RUSE Beta: Feedback from a RTS lover

[TheKritsTheyKil]

No doubt about it, I love RTS games.

I'm talking about Starcraft series, Warcraft series, Age of Empires, World in Conflict, Rise of Nations, and of course Company of Heroes...saying that, i've been watching R.U.S.E. for a while now since its large touch screen debut.

The game is based around being a General, and dealing with large tracks of land inhabited by enemy forces. You may either be by yourself or with teammates, but either way, you have to quickly develope a strategy, and then put it in the works. However unlike other RTS games that develope all around "guessing" what the enemy is doing and spam building your army, you are set up with a more realistic scenario. You have your intellegence staff dillegently giving you information on what is going on, and can see a rough estimate of what and where the enemy is. However, like real intellegence, its on guessing/visual sight. The difference with RUSE though is that like real intellegence, it can be altered to fake out the enemy. This is what the game is about. Going toe to toe as a general with another player, and dupping them into failure allowing your army to roll across the land and crush them (or atleast pushing them back/scaring them to death/etc)

From a stand point on this notion, I feel the game is successful. Each RUSE is powerful in itself and allows you a variety of combinations to sucker the enemy into losing. However...like REAL people, just pressing a button and expecting someone to pop on their dunce cap doesn't happen. This is where YOU sir/madam..yes YOU have to THINK (OMG!!! NNNNNOOOOO!!!! -some of the community)

This hit a real key note with a lot of the original RTS'ers but many newcombers weren't so sure. This is why they made the game simple to understand with the fight calculator, and the nicely laid out icons, etc allowing you to quickly graps what is going on in a second or two, and then focus more on what the enemy is doing.

This I give an A for.. I am not giving a A+ though simply because:

1. The Ruse cards still need tuning.
2. I wish mousing over gathered units would allow you to select one from the group, rather than having to select the group, THEN select the picture of the unit you want.
3. I wish sector lines would be shown no matter what zoom level so you can see where the boundaries of them are if a RUSE is active in that sector.

These are a few key things I felt need tweaking.

As far as the game play speed. Many say "but its too slow!" well..mr. or madam, if you didn't realize, the actual units are SUPER SUPER TINY, because the maps are so MASSIVE. Thus I think the speeds are perfectly justifiable as is. I don't have many issues with this, but some people do I guess because they must be hyperactive low attention spanned individuals that MUST HAVE IT NOW!

However, during this movement phase, it grants a player to see how the enemy is reacting, and allows you to adjust and play the ruse cards. I find it handy, at the least.

I give the speed of the game a B, because yes, it would be a little nicer if the units were speed up just a tad, however I think having a game speed bar would fix this so that you could select if you want to play at "normal game speed" or "super fast, spastic" mode.

Now to the Units. The nations are nicely done, although having a French army DID surprise me, I welcomed them. Most don't know this but it is accurate in 1939 since the French had a MASSIVE defensive border. Unfortunatly the germans just rounded it through another country and bypassed it. Oh well, but in the game, the french are fun surprisingly!

Each country is nicely tuned for better or worse. Each has its issues, but I would love to see some tweaks here:

1. Each nation shows a + or - bar indicating pros/cons of that nation
2. All Light infantry should have a speed increase
3. All infantry should move faster when on roads..right now they move as fast as tanks (and I know those trucks moved MUCH faster back then)
4. Artillery pieces auto fired on unidentified units (sometimes they don't)
5. Heavy/elite infantry had a slight firing range increase over light infantry
6. Capturing a building shouldn't be instant, it should take 5 seconds or so. (LOTS of complaints on this one, although effective)
7. Health bar for units? I understand the withdrawl icon, but it would be nice to know.

That's everything I can think of off hand that would definitly make this more "user friendly".

Those are the main ones that come to mind. Overall I give the nations and units a "B".

Would I recommend the game thus far? Yes, to those that LOVE RTS games. Would I recommend it to those that want to get into a RTS game? Yes! I would! Would I recommend it to anyone else? probably not since this game is heavily geared to this genre of player.

However, this is just a quick feedback from myself. I encourage those more curious to give the FREE STEAM BETA a try and check it out for themselves!