The Fishstickfoundation

Now this game has really caught my attention. IMHO has the potential to become really big and interesting. The screenshots and trailer show only little about how the game works. Best check out some weblinks on the game mechanics since it would take me too long to translate the article I have read in German. Or read the preview I have copy/pasted below.

Screenshots

Trailer

Review

Ubisoft's R.U.S.E. is under development by French-based Eugen Systems, which brought us Atari's well-received Act of War Direct Action and Act of War High Treason. R.U.S.E. will be heading to the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 later this year, and we got a chance to see it in action at a recent Ubisoft event in Central London.

We were treated to a teaser trailer at the beginning of the presentation, featuring two businessmen squaring off against each other in what looks to be a game of Battleships. Using a futuristic touch-sensitive table like the one from Minority Report, they were able to deploy battleships, tanks, fortified guns, and landing craft against one another. However, things got interesting when one of them used fake units as decoys, including stuffed mannequins, and stole victory in the process.

After this brief introduction, Ubisoft senior producer Mathieu Girard highlighted three main concepts the team has tried to include in the game dimension, deception, and depth. Dimension is represented by the game's proprietary, purpose-built engine, Iriszoom. This real-time 3D engine allows you to view the field of play at several levels. There's a high-level view that represents the battlefield on a tabletop, a strategic overview of local troops within a 3D world, and a close-up view of the action above the ground, with each level also having access to different contextual commands.

Deception is how R.U.S.E. gets its name. By using various cards, you can activate a special ability on a chosen sector of the battlefield, such as deploying fake tanks and soldiers that appear real to the enemy. Another card inverts the appearance of your unit classes, so enemies will see heavy units as light infantry, and vice versa. You can reuse cards and redeploy them again, but you may be limited to the cards you have access to, as they're prechosen at the beginning of the game. The last aspect is depth, which is the team's focus on making strategic decisions rather than what Girard calls "click-fest micromanagement." There are six factions in the game, and each can build structures and output resources, but the ultimate goal is to get into battle. To this end, resources in each map are limited, meaning that players who like to slowly amass a sizable army might need to change their tactics to be successful.

Girard demonstrated one of the single-player campaign missions using the Allies. Based on the real-life Battle of Monte Casino, the Nazis have seized the hill and its monastery with five infantry and tank divisions. The ultimate goal of this mission is for the Allies to capture the monastery. Girard chose to do this by flanking them from the nearby town of Ausonia, but to do that he needed to take care of an AA division to allow the 101st Airborne division to parachute into the town.

There are two ruses you can use to help win this particular mission. The first is radio silence, which makes your units drop off the enemy radar intelligence, effectively granting them stealth. This allows you to sneak past enemy lines and destroy the AA division. The second ruse lets you intercept enemy plans, so you can see what the enemy is up to. The data, in the form of arrows, indicates where and at what the Nazis are planning to strike and can then be used to execute ambushes or defensive measures. One important note is that ruses can be used at only one sector of the map at a time, but you can redeploy them as many times as you wish on other areas.

The Iriszoom engine shows the battlefield from three different perspectives. The first is the R.U.S.E. level, which presents a strategic view with which to formulate your master plan. This level is accessed by zooming out to the highest level, at which point the 3D battlefield becomes a 2D version. It's a great visual effect that makes you feel like you're in control of a real battle, with the ability to command the action like some sort of war-room general. It's at this level that you can also choose and activate ruses. One ruse is always chosen at random, but the rest can be selected from 10 different options. One such example is the decoy offensive plan, which lets you send trucks in to build a fake wooden base, deceiving your enemy and causing him to lose valuable time if he chooses to attack.

The Iriszoom engine shows the battlefield from three different perspectives. The first is the R.U.S.E. level, which presents a strategic view with which to formulate your master plan. This level is accessed by zooming out to the highest level, at which point the 3D battlefield becomes a 2D version. It's a great visual effect that makes you feel like you're in control of a real battle, with the ability to command the action like some sort of war-room general. It's at this level that you can also choose and activate ruses. One ruse is always chosen at random, but the rest can be selected from 10 different options. One such example is the decoy offensive plan, which lets you send trucks in to build a fake wooden base, deceiving your enemy and causing him to lose valuable time if he chooses to attack.

You won't need to worry about repairing units in R.U.S.E., because they automatically regenerate health over time. They're not invincible, however, and units can be destroyed instantly if ambushed with enough firepower. There are six factions in the game--USA, UK, Italy, France, Germany, and the USSR--and each has its advantages. Russia relies on cheap conscripts and powerful artillery, the US has bombers, France can set up defensive lines like the infamous Maginot Line, and Germany has formidable tanks. The campaign will take you across Europe and Northern Africa, including Tunisia, Italy, and Normandy. We didn't get to see the multiplayer mode, but we were told R.U.S.E. will support four-on-four competitive multiplayer, though there are no plans for cooperative play.

Zooming in from a Risk-like strategy map to a real-world close-up view is great. The Iriszoom engine, despite a few glitches, looks capable, and we saw buildings blazing on fire, explosions emitted from units, AA flak flying through the air, and the occasional cutscene from a friendly commander. We're told some of the biggest maps in the game could be up to 100 square kilometres. If you added up every tree, rock, unit, and structure on a map of that magnitude, Girard says it would surpass more than 1 billion polygons. Thankfully R.U.S.E.'s engine ensures that it's drawing only what you need to see.

R.U.S.E. will be arriving on the PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 sometime in 2009, with all versions due to launch on the same day. For more on the game, watch the announcement trailer and check out our previous reviews of Eugen's Act of War Direct Action and Act of War High Treason.