The game was R.U.S.E., the March 2010 real-time strategy game from Ubisoft that will be playable on a PC or Xbox 360, and PS3 without a touch screen.

But with a multi-touch screen is how I would sample it last Wednesday evening. Specifically, I was playing the game on a HP TouchSmart monitor which runs a several hundred dollars.

Imagine your typical RTS, which isn't quite the description R.U.S.E. seems to deserve. As noted before on this site, the game has some good twists involving its battlefield perspectives and emphasis on deception. But for this post, consider it typical, with units spawned and selected from an overhead perspective, directed toward their targets.

Tapping on a unit with your finger selects it. Pressing your finger and then dragging it diagonally creates a box that selects multiple units. Those controls are simple. Your finger does what a mouse pointer would do.

Now imagine — touching your monitor for this is fine by me — dragging two fingers across your monitor. That makes the camera pan to the side. Drag two fingers the other way and it pans the opposite way. Up and down pans work similarly.

Now take the pointer fingers of each of your hands. Press them to the edges of the monitor and, iPhone-style, drag them toward each other. The view zooms in. Spread your fingers to the edges and the view zooms out.

Place one finger on a spot on your monitor. Start drawing a circle around it with your a finger on the other hand. This rotates the view. (These controls are different from what Ubisoft had demonstrated for R.U.S.E. played on flat table-sized monitors.)

These are functions that any decent RTS player would implement. What might be harder to do with just a mouse, however, would be selecting units that are far from each other on the screen and issuing them commands nearly simultaneously. A Ubisoft developer encouraged me to try this, having me tap and move one tank in the lower left of the screen with my left pointer finger while I manipulated a vehicle on the right side of the screen with my right hand. The developer pantomimed a skilled player tapping furiously with both hands, showing me the potential of two-handed play.

Conceptually, all of this was quite good. Functionally, it wasn't great yet. I had trouble getting the unfinished version of the game to reliably read my zoom commands. But that can improve. I didn't expect to find the touch control meaningful. Once I did, I just wanted it to work. One hopes it will. Then again, one would need to have a multi-touch monitor, and this one writer does not.

Playing games with the latest tech is a Ubisoft thing. In other corners of the hotel room where I played R.U.S.E., Red Steel 2 could be played with Wii Motion Plus and Racquet Sports could be played barehanded using a proprietary Ubisoft Wii camera. The recently-released Avatar game can be played in 3D, only on 3D TVs, which very few people have.

That doesn't stop Ubi. Ever the innovator. This time, with a monitor and my fingertips.

The full Joshi quote as pulled by Gamerzines reads: "RTS players are great people but some of them have very little balance in their life. So their enjoyment is entirely derived from smashing another human in a videogame."

On the one hand, I want to disagree because I like RTS games and consider myself a level-headed person who enjoys all kinds of balanced things like butterflies and nail polish, etc. But, yeah, I enjoy smashing another human player in a competitive video game — that's kind of the point, isn't it?

On the other hand, I do agree with Joshi because I once watched a friend fling his expensive keyboard across a room during a total rout in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. "Unbalanced" just about sums him up.

And on a third hand that I don't physically have, couldn't you say that by Joshi's logic all gamers who get off on crushing other players in any genre are unbalanced? Why pick on his own audience when there are so many other worthy targets to choose from (*cough* first-person shooters *cough*)?

Oh, but here's another Joshi tidbit to sink your teeth into: "Now the gameplay is no longer tailored to beating the opponent's base and having that be the source of victory. It's now about capturing objectives. So there's less of that head-to-head 'I'm going to crush you' mentality going on."

I'll let you handle the arguments behind that one, commenters.

RTS players "have very little balance in their life" - C&C4 Producer [Gamerzines]

The BattleForge Renegade Edition card set is an expansion of the Renegade Campaign introduced earlier this year, which added the Southern Wastes region of Nyn to the game. The expansion brings two new support factions in the Bandits and Stonekin, plus a whole mess of legendary creatures and buildings to help bolster your line as you advance through the ranks.

The Renegade Edition cards are now available in the BattleForge in-game store, purchasable for $2.50 or 250 BattleForge points. Check out the game's official website to download and play for free.

While I enjoy the odd real-time strategy title, I'm not a huge fan of the overhead perspective so many games in the genre employ. I like to feel a little more immersed, personally. It's why I loved the Kingdom Under Fire series on the Xbox 360, and why this new Stormrise trailer impresses the hell out of me. I'd like to think I was the type of general who stayed in the thick of things while his troops were battling mutant enemies in a post-apocalyptic setting.

Stormrise is due out next month from Sega for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC.

Sort of.

Fans of Relic's previous two games will be surprised to find that Warhammer 40000: Dawn of War II bears little resemblance to either. Where Dawn of War shot for Warhammer's sense of epic warfare and came up short, this game goes in the opposite direction, forgoing scale for intimacy as you find yourself in command of an army of...eleven men.

Which is tiny. Teeny tiny. Definitely not the sort of thing you expect from a real-time strategy game. Which is lucky, then, because Dawn of War II isn't really a real-time strategy game. Least, not one like you've ever seen before.

Loved
Level Up - You'll only end up commanding between 8-11 men in the game, split over four "squads", and those four squads are led by heroes. Don't think of these heroes as RTS pawns. Think of them as RPG party members. They have names, they never really die, and between missions their attributes can be levelled up to make them more formidable. You'll grow very, very attached to them.

Loot Drop - The RPG similarities continue with loot, which is dropped throughout missions. You'll get better weapons and better armour for killing bad guys, which can then be used in later missions. Because the game is built on such a small scale, these items can actually be seen on your men in battle (oh, look, he's carrying his new Heavy Bolter!), which is a real kick.

Homeless - Unlike previous Relic games, Dawn of War II has no buildings. Your men are dropped into a mission, and that's it. No unit building ,no resource gathering, you don't even need to hold command posts. It's just you, your men and the mission at hand, which is really, really liberating.

Choose Your Own Adventure - Giving RTS players a choice between 1-2 missions is nothing new, but giving you a choice between 2-4 missions on each of 3 planets is. Such choice means if you wake up one day and only want to fight Orks (each enemy army plays a very different game), just fly to a planet with an Ork mission and you're set.

Not One Game, But Two - All this RPG talk of loot and levels applies only to the singleplayer campaign. Multiplayer matches are more like those found in Company of Heroes or Dawn of War, with units to be built, strongholds to be upgraded and command points to be held. This effectively means you're almost getting two games for the price of one.

Rock, Paper, Chainsword - Aside from your "avatar" character, a Space Marine Force Commander, you can only take three of the game's five other squads/heroes into battle with you. And each of these squads have wildly varying strengths and weaknesses, meaning you not only have tough strategic decisions to make when deciding who to take on a mission, but flexible tactical options at your disposal once on it.

Hated
Wash, Rinse, Repeat - Most missions involve you having to fight your way across a map to fight a boss (yes, this game even has boss fights). Actually, 95% of missions have you doing this, and while it's a blast, some more variety would have been nice, especially when the few defensive missions in the game prove to be the game's most enjoyable.

If what you've read above makes the game sound like a rich, creamy Diablo/Warcraft III/Company of Heroes soup, well, that's because that's exactly what it is. One minute you'll be using cover and flanking like Company of Heroes, the next you'll be using special powers to bring down a colossal boss character, the next you'll be collecting loot off its corpse and improving your "party" with it.

Which makes this an amazing game to play. It's like Relic have taken some of the most addictive and endearing elements of both real-time strategy and role-playing genres and smashed them together, the resulting game something that's able to appeal to fans of both genres without alienating either.

Warhammer 40000: Dawn Of War II was developed by Relic and published by THQ for the PC. It was released on February 19, and retails for $50. Played single player campaign to completion, played multiple skirmish battles online. Did not play co-op campaign, which game also features.

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In Halo Wars, gamers return to the beloved Xbox franchise to explore its early days in a real-time strategy title by Ensemble Studios. The game promises the chance to control not one Master Chief, but an army of marines, Spartans, Warthogs and Scorpions.

Can Halo Wars ride on the success of its lineage and, with the help of some of the best real-time strategy developers in the business, do for strategy what the original title did for shooters?

Loved
Essence of Halo: The biggest selling point for this strategy game is its setting, characters and story. Set in the Halo universe, Halo Wars delivers across the board on everything a Halo fan could want, from a tightly paced plot, to memorable characters, to the rush of commanding a squad of Spartans

Cut Scenes: One of the best parts of this game are the cut scenes. Delivered in amazing detail with highly polished graphics, there's enough there to keep you captivated throughout the single player campaign.

Graphics: The cut scenes are spectacular, but the gameplay graphics are just as adept at delivering an eye-catching experience. Units from the UNSC, Covenant and Flood are all meticulously detailed and the backdrops vary just enough to keep things interesting.

Eclectic Missions: Instead of having gamers run through a familiar gauntlet of control points and forward bases, Halo Wars relies heavily on the story to create an interesting selection of missions on multiple settings, from ship hulls, to infested planets. You even have to solve a puzzle in one.

Strategic Strategy: The smartest thing that Ensemble Studios did in making Halo Wars was realizing the limitations of playing a strategy game on a console. You don't have a keyboard of hot keys, or a mouse to zip around the map with. So the game limits the size of maps, units and pushes things to the point of being hard to manage, but not frustrating.

Hated
Simplistic: While creating a strategy game too complex for console controls would have killed Halo Wars, making it a tad too simple means hardcore strategy fans will at best find this game a brief amusement. Gamers new to the genre might find it a good introduction to strategy.

No Hot Keys: While Ensemble Studios couldn't include keyboard controls in the game, it would have been nice for them to come up with a better system for group selecting and saving to buttons. As it stands, you can only really jump between types of units or local and all units. Something that severely hampers the experience.

Camera Issues: The camera works relatively well, though I noticed that it got hung up on scenery around the border of maps at times. My biggest complaint, though, is that the zoom doesn't zoom enough. There were plenty of times when I wanted to really zoom in and watch a Spartan beat down a bad guy and steal his vehicle, but the zoom doesn't offer that level of detail.

Not Many Units: There really aren't many units to pick from in the game. In the single player this isn't that evident, but once you start slugging it out with real people online you start to realize that there's not much to choose from in this game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Limited Multiplayer: Real-time strategy games, like first-person shooters, live and die in multiplayer gaming. After you get through the game's 14 single-player levels, that's the only reason you'll still play it. But there's just not much there. No multiplayer Flood. No massive battles. Not much of a map selection.

I enjoyed my time with Halo Wars, it was just too short for a game that I can't see myself playing much online. Perhaps gamers would have been better served if this iteration of Halo Wars included more campaigns, played from the perspective of the Covenant and Flood, and less multiplayer.

It's odd, being a long-time fan of both strategy games and Ensemble Studios, to love the single-player experience of a game they made, but feel so flat about the multiplayer sessions. Halo Wars is a fun ride, an action strategy game that delivers on everything but, perhaps, where it needs to deliver most to succeed: multiplayer gaming.

Halo Wars was developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft Game Studios for the Xbox 360. It will be released on March 3, for $60. Played single player campaign to completion, played multiple battles on Xbox Live against other players.

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First there's that gee-whiz technology that lets you order around grunts like you're McArthur at the Battle of Manila. But better still is the deep world in which the game is built. EndWar is meant to be the ultimate conflict in Tom Clancy's espionage and Cold War universe, a rolling end-of-days war peopled with Ghost Recon teams and Third Echelon black-ops.

But just how much of Tom Clancy got into Tom Clancy's EndWar and how much of it is just about the game's amazing tech?

Loved
Voice Recognition: Ubisoft's voice recognition software is by far the best thing about EndWar. There is virtually no set-up, few miscommunications and it runs seamlessly, making the experience of commanding troops not just easier but more immersive. There's nothing like bellowing out orders into a headset then watching them get carried out by soldiers, tanks and helicopters.

Streamlined Command System: Working hand-in-hand with the razor-sharp voice recognition software is a command system that makes speaking your orders as easy as a mouse click. By boiling almost everything down to four or five words, EndWar's control mechanic is easily the best around for a console-based real-time strategy title.

Global War to Local Conflict: The sheer scope of EndWar, encompassing skirmishes, raids and sieges in cities around the world, is impressive. Even more impressive is how the game ties all of these battles together to create the sense of world at war, where every conflict matters. Moving this idea online gives the real-time strategy game the feel of a massively multiplayer title where everyone has to pitch in to make a difference.

Hated
Vanilla Aesthetic: If Blizzard showed us nothing else, it's that the art style of units and backdrops can make or break a real-time strategy title. These are the units you will be ordering about for the entire life of the game, they are the settings you will fight through time and time again. EndWar's units are bland, mundane looking military knock-offs, and the settings begin to blend together after just hours of play. It doesn't help that there's really not much splash in the thick of battle either.

Poor Pathfinding: It's difficult in EndWar, unlike with mouse and keyboard titles, to nudge your troops to specific locations. Instead, you have to hope that "Unit 1 Move to Alpha" does the trick. Because the game relies on such broad commands it's problematic that units seem to be in desperate need of a map to find their way from point A to point B.

Muddled Story and Campaign: Despite a humanizing introduction and the tantalizing lead-in to the game, once things get going, EndWar is a surprisingly personality-free title. Sure you have tactics and enemy attacks laid out for you between skirmishes and the game tries to track which commanders you've fought against before. But it's such a web of battles that it's hard to tell when what you're doing makes any sort of difference and the plot quickly becomes nearly transparent window dressing.

Generic Strategy Gameplay: It feels that the team at Ubisoft Shanghai used up all of their creativity with that wonderful voice-recognition command system. EndWar is the epitome of rock-paper-scissors strategy. There are a few super attacks that can be unleashed, like mini-nukes and support forces, but in general the game is far too simplistic to have any lasting power for fans of strategy.

Needs More Clancy: It's got his name in it, right there at the top of the box, so why isn't more obvious this is a Clancy game? In theory, the Ghost Recon teams make an appearance as playable units in the game, but that's really just in name. And, from what I saw, that's it. Why use the Clancy name and not tap into the rich background it affords?

You really can't understate the brilliance of EndWar's voice command system. Even in this simple form it shows so much potential that I'm eager to see what game it shows up in next. But a new bit of innovative technology, no matter how amazing, isn't enough to support a triple-A title. The game works. Technically it is almost flawless. But there's no soul, no depth, no story, nothing really, to make even a hardcore strategy fan such as myself want to play the game for any length of time.

Tom Clancy's EndWar may have been worthy of a purchase at a time when there weren't so many other excellent titles vying for a shrinking budget, but not now. I just hope that now that the technology for this command system has been proven, it can be placed in a game with a bit more substance and character.

Tom Clancy's EndWar was developed by Ubisoft Shanghai, published by Ubisoft and released on Nov. 4 for the DS, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable and Xbox 360. Retails for $59.99 USD. It was reviewed on the PlayStation 3. Played the single-player campaign, tested campaign coop and skirmish.

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