R.U.S.E. is a great attempt at bringing grand-scale WW2 to strategy gaming. It is a large step forward since Act of War!
The unique gaming interface is sleek, smooth and easy to use making it suitable for both veterans and newcomers to the RTS genre. Its appearance and map graphics when zoomed out makes it feel like a strategy table in a country's high command war room. Units appear as "counters" that can be shifted around, with varying sizes of stacks representing everything from a company size of infantrymen, to entire divisions worth of men and machines. Zooming in will give you the traditional RTS view of your units on the battlefield, with single tanks and squads representing platoon or company level units. Additionally the game engine uses a system of damage counting (since a single tank may actually represent a platoon of tanks), in which a unit will take on damage until it is about to be annihilated, upon which it will start to rout in order to give the unit time to repair and recuperate. A unit which is successfully retreated will therefore eventually repair and refit till it is back to full strength (i.e. full health).
However what makes this game truly unique is its introduction of "ruses" to the game. There are several ruses including "radio silence" and "decoy army" which adds a whole new dimension to traditional strategy game-play. As such the saying "Walk softly and carry a big stick" is the very essence of the game itself. Not only is it important to have the bigger and more powerful tank, but it is also equally important to make the enemy think that even if you don't as well. To conclude there is more to R.U.S.E. than meets the eye, don't be fooled by the first thing you see.