Rock, Paper, Shotgun

RPS’s natural state is well documented as a kind of electric bewilderment, but this is surprising even for us. A new sliver of DLC entitled The Rising Sun Pack has just been released for RPS favourite R.U.S.E., adding the Japanese to the game as a brand new faction with 28 new units, plus 3 new Japan-centric Operations (standalone scenarios), one of which sees the Japanese taking on the US National Guard in an assault on Fort Knox. Look, here it is on Steam. I had no idea this was coming. I haven’t even had my morning tea yet. This is horrible. Unless this is some kind of… ruse? No, it’s not a ruse. Full press release after the jump.
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By which I mean “the Manhattan Project Pack free DLC for RUSE has (probably) arrived.” As evidenced by yon screenshot above, this multiplayer-centric gimme adds a little nuclear frisson to yer World War II strategisin’. For your no-dollars, you get three new maps and two new modes – one of which includes nukey “Long Toms”. Missus. There’s also the option to play the game at accelerated chronology, which the boy Quinns got quite excited about the other week. The DLC is in theory supposed to auto-update onto the parent game in Steam right now, but I hear murmurings of some sort of snafu. And luck, generals?

And whatever was I quoting in the headline?

This December, R.U.S.E. will be inviting us all to come and strum on nukuleles. VG247 has pointed me towards this blog post on the official R.U.S.E. site talking about the upcoming and completely free Manhattan Project Pack, which will add three new multiplayer maps for 2v2 and 3v3 games and two new multiplayer modes, Total War and Nuclear War. Details after the jump.
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Following on from Jim’s individual discussion of RUSE, the RPS high-fiving fraternity elected to spend some time getting to grips with Eugen Systems’ latest RTS, and discovered they rather liked it. It was time for a verdict. But what would the collective verdict be? And were they wise to the tricks and traps the game laid out for them? And why was John on holiday? Did anyone care? There were so many unanswered questions. Read on to discover…

Jim: RUSE: A real-time strategy that seems to have surprised people. Did it surprise you guys? It surprised me.
Kieron: It certainly surprise attack-bonused me. Regularly. But I suspect we’ll get to that.
Quintin: I had no faith whatsoever in it before I played it. Not entirely sure why. So yes, I was surprised. Alarmed, even.
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And henceforth Ruse, because game names with extraneous punctuation in are just silly. Right, Stalker? Right. There can be much in a name, too. In this new real-time strategy from Eugen Systems and Ubisoft everything is based on that one titular conceit: trickery, misdirection, the flow of information. The ruse is the game. Some RTS games make a nod to this stuff with their fog of war, or even stealth tanks or whatnot, but here it’s the key to success. It’s remarkably refreshing. Also, I flagrantly kicked out my network cable and I didn’t care! Why not? Because there’s no always-on DRM. But enough pre-blather bombardment. Let’s launch the landing craft of criticism directly into what I think about Ruse…

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Lies, damned lies, and ballistics. That’s what’s in store for anybody who chooses to download the R.U.S.E. demo, which is available right now on Steam. Worth mentioning once again that R.U.S.E. isn’t going to feature Ubisoft’s DRM of legend, so it looks like this whole mess has worked itself out peacefully.

A video of R.U.S.E. isn’t to be found after the jump.
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Word via the Ubi forums is that Ubisoft’s sadface-inducing DRM will not appear in forthcoming Strategy, R.U.S.E.

When R.U.S.E. is released in September, it will benefit from Valve’s Steamworks API to offer the best community experience to players. Consequently, a Steam account and Internet connection will be required to activate the game, as per Steam policy. For this reason, R.U.S.E. will not use the Ubisoft protection. Single player can be played offline.

Speculation about the end of UbiDRM ahoy! (Also thanks to everyone who sent in this link.)

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.

Read on!