R.U.S.E. Beta

A few weeks ago, the R.U.S.E. Beta opened up to everyone on Steam. Knowing nothing about it, I decided to jump right into it.

R.U.S.E. (and I have no idea what R.U.S.E. is an acronym for) is an RTS game set in WW2. In the same vein of EndWar, R.U.S.E. tries to add a new spin on the RTS genre. R.U.S.E.'s big spin on the genre is the ability and emphasis on tricking your opponent. In R.U.S.E. you have the power to fool your opponent with ruse cards. You get two at the start of each round and another about every 5 minutes. You can do things like hide your base, or your troops, or send fake units to attack them. That's all fine and dandy but Ruse also sets their maps on a war room board in a different environment. Sometimes it's a bombed out building, other times it's an actual war room. They say they did this because now they can have bigger maps than other RTS games. I'm not too sure about that, but it is interesting to zoom out and see what the war room looks like for a few seconds until you start to realize the enemy is sending a shitload of paratroopers to take over your base.

RTS games aren't my thing, but I can tell that this isn't that special.

Since it's beta, there's not too much that I can be truly mad at the people for, because it isn't done. Sure, the whole ruse thing is neat, it just isn't that new or amazing. Tricking your opponent has been a tactic in RTS games for a while now. Building a bunch of Black Hands or something to go attack your opponents teammate while you send the actual army of tanks and shit has been my tactic for a while. Sure it hasn't worked. Apparently my idea of an army of tanks would be like 20 of the lowest ranked tanks, but still. It's an average RTS game, but by opening the beta to everyone on Steam, they reached out to the crowd of people who never play RTS games, and they're going to get them to play and buy.

Tricky.