R.U.S.E. Updated Impressions

The last time we saw Ubisoft's WWII-themed strategy game R.U.S.E. was at GamesCom, where we pitted our skills against a human opponent in direct battle. Skip ahead a few weeks and Ubisoft is once again showing off R.U.S.E., although this time at TGS it's focusing more on the single-player experience. We donned our battle fatigues yet again to see just how smart the game's artificial intelligence will be.

What's New: During our behind-closed-doors demo, a friendly developer from Eugen Systems took us through what we can expect from the game's AI when taking on the game solo. While a final decision hasn't been made yet, the developer said there may be up to five different difficulty levels in R.U.S.E., with the AI acting in an increasingly sophisticated manner on harder difficulties.

Of course, being more sophisticated in R.U.S.E. means making better use of the game's deception-based gameplay. These special ruses can be activated on the map and can confer strategic bonuses such as deploying fake units, sending spies to find key enemy locations, disguising the true abilities of your troops, and much more. At lower difficulty levels, the AI won't even make use of basic ruses such as minimising radar. Pump it up, though, and the computer-controlled enemy will have full use of the same arsenal of ruses as a real-life player.

What's The Same: The game still looks great, with its real-time 3D engine impressive to view as it seamlessly shifts from the high-level battle-top view all the way down to ground level.

What Impression The Game Made This Time: Our demo tester set the game's AI on a fairly low level, which meant that the match was won with a simple rush of heavy bombers directly attacking the enemy base. We're keen to get some more hands-on time to see if the AI can be as deceptive as a human opponent, though, so keep checking back with GameSpot for further updates on R.U.S.E.