R.U.S.E.

One danger, of course, is that ruses come across as gimmickry, but having now played two single-player missions - defending against a Fliegerkorps attack in Tunisia, and liberating Monte Cassino in Italy with British naval support - they actually feel quite natural. Girard points out that this is because World War II basically did work like this. "It's a very good example of lots of use of espionage - breaking codes, the Ultra machine, the Enigma, or Japanese bombers attacking Pearl Harbor under radio silence. There were decoy units in the war - Rommel used them, the British used them." He says some of the individual ruse ideas presented themselves through the setting, and the core World War II RTS game as it took shape, rather than being imposed upon it by the team.

The Tunisia level, the bigger of the two I get to play, is said to be most representative of single-player levels in the campaign. It begins as you take control of a few tank units in a valley, heading towards open desert and the town of Gafsa, and Girard's point about the controls is immediately proven. You move a central cursor around with the left stick and the camera follows. When you hover over a unit, you can click A to select it, hold right trigger to drag select, or hit X to select every unit of that type. B deselects. Then you move your cursor to where you want to go and send your men on their way. It's so simple that I barely need my Eugen chaperone to explain it.

As you reach the mouth of the desert, it's ringed with German armoured teeth. Your tanks are more than a match for them, but your overzealous British allies quickly run into problems outside Gafsa as they're picked off by artillery in nearby trees, and any tanks rumbling into the town itself are smashed by infantry, who are better placed to disrupt them in the tight corridors of African buildings. Fortunately, you're soon reinforced by flame units. Up to now it's fairly simple, inline tutorial stuff: pay attention to terrain, beware the fog-of-war system, etc. Now it gets serious.

Girard explains that the plan is for each level to do a bit of teaching: "A series of learning objectives - how to use certain units and ruses - and then the sandbox where you put that into practice." In this case, the Germans hold a reinforced position outside El Djem, so it's a good idea to lay down an HQ and some resource stations. Take over nearby supply points and trucks will start moving between them and your main base, vulnerably but reliably, topping up your cash totals, and you can hit the Y-button drop-down menus to queue up units, which roll out of their home barracks or factories once complete. Again the simplicity, but as Girard noted, that's a useful thing, because you quickly need to decide which ruses to use. And frankly, to begin with, I have no idea.

So, one basic idea: send a couple of tanks out to get into skirmishes with the Germans' own supply trucks. They know I'm here anyway. With help from the radio silence ruse, I'm not noticed until a couple of trucks are dead, at which point I leg it. It buys some time. I'm paranoid, so as I continue to build up my army, I use the spy plane ruse to put a few names to swastikas. The German force isn't that hot, it turns out. Using the decoy ruse, I hope to distract them on their left flank and circle round on the other. The problem is, I've already used radio silence. Whoops. The Germans don't buy it.