RUSE PC Demo is Out!

RUUUUUUSSSE

The PC demo is out! Single-player, but it will whet your whistle for the release in September!

Okay I know this is already a lost cause, I know that. Starcraft 2 has effectively killed any other game that is even remotely like it, squashing them before they even get a chance to show their colors. Like the inevitable -yet no less horrific for that very inevitability- consequence of taking your pet peacock to an industrial site.

But I want you to stop and think for a second: are you playing Starcraft 2 right now? Hell, do you maybe not even like Starcraft 2? Or RTS games? Or games at all? RUSE might be a great option for a fun time then. It is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Starcraft. It is slow paced, it emphasizes large strategic-level decisions rather than smaller tactical ones, and being quick on the draw is worth significantly less than having a solid idea of where you want to position yourself. It’s a very entertaining and different take on the genre, bringing in some much needed innovation.

RUSE is essentially a simulation of that scene in World War 2 movies where they push around little groups of army men on a board in response to intel. Except you know, prettier. It’s very focused on making your opponent make a mistake by playing with what information he or she has access to. To that end, in addition to the standard building of little army men to attack them, you can hide your units in forests and cities, and use command abilities called “Ruses” to make dummy units, cloak your troops, hide your structures, make your tanks look tiny… lots of fun little ways of playing around with perceptions. Backing that up is a pretty solid combat system based on simple hard counters with a couple of tweaks. What that means is that your infantry can always be killed by armored vehicles, your armored vehicles can always be killed by a tank, your tanks can always be killed by a bomber… etc. The tweaks -like infantry killing tanks if they get the drop on them in a city- add a quite a bit of depth to that. Each side (US/England/Russia/France/Germany/Italy) also have their own idiosyncratic troop types to add to the mix.

It’s also surprisingly pretty at any level of zoom:

Part of why I found it so engaging is that I can make very large scale decisions (I’ll try a feint here, supported by dummies, then push the main force around back under radio silence….) and ignore the minor decision-making of putting down an extra depot every time I want to make new units or clicking about wildly to keep things in position. Micromanaging is kept to a minimum and “skill” with the UI is a very small part of your victory. There’s something very satisfying about knowing that all it took to win was a good read on your opponent and a solid idea of what sort of army you’d need to crack their forces wide open.

I think that any person with even a vague interest in ordering around little army men, even those of you who aren’t generally into it, should give RUSE a try. It’s accessible in a way many modern games are not, and it’s one of the few games I’ve seen recreate the sort of fun I used to have with actual board games.

Also! For people who are way too into game news and hate DRM: they removed the Ubisoft DRM. No crazy DRM! You can purchase without worry!

R.U.S.E’s Strategy: Be Awesome.

So I’ve been playing the beta version of R.U.S.E. for a while. R.U.S.E. is an amazingly cool game, even if the developers don’t understand that everyone forever will call it “Ruse”.

Ruse is a Real Time Strategy game with a significant focus on strategy and pissing the hell out of other people. This makes it the perfect thing to play online. Unlike most RTS games, Ruse doesn’t require much in the way of frantic clicking and micromanagement. The way to win is careful planning, deception, and understanding your enemy. The basic gameplay is simple, but the possible variations on the simple mechanics make things shine. The gameplay is slow enough to allow for strategy while also giving players enough to do moment-to-moment that it never becomes boring. And in a frankly amazing twist it actually appears almost perfectly balanced out of the box. There’s no one strategy that you see time and again, no one unit people build like it’s going out of style. It’s my new favorite competitive multiplayer game.

The basic game is building and moving little tanks/soldiers/airplanes from a wide strategic view, positioning them on the board in a way that will make them most effective. In fact, when you zoom out they turn into little board-game tokens. You can surmise most of the simpler rules. Tanks beat soldiers, soldiers beat anti-tank junk, planes beat tanks/soldiers, but die to Anti-Air.

The only difference is that your asshole friend can't break these.

There are a lot of little wrinkles, though. One is that units aren’t simply “better” or “worse” than one another. Those tiny soldiers there? If they hide in the city ahead, and position their little RPG launchers, a column of tanks could be reduced to so much scrap metal if they try to rumble through. Unless, that is, those vile Axis have some aerial recon planes up spotting for them. Then they just reduce those clever troops to paste from a good distance. This is how the game gets complicated, simple rules interacting in strategically important ways.

Then there are the titular “Ruses”. Basically, they’re devices designed to get people on the internet to question your sexual preferences. With a ruse you can hide your troops, make your tanks look like soldiers and vice-versa, create a decoy army or airforce, make booby-trapped decoy buildings that kill anyone who tries to capture them, see your enemy’s plans and orders, or any number of incredibly mean things. You could, for example, create a dummy army to attack from the left, then place a small force on the right and a large invisible force behind the dummies on the left. On the attack you push with your left force and your dummies. Your enemy feels like a clever boy because he recognizes that only one of these attacks is real, and goes for the left force. Then you attack with your reserve army when his troops have been drawn away and he kindly asks what specific kind of homosexual you are.

Ruse was completely off of my radar for a long time, because RTS + WW2 screamed generic to me. But after downloading the demo I have to say it scratches an itch I didn’t even know I had. Ruse is a computer game for people who like board games. Tokens, strategy, anger, and impeccable balance combine into something lovely. I highly recommend you at least give it a try when a demo comes out, or download the beta version from Steam, which should be available for a few more days.

P.S. If you’ve ever played Diplomacy, I’m sorry for the friends you lost, and this is a lot like that but in real time and doesn’t take 20 hours to play.