GOTY 2010: Best Real Time Strategy – R.U.S.E.

This was the year when Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty showed what a real time strategy could deliver in terms of experience when it’s polished close to perfection and plays it traditional, while Relic continues to redefine the tactical level by incorporating even more role playing elements and diverging paths in the Chaos Rising expansion.
 
But the real time strategy title which captured my imagination is the Ubisoft published and developed by Eugen Systems R.U.S.E.

This real time strategy game has the misfortune of being set during World War II and the fortune of focusing not just on the actual warfighting of the era, but on the influence which knowledge and lack of it can have on battles.

The game gives the player (rather slowly in singleplayer, stick with skirmishers or battles with friends) a set of ruses they can play, which range from creating fake offensives to putting a zone in radio silence and to speeding up certain units.

The twist is that, unlike special powers in other real time strategy games which just give a small tactical advantage, the ruses can make or break an engagement.

Often I have lost a battle to a canny human enemy who knew just when to trick me into thinking I will be defending against infantry when he was actually amassing an armor assault, which, thanks to another ruse power, actually came the north rather than the south.

The map design usually includes woods, rivers crossings and other chokepoints, making it pretty much impossible to win by pure might alone, which leads to tense matches where good use of powers is the key to edging out a victory.

Unfortunately, the game has a very weak single player campaign and the World War II setting does it no favors, but if Eugen Systems moves the action to a hypothetical modern day scenario or the Cold War and expands the ruse mechanics, it could have a real hit on its hand with R.U.S.E. 2.