R.U.S.E.: No More Cutscenes for Strategy Gaming

R.U.S.E. is a World War II real time strategy title developed by Eugen Systems and published by Ubisoft which aims to shake up the reliable formula of Allies versus Axis by introducing ruses, special powers that can alter the way the battlefield is laid out and offer an advantage to the one who plays them.

R.U.S.E. seems pretty competent when it comes to the actual gameplay mechanics, with the units feeling pretty historical and well designed and the ruses making sure that there's always a surprise lurking somewhere on the battlefield, with light units actually being hordes of tanks or a whole force hidden by radio silence coming from an unexpected direction.

But the game fails pretty hard when it comes to creating a coherent gaming world and the main culprit are the cutscenes.

It seems that the developers tried a bit too hard to make the story as interesting as the actual game and overshot, with cutscenes that are badly acted, full of details that have no impact on the actual battles that follow and, worse of all, the reason to only allow the player a limited range of units for use in the single player campaign.

The story also tries to work around the events of World War II, like the battle of Kasserine Pass and the Anzio amphibious invasion but without making use of any of the real life commanders involved in the action directly while trying to introduce an bright and eager American commander and his British intelligence officer that lack background and can't elicit any sympathy from World War II buffs.

It would have been much more interesting to ditch the new characters altogether and simply mine archives for some good footage showing Rommel, Patton, Eisenhow, Kesselring and the like in order to allow artists to model characters based on them to then deliver briefings to the anonymous commander that is the player character.

The gameplay of R.U.S.E. is strong enough to carry the game and the narrative is just a distraction that could even lead some to ditch the game before they see how the multiplayer plays out.