R.U.S.E Beta

As far as real time strategy goes, RUSE is more like playing RISK with blinders on your opponents countries. Its not that its a bad game, its that its a boring game. I've played about 20 hours of this game trying to find the fun in it, and it was nowhere to be found.

The game starts off like any RTS where you have to find and build up resources and resource collection. This doesn't bother me in the least. Then you have to build up your buildings so you can generate an army. You have your air strip, your barracks, and your tank depot. So it has all your standard features of an RTS and its not too spectacular.

There is one "new" thing in RUSE that separates it from the rest of the RTS squad out there. It has espionage modes which allow you to initiate radio silence, reverse communication channels so that your enemy thinks your tanks are planes and your planes are tanks. But here is the major problem. They only affect one area of the map at a time. You'd think that something like "Hey assholes, stop using the radio for a few minutes" would be map wide. Apparently its only in one region. Same with the rest of the RUSE abilities. Its like they have tunnel vision and they can only use it on their friends of friend, but not their real friends, more like the friends they made at the office Christmas party last year but haven't seen since because they work in another division. Yeah, that trailed on, I'm sorry, and I'm glad were past that.

Here's an idea, why not make radio silence cover all units instead of one region? Sure the regional restrictions when you're deploying dummy units is fine, but come on, regional restriction on swapping radio frequencies and radio silence? That just seems like lazy coding to me.

Additionally there isn't much fun in this game. If you like the Total War series, but think the game moves too fast for you, and want a game thats more like playing RISK with a time limit, then feel free to play RUSE.

All in all, I wouldn't call RUSE a fun game. Its more like an attempt at fun by a simulator that has been dusted off and put into production because the military didn't deem it fit for their usage. Its pretty much RISK online, but is much more about tactics and strategy than it is about swarming your opponents. If you like RUSE, you should go out and get friends and give RISK a try. Its a lot more fun than RUSE, especially when combined with beer and people with a good sense of humor.

Supreme Boremander 2

Supreme Commander 2 is a RTS released by Square-Enix. Its focus seems to be on a political struggle between a global government and a small anti-government sect. It starts off in Alaska with a local rebellion that you're sent to squelch. There's the typical RTS requirements of walking through and building resources and a force to attack your enemy. One benefit of this is that it does not include a cap on the number of units you can build.

This is where the games excitement ends. First you have to build up Naval units and take out your enemies naval unit. Secondly, you have build up Air units to attack the enemies land positions. Fine, right? Typical RTS stuff. The amount of units it takes for you to kill your enemy is typically a 2 to 1 ratio. This gets a bit tedious and after a while you're thankful it lacks a unit cap. So you've build up your gigantic fleet and go after the enemies positions and guess what? They wipe you out. For some reason, the small rebel band is able to out maneuver and over power your fleet even though its twice the size of theirs. Its like playing poker and having a straight flush, only to find that the only other person in the game has a royal and you've gone all in.

Additionally the AI in the demo isn't very ambitious. Its very content with playing the defense card. It doesn't attack you, until you're in its territory. Sure I understand the desire to make the demo "easy" but it could at least demonstrate the full capabilities of the AI. Who wants to play a game where you're constantly attacking your enemy and they are constantly fending you off? NO ONE! Games aren't meant for Stalemates, its meant for victories!

Thats a perfect description of Supreme Commander 2, Stale! Similar to biting down on an old cracker, this game lacks the flavor, excitement, and strategy that more RTS's offer. Its simply a game of numbers and taking over your enemies resources. Building up a massive force and overtaking them. There's no strategy to it.

It does have a leveling system that unlocks new units for you to control, which is neat. Its very similar to WoW's talent system where you have to put set amount of points to gain access to areas where you can develop new units, but at the same time, why not have a support structure that you have to build that allows for them to be built? It would be far more cost effective, time wise, than having you send in your units against the vastly superior enemy like lambs to the slaughter.

Final Verdict:

Supreme Commander 2 lacks something that its ascetic appeal cannot make up for. It lacks fun. Its a rather mindless game that requires ridiculous time investment and large forces even to conquer one enemy. It seems to me that Square-Enix should stick to making RPG's, since they love the massive time investment system so much, and stay out of the RTS gaming arena. RTS fans, Wait for Starcraft 2 in my opinion. Don't encourage bad games from bad companies.

Recon Beta

Hello there

Here at Recon Beta we will bring you the best reviews of game betas and demos. We will also review fully released games, but this will be done sparingly as we will be focusing on free demos and betas primarily. That being said, we should have a beta and a demo review by the end of next week.