As a dev team, we’re beyond excited to see the release of R.U.S.E. drawing near – it launches in Europe on September 9, so we’re just over a week away.

For those of you new to the game, R.U.S.E. enables players to use manipulation and trickery against their enemies.  In fact, deception is at the very heart of R.U.S.E., and you’ll find that without it you cannot succeed. With R.U.S.E., we aimed to create an RTS that goes beyond the established rules of the genre- we sincerely hope to have succeeded.

In any case, you will soon be able to judge for yourself, since we are making a demo of R.U.S.E. available on the PlayStation Network from tomorrow.

In the demo, players will be able to check out an exclusive mission from the Italy campaign and play as U.S. General Joe Sheridan, leading the U.S. army in a fight against Germany and Italy. The final objective: cut off a German offensive from withdrawing by attacking them from behind. Although the Axis forces are retreating in this mission, players will see that one should be very cautious when attacking a wounded beast… if you need a hint, or don’t mind spoilers, check out the “Divide & Conquer” video, which outlines one of the numerous strategies you can use to bluff your opponent on the road to victory.

We’re really proud of the game’s compatibility with PlayStation Move. Since the early conception phase for R.U.S.E., we wanted to create a strategy game plays equally well on PC and consoles, with simple controls and an interface that allows players to focus on the strategy, rather than the UI.  Although the game plays like a charm with a standard controller, we couldn’t resist pushing things even further with Move support. It is really a matter of matching philosophies: we want our game to play naturally, and Move can provide games with this opportunity. So we used all the features of Move – optical, acceleration, and magnetic – to create smooth and natural interactions that allow you to change the view angle and zoom, control units and access the menu.

We hope you will have a great time trying the demo, please visit us at rusegame.com for more  information about the game.

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Earlier today I received this strange image with a bunch of gaming sites listed on it. I checked some of them out and they seem to have received similar images.

We’re told that this all leads to the announcement of a new minis title and that more details will follow but, in the meantime, does anyone fancy trying to solve the puzzle?

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Having briefly considered mounting a campaign to abolish Mondays and have three-day weekends forever, I’m back in work after the bank holiday to tell you about the next episode of FirstPlay.

Episode 22 is up on the Store from Wednesday, and this week features an all-new hands-on with LittleBigPlanet 2, the second part of our big PlayStation Move playtest, and a preview of Ubisoft’s under-the-radar strategy contender, RUSE. Oh, and a chat with Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Andrew House.

On top of that we’ve got an online review of our surprise summer favourite, Singularity, a round-up of PS one classics, and a look at the best fighting games available from PlayStation Store. And to round everything off we’ve got screenshot galleries of FIFA 11, Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, new Bond title 007 Blood Stone and the twisted fairytale, Alice: The Madness Returns.

All of which gives you over half an hour’s worth of HD games coverage and info for just 99p, or as low as 75p if you take out a 90-day subscription for £8.99.

As usual we’d love to hear all your feedback, suggestions for content, and ideas for mobilising voting blocks of very lazy people, and you can get in touch with us on Twitter at @firstplay_uk, FirstPlay@futurenet.com, or the official EU forums. And don’t forget you can sign up for the FirstPlay newsletter at http://www.firstplay.co.uk/register to have regular news and content updates delivered directly to your inbox.

See the Future of PS3. First.

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In a studio in South London, professional dancers, choreographers, principal designers, members of the SingStar team and myself gathered for something pretty special.

This was the shoot for the upcoming SingStar Dance game, due for release later this year. The team were recording footage of the dancers that will be presented in-game for users to follow when playing.
Fully rehearsed and in costume, the dancers were ready to begin.

For me, watching anyone perform a well thought out dance routine is pretty impressive, and two people simultaneously performing a very long and difficult routine in perfect time is something that takes a lot of effort, practice and skill.

I spoke to choreographer Shaun Niles about how he creates a dance routine for SingStar Dance.

“It’s very hard! I have to pretend to hold the PlayStation Move motion controller myself when I work out routines to see what can be done with it. Some movements can be quite difficult, such as a flick of the wrist, and can feel a bit weird with the controller in your hand at first. Its hard work but I have choreographed a few routines for SingStar Dance now; it just takes a lot of practice!”

As the day went on, it was very clear that the dances had been carefully tailored to the song in question.
Principal designer Charlie Hasdell told me how the team decided on dance moves and routines.

“I go to all the dance rehearsals, record the performance and then play it back next to the original video. I think there is an expectation from SingStar users that when they see a dance move in a video, they want to recreate that themselves, so we try to keep it all as relevant as possible.”

Once all the dances have been perfected and recorded, they will be synced alongside the original video, then given the SingStar game treatment so they look lovely and colourful. The final step sees the dance transcribers go through each track and mark up the dance routines so you can bust some moves!

Watching the dancers, all I could think was “wow, I wish I could do that”. Thankfully, when I get my hands on a copy of the game, I’ll be able to. I hope.

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As dark clouds have taken residence over London and the weather resembles a certain interactive drama, I don’t think I’ll be stepping onto a tennis court any time soon. Luckily, I have a PlayStation Move motion controller, a 3D TV and an early demo of Virtua Tennis 4 to tide me over.

I recently spoke to the game’s Executive Producer, Mie Kumagai, and asked why she had chosen to develop a tennis game when she served us the first in the Virtua Tennis series, back in 1999.

“When we first started the series, we wanted to make a casual arcade game that everyone could pick up and enjoy,” she said. “Sport seemed like a good place to start because it appeals to many people that wouldn’t usually play games. That was the start of the series, but we reached a point where we were looking for something new; it’s around this time that we heard about PlayStation Move.”

Virtua Tennis 4 lets you step into the shoes of some of the world’s best tennis pros. Every swing of the racquet can be performed with the PlayStation Move motion controller and you can judge the approach of the ball better than ever, thanks to stereoscopic 3D support. I asked Kumagai for her thoughts on Move and her philosophy behind working with a motion controller.

“I saw PlayStation Move at quite an early stage in its development,” she replied, “and I remember being curious about what Sony [Computer Entertainment] had been working on and excited about the new technology.”

“We have two points of consideration when it comes to the game’s controls. The first is that we want the game to be playable without the user having to press any buttons at all; in other words, you are relying entirely on your own movement.”

“The second consideration is to achieve a good balance between first and third person points of view. If we want the game to be totally realistic, then first person would be the way to go, but that way you kind of lose the fun of controlling top tennis players like Roger Federer, so we have aimed for the right mixture of the two.”

The demo available to play at gamescom (and my desk) features Roger Federer and Andy Murray. Your character’s left and right movement is automatic but each swing of the racquet must be performed by the player and you can drop back or rush to the net by physically stepping back or forward. There’s a dynamic camera system in place, so when the ball is in the other half of the court, the camera pans out so that you can see your position.

When the ball is coming towards you, it glides seamlessly into a first person viewpoint where you can see your racquet in front of you and time your swing accordingly. You can even twist the racquet to adjust its face when it connects with the ball, allowing skilled players to apply spin. It’s accessible and extremely intuitive, especially when playing in stereoscopic 3D.

“The balance between accessibility and realism in very important when it comes to gameplay, but I think that Virtua Tennis with Move has a really good system, where the gameplay and the controls are in perfect sync. Building the game up from this existing system wasn’t too hard for us,” Kumagai added.

Virtua Tennis 4 will be available on PlayStation 3 in Spring 2011.

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