14 DAY TRIAL // If you have a Steam account, then you can do worse than installing and then playing a few matches in the now running R.U.S.E. open beta stage. The game is being created by Eugen Systems, a development outfit, which also delivered the two Act of War titles, and will be published by Ubisoft in June for the PC, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PlayStation 3 from Sony.
The beta allows a player to engage both the AI on one map and play against other human opponents on a few maps. It is quick and engaging, with significant decisions available at every point in the game. The main idea is that the battlefield is a confusing place, with enemy units hard to identify and orders hard to decipher.
There are not too many units in play at the same time and using the appropriate unit for a certain job is crucial. The Blitz and Terror ruses seem to be the most used ones at the moment, with units that can actually see far enough to allow a player to detect incoming assaults crucial to success. The big problem now, at least for me, are crashes that seem to affect quite a few of the games, which is to be expected from a beta.
The big problem is that Ubisoft and Eugen Systems might have made the game a bit too simple in some respects. It's not clear whether more ruses will be delivered in the full release or whether the current ones will be significantly changed but as it stands at the moment, the deceptions are only marginally important, the winner of the game being mostly deciding by a good build order, good knowledge of the roster of the various factions and good use of counters. The deceptions need to be bigger, forcing players to do certain things and to reach to them, rather than just being a sideshow to the actual clash of armies.
The game also needs some work in the balance department. Currently, some players are developing rush strategies based on airports and para drops that are difficult to counter and that make games pretty unbalanced. The beta is here to allow for some of this kinks to be ironed out and Ubisoft seems to be taking into account the feedback players are offering, with at least two updates delivered to the beta until now.
R.U.S.E. will probably not beat StarCraft II in terms of sales or online play but it could prove a nice real-time strategy for both the PC and consoles as long as a bit more depth is added.