By Jim Rossignol on December 8th, 2009 at 1:27 pm.
I’ve been spending some time in the slow-but-satisfying depths of the R.U.S.E. multiplayer beta. Then I went and wrote about it for that Eurogamer website. Here’s a taste:
The first impression of RUSE is that this is another “long-zoom” game, where the map and the game space are one. When you zoom right out the gameworld is set in some kind of control room, and is reduced to slowly trundling icons. Zoom in and you can see the buildings, trees and even the movements of individual soldiers. It’s not exactly visually breathtaking, but it’s sort of functionally resplendent in a way that will make desktop general nod in sated approval.
08/12/2009 at 13:38 Sam Bigos says:
Can’t wait to see what this is like, I hope they focus mostly on the Multiplayer and not spent too long on SP.
08/12/2009 at 14:13 Baris says:
I hope they do the opposite.
08/12/2009 at 17:19 Rich says:
Screw multiplayer. I want my SP campaign.
08/12/2009 at 19:08 TotalBiscuit says:
There’s no reason why they can’t have both. The multiplayer component is solid atm.
08/12/2009 at 13:41 Babs says:
Real-Time-Strategy with actual Strategy? Sweet!
I love the movement arrows in that screenshot, it makes it really feel like pushing units around with a long stick.
08/12/2009 at 18:15 Bhazor says:
If you don’t think there’s strategy in a RTS’ like CoH or Warcraft it’s because you’re crap at it.
08/12/2009 at 18:40 Railick says:
There isn’t really any strategy in CoH or Warcraft there is tactics, IMO They should be called RTT instead of RTS Since there is no control over the strategy part of the war only the tactical part of it. The NPCS decide the strategy for you and just tell you what your strategic objectives are with you having any say so. You really only have control over what tactics you are going to deploy in order to achieve your fake strategic objectives (I say fake because there is no actual war going on in these games they are just missions, it really doesn’t matter what you do as long as you take the objective even if you lose 5000 tanks in the process the game doesn’t realize you’ve just lost every tank in the theatre and couldn’t possibly continue the war ;P)
08/12/2009 at 13:48 Arathain says:
This does look really quite interesting- thanks for the article, Jim.
08/12/2009 at 14:37 JB says:
I’m on the beta, it’s actually a lot of fun.
@Babs: I know what you mean. Makes me want to break out the brandy and cigars too =)
08/12/2009 at 14:42 JB says:
And Jim, nice work on slipping a vague RPS mention into the article.
“…give me a vital edge in the rock-paper-artillery game that lies ahead.”
08/12/2009 at 15:00 Ginger Yellow says:
I’m very glad to hear it’s shaping up well. It was dismissed out of hand in all the post E3 previews I saw, but I love the idea of properly slow, tactical RTS (Sins was close, but it’s still pretty frantic at times) and the deception mechanic could be great (or a crappy gimmicky).
08/12/2009 at 15:38 Torgen says:
I am quite intrigued by this, and hope there is an ability to save MP games in progress. Hopefully with some sort of “both have to be online and connected to each other to open MP saved games” check to prevent nasty peoples from running the saved game before the next meet-up to find out where the other guy’s units are.
08/12/2009 at 16:37 TotalBiscuit says:
There really is no need for that, games have a time limit of 30 minutes or less and to be honest that’s a good timeframe for play.
08/12/2009 at 15:54 DMJ says:
I hope they do both.
08/12/2009 at 15:55 DMJ says:
My first ever reply fail :(
08/12/2009 at 16:17 Radiant says:
Sounds like a great way to spend a couple of hours with your mate.
Kind of like how we used to play command and conquer before we discovered how everyone else played command and conquer.
08/12/2009 at 16:38 Flobulon says:
We’ve all been there. Stay strong, brother.
08/12/2009 at 16:39 Flobulon says:
How ironic, I responded to a comment fail with a comment fail.
inb4 “that’s not irony”
08/12/2009 at 16:49 Railick says:
This seems like it could be interesting but only if the combat itself is realistic. If it is command and conquer like where the tanks have HP it’ll be rather boring IMO. I’m so tired of tanks having to shoot each other 10 times then for no good reason one tank explodes 100% Where in real life one good shot would have killed everyone inside the tank making it as good as dead. This is why I like games like Steel Panthers or Men of War when it comes to WW2 tank combat.
08/12/2009 at 17:37 TotalBiscuit says:
You don’t really have to worry. It’s not quite Men of War level realism but stuff does blow up pretty fast. A squad of infantry can pop tanks with bazookas incredibly fast (and yes they do carry them as part of the squad, you don’t have to build ‘bazooker infantry’)
08/12/2009 at 17:17 Rich says:
Do we have any word on the system requirements for this?
A bit of googling has produced results that are so stupidly high (in terms of min RAM anyway) that I can’t/won’t believe it.
08/12/2009 at 17:35 Railick says:
@Rich I recall seeing that it would require a lot of ram due to the way the renders the land scape when you zoom in-out but I never thought it was true either since Supreme Commander does the same thing with better graphics (IMO) But I believe in this case we are talking about a MASSIVE amount of area covered in each map and when yo zoom in you get extreme detail like soliders walking and trees and bushs and towns ect. So that MIGHT explain the high Ram requirments.
Shadowcat “It hammers at my retinas like an evil woodpecker of pure energy”
08/12/2009 at 19:23 JB says:
My PC is an AMD Athlon 4400 with 2 gig of RAM and a paltry GEForce 7600GS. RUSE runs quite nicely even on that.
Even the transition from “War Room” view down to traditional RTS view is smooth enough for my liking.
08/12/2009 at 17:39 leeder_krenon says:
single player all the way
08/12/2009 at 17:40 TotalBiscuit says:
It’s a good game, been playing the beta for a while. Units are generally well balanced with the exception of Maus tanks which seem almost unkillable (maybe my opponents just sucked), the game flows well and the ruses are effective, if a little understated. It’s a solid wargame, though the scoring system leaves a little to be desired. It’s based on victory points which are earned from blowing stuff up and then totalled up once the timer runs out (or if you wipe out the enemy completely first).
08/12/2009 at 18:02 Mad Doc MacRae says:
I might have to investigate this – the earlier preview material (and those silly trailers!) had left me uninterested, but if the actual gameplay is slow and subtle then maybe it won’t be so bad.
Any way to get my hands on the beta?
08/12/2009 at 19:21 JB says:
Apparently these days you have to join the R.U.S.E. Facebook page.
08/12/2009 at 19:50 liquid says:
I played 5 games, got my ass handed to me 4 times and one draw (although I was losing by 50 points, go figure). The game is lovely. It does seem like the design was done with touch interface in mind, but it’s not that bad. It looks very, very slick which compensates a bit, imo.
The gameplay itself is great. The zooming in and out is very fast, no lag at all and that is impressive. I like that the default time is 24 minutes, it isn’t too long so you can play a game and know when it’s going to end but it is also enough to get your fix.
The game itself is deceptively simple. It looks very easy and you can probably get away with some very basic tactics against many players but underneath there’s a lot of tactics, thinking and depth to the gameplay. I can’t really remember of any other game that is similar to RUSE. It’s great, I’ll be testing it a bit more and most likely will buy it as soon as I can afford it (Fucking busy Q1).
08/12/2009 at 20:02 Bhazor says:
Thats what I was thinking.
Any word on whether this is compatible with Windows Surface or whatever it’s blasted touchy gropey screen do-hickey is called?
08/12/2009 at 21:49 TotalBiscuit says:
Yes it is, it’s the debut game for it. Regardless it still works great with a kb/m.
08/12/2009 at 21:43 DrazharLn says:
“…way that will make desktop general nod in s(e)ated approval.”
Change it to armchair general and you’ve got yourself a right sidesplitter! :P
08/12/2009 at 23:08 Fruik says:
French touch rules :)
15/07/2010 at 21:11 Danny says:
The game is a bit lame. The promise of tactical warfare is lost under the deluge of options available. In the end it just becomes another insane RTS button bashing game that Konami would have bowed down to.