Oh, so you want to play a World War 2 RTS? hope not this one, at least. A solid game, but highly frustrating.
As surprising as it may sound, R.U.S.E isn't one of these types of games. It's actually better to play in the console, despite its choppy frame rate when a lot of explosions happens and, well, limited graphics.
But oh well, here comes my review, by a RPG fan and critic:
-- STORY --
Must I tell you this one part? everyone knows what was WW2, so I won't explain much...but indeed, it doesn't have those cheesy aditions to the real story (like adding abnormally big tanks/robots or strange gadgets in the middle).
Basically, you control armies from USA, Italy, France, Germany and UK, once at a time, and complete some missions as an in-training commander, who eventually ranks up (for show only, it doesn't affect gameplay in general) and controls forces from other countries to stop the communists from controling Europe.
-- GAMEPLAY --
Well, this is basic Real-time Tactics for you. Nothing much to add...on the beggining, you learn how to move units, its strong points and weakenesses and how to attack. Later, of course, you get to build factories to build your own army or ground or air units and even upgrade later.
One good addition is the Ruses, which are some "cards" (not actually cards, but just so you get the picture) that you use and give a specific region an ability, like moving faster, hide units for ambush, discover enemy units to mount a counter-attack, camouflage buildings and even make decoy attacks. It adds a surprise element to battle, specially in online modes, but....
-- PROS AND CONS --
You may think, after all I've said, it looks like a good game...right?
and the answer is.....*suspense music*....
no, it isn't good..sadly
In single player, all the 22 campaign missions resume to "go there", "destroy the enemy base" or "suvive xx minutes", and let me tell you, once you unlock the big units, you'll just use them unless you don't have other choice and you'll win most of the battles that way.
...oh wait, I said win??
Another aspect you must hate about this game is the difficulty and selection the enemy units. If you set the game on easy, you might stumble a little in the beginning, but after that, it's still HARD. The first half of the game you can manage to beat in the first try, but after that, it's trial and error. Even if you manage to see the enemy base and think "oh, I should use an air attack to destroy the headquarters", once your planes reach the location, your enemy mysteriously build air defenses and there goes your money.
You know why? it isn't because you didn't paid attention, but you can't select enemy units/buildings! You have to look closely enough to the unit and think "oh wait, this is an anti-air turret, better think another way"...why complicate this much?
Even in Supreme Commander 2 for the X360 you could easily pass the cursor on the unit and see what unit it is...here, you don't see what unit it is unless you're personally close enough to it, but if you do that, you're already having your units begging for mercy to the enemy as they wipe your forces.
No, I'm not nitpicking this flaw...because, even if you can tell the enemy units by eye, they build ridiculously fast even on easy difficulty, let alone in normal or veteran...and the last 5 missions are impossible unless you see a walkthrough of someone who beat it first...so where's the strategy here? shouldn't there be other ways to complete the mission besides thinking "I must build 3 anti-tank turrets to the north and anti-air turrets on the west"? Where's the dynamic here?
Let's take good examples so you don't get me wrong. On Starcraft missions, even if you restart the mission, the units you confront aren't the same always. Sometimes, you're rushed by air units, other times, stealth ground units, and other times even long range units...it's never the same twice. Age of Empires, same thing. Rise of Nations, same thing....why be different here? the only variation seems to be the way they go to you. Sometimes, it's one tank, other times it's 3 or 6 of them, or they simply take another route at random.
And once your opponent hits you on the place it hurts, reset your mission and start over...their attacks are lightning fast, and as you're losing suplies to build an counter-attack, your opponent's already making something to counter it too, and since you have less supplies than him, consider it over.
To sum it up, as I said before, this game have some cool features to look at and is pretty solid on following the happenings of WW2, but gameplay-wise, it's either too easy or highly frustrating...other games make it difficult as it progress, but as so you don't get bored or it doesn't get repetitive.
You know, looking back at the trailer, it doesn't look that bad, but it unfortunately fails of a game's main objective: make the player have fun. Instead, it's like I'm playing chess, making the same moves to complete the mission and repeat for the next one with little changes...
So, try it if you really like RTS and have more patience/time than me, but if you aren't one of those, I strongly recommend to stay away... companies prefer to make FPS games and don't put the same effort on rpgs and rts's...