First Look at Ubisoft's New IP: R.U.S.E.

Check out our first-hand look at the latest from Ubi Paris - a rather unique RTS title for PC and console.

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This doesn't water down the RTS experience though, as the rest of the game on a more intimate level plays exactly like a regular strategy title. Zoom in closer on the map, and you can build factories, train foot soldiers and engineer tanks to overcome your enemy. The only resource in this game is money, which can be obtained by building depots that hold your cash. The closer you construct buildings to your main base, the faster they will be finished, but that comes at a cost to the convenience of having troops ready to hand.

Zoom to the ground to place with finesse the right units to win epic battles

You can even use tanks to blockade roads to enemy depots, suffocating their funds and tactfully forcing them to change their game plan. In total there are three zoom levels, including the land layer to micro-manage infantry, the fully-zoomed out layer that exclusively handles your R.U.S.E.s, and a medium layer that allows you to see aerial fleets and oversee the action in full view.

The zooming occurs in real-time, and uses an impressive new rendering engine called Iriszoom - because maps that appear small when zoomed out can actually become miles in length at its closest layer, many maps are reported to require roughly one billion polygons. That's just for the environment. As a result, Girard explained that the studio had to reinvent how they programmed the AI and designed the maps; else the sheer size of it all would prove too arduous.

The result is one of the most rapid, impressive rendering technologies we've seen in modern PC gaming, that's likely to have the crowds at GDC frothing later today.

Artilleries have the ability to shoot from a long distance range. The orange arrrows show the distance range whereas the target allows to see if the attack will be successful or not at a glance

Add a damage system that's more akin to a first person shooter than an RTS (instead of HP, units recover damage over time when moved out of enemy fire) and you have a game that really tries to redefine the speed and mental agility required for the classic PC war strategy. It's certainly piqued our interest, but we didn't get to actually play the game. Which was probably for the best, as the demo we were shown crashed about three times. It's looks really fluid and interesting enough to warrant a look when it's released later this year on PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

R.U.S.E. is released for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, "fiscal year 2009/2010".

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