The act of delisting a video game has become somewhat controversial in recent years, largely due to the prevalence of always-online experiences. I’m very much in support of the notion that, should a game be delisted or taken offline, some form of offline component should be patched in to prevent it from becoming perpetually unplayable. However, a long time ago, games were delisted with very little fanfare, their temporary existence largely going unnoticed, or the removal of a digital product proving largely inconsequential due to the abundance of physical media at the time.
One such delisted game was the Ubisoft-published strategy title, R.U.S.E, which, while not immensely popular, had its fans. I considered myself one such fan, and in the years since its delisting, I have often reflected on my time with the game and how desperately I wanted it to return. Thankfully, R.U.S.E, which ranks rather highly as one of the most underrated strategy games of all time, is finally back and available on digital storefronts once more. It’s incredible news, not just for returning fans, but for those who never got a chance to experience its brilliance, and for game preservation as a whole.
I have the vaguest and haziest memories of R.U.S.E from when I was a wee lad, and yet, despite barely remembering it, I find myself constantly reflecting on it, wishing I could get stuck into its sprawling maps and in-depth tactical gameplay. My memories of playing R.U.S.E involved being endlessly impressed by the sheer scale of the maps and the ability to go from a bird’s-eye view of the entire map to an incredibly up-close perspective of troops fighting across a blistered battlefield peppered with shredded mounds of dirt. This was all thanks to the game’s awe-inspiring IRISZOOM technology, which allows you, at a moment’s notice, to zoom into any moment on the battlefield and see it in greater detail, or as detailed as a 2010 strategy game will allow.
Every time I found myself wishing I could return to R.U.S.E, I was met with the unfortunate realization that it had been delisted all the way back in 2015 by its former publisher, Ubisoft. While the original Xbox 360 version had been made backwards compatible on last-gen systems, the Steam edition had been blitzed from existence thanks to expired licenses on certain military items used in-game. If you owned the game, then you could, naturally, continue playing it. However, had you never purchased it, then you would have simply lost the opportunity to try it out for yourself, at least on PC. Oh, the joys of the immaterial and the impermanence of digital media.
Fortunately, that has all changed, as the game’s developer, Eugen Systems, has managed to obtain the rights to the entire game from Ubisoft and has thus adopted publishing duties. Upon successfully gaining ownership of R.U.S.E, Eugen Systems immediately put the game back on Steam, making it publicly available again. It has released it with all DLC included, making it the definitive edition, and evidently has no plans on removing it any time soon. That’s great news, as it means that R.U.S.E is preserved for a tad longer and newcomers can experience its tactical brilliance. I am in no way being hyperbolic when I say that R.U.S.E may be one of the greatest strategy games available today.
Beyond the aforementioned seemingly perpetually impressive IRISZOOM technology, R.U.S.E has a plethora of unique tricks up its sleeve that allow it to innovate on an occasionally stagnant genre. R.U.S.E is very much a grand strategy game, one with endless chaos breaking out across sprawling maps in real-time that requires precision and careful strategising to overcome. Set during 1944, you can play as one of several factions involved in WW2, and must take control and defeat your opponent through whatever means necessary, including using the titular ruses to gain the upper hand.
This was R.U.S.E’s trump card, a novel mechanic that allowed players to deploy ruse cards at key moments to either gain valuable information on their opponent, trick their foes by using decoys, or reinforce important targets to better defend them against incoming enemies. These worked exceedingly well and elevated an otherwise phenomenal strategy game. With the sheer number of units at your disposal, the huge campaign with its own unique narrative, several operation missions to add even more replay value, a skirmish mode against the AI, and a multiplayer mode (which is now functional once again), R.U.S.E offers a frankly staggering amount of strategic gameplay to get stuck into.
Eugen Systems has gone on to develop more strategy games in the style of R.U.S.E, with my favorite among them being Steel Division: Normandy 44. However, R.U.S.E always felt like the least complicated, a testing ground for many of the ideas that the developer’s later games would iterate on and sometimes even complicate. That’s not to say that R.U.S.E isn’t packed with complexity, as that is simply not true, nor that Eugen Systems’ later games are worse. Rather, if even a sliver of what R.U.S.E offers looks interesting, then it is absolutely a worthwhile investment, even for those relatively new to the genre. It is a shame Ubisoft bungled it up so much post-release, as, ironically, before the publisher handed over the rights to Eugen Systems, it was one of the best Ubisoft games ever made. Fortunately, we now have it back in our hands (digital or otherwise) and can enjoy its immensely impressive gameplay all over again.
Will you be picking up R.U.S.E now that it has returned? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
