In Soviet Russia, Command and Conquer plays YOU!The great Russian bear lies toothless. Bloodied in battle, licking its wounds.
Despite so many defeats at the hands of allied forces, the Russians will not disappear into history without one last ditch attempt to regain their former glory.
Calling on top Russki science bods to revive a fledgeling time-travel project, Premier Anatoly Cherdenko (played with blisteringly white-toothyness and scenery chewing glory by Tim Curry) and General Boris Krukov (played by some bloke with serious pock-marks) travel back to a keynote speech given by Albert Einstein. One swift handshake later and old Alby never gets to aid in the construction of Allied weapons including the atomic bomb (and also never gets to boop Marilyn Monroe which is probably more of a cause of upset).
Returning to the present day, both Krukov and Cherdenko expect the mighty military Russian prowess to be the dominant force on the planet once again, but as Marty McFly will tell you, going back and dickarsing around with History can cause problems in the present - and though the Russians are no longer down for the count, a new nefarious enemy has risen from the east - The Empire of the Rising Sun led by the inscrutable Emperor Yoshiro (played by George "Sulu" Takei).
Thus the scene is set for the third iteration of the superb Red Alert series. Out-gunning, out-weirding and out-cooling its stablemate Command and Conquer in every conceivable way, the Red Alert series has always been the staple game of choice for any LAN party worth its salt. But with such a rich heritage already under its belt, where can the series possibly go and how can it possibly evolve?
Bring on the girls
For starters, the FMV is back! YAY! And so are the lovely ladies and gratuitous cleavage shots (though if we can have a moment's respectful silence for the fact that Kari Wurher isn't in this game, wearing that lovely dirty vest). EA have poured a lot of time and effort into the cut-scenes which are ludicrously polished and reeking of cheese at the same time, just the way they should be in a Red Alert game.
With three main factions vying for world domination, the game has a very finely tuned balance to it. In Skirmish mode, pick and choose from the insane technologically advanced Empire of the Rising Sun, the slick and by the numbers Allies or the unscrupulous yet effective Russians. As before, each faction has their own signature units which have strengths and weaknesses and every player will quickly find one that suits their particular style - whether you're an out-and-out offensive strategist or a quiet stockpiling defensive player.
Skirmish mode is actually far better practice for exercising your creaking RTS bones than the tutorials are ("This is my grandmother, she'd like to know how to suck those eggs") so the best advice is to dive in and play a couple of low-end rounds in Skirmish mode first.
Then you can start attacking the main storyline, and though you can pick and choose which path to take from the outset, I'd wholly recommend doing what the game tells you to and tackling the Russian campaign first because Red Alert 3 is tougher than Godzilla's nuclear-powered nutsack.
Stop checking out my unit!
With Russian Strategic Command in slight disarray after the failed time experiment, you play a maverick commander and it's up to you to scrape together whatever forces you can muster to begin the fight back against the Empire of the Rising Sun's ridiculously well-kitted-out armies.
At first, the game looks slightly more cartoony and brightly coloured than before, and you might be forgiven for thinking that this new graphical overhaul doesn't really work. But stick with it, and you'll start to really like just how slick the whole game feels. Even on a reasonable specced up rig you should be able to run the game with all its associated graphical niceties switched fully on and still get a really smooth and jerk-free game, no matter how insane the number of units on screen gets. It's not quite up to Supreme Commander numbers but at times during heated confrontations it's certainly getting there.
Sticking with Supreme Commander for a second as a benchmark for RTS stuff on PC, you really do miss SC's massive map overview and the ability to zoom right out and get a better view of what's going on in the battle, but of course you've still got the stock-in-trade minimap to fall back on. Other than the lack of extreme zoom, playing C & C RA3 feels intuitive and there's even the option to switch back to standard Command and Conquer mouse control systems if you so wish (though quite frankly you'd have to be mad (or Lutzie) to want to do so!)
Units make or break a game though and although Supreme Commander got all the plaudits for virtually reinventing the realtime strategy game, I always thought that its unit design was a bit crappy (but then I thought that about Total Annihilation's units too so sue me).
Red Alert features a superb mix of lashed-together stuff for the Russians (Bears with frickin' laser beams! YAY! At last!) which endears them to the player because you feel like you have to work twice as hard with what you've got. The Allied units range from speedy ground troops to some pretty hefty armoured units, and the Rising Sun have some ridiculously efficient mech units that blitz into battle like Transformers on crack.
Each and every unit is picked out in such loving detail and is beautifully animated - doubly so when they get destroyed by anything, so it's worth sacrificing a few bits and bobs just to see how they go up in smoke.
Elsewhere the game engine (which looks like a seriously buffed and polished version of the Command and Conquer 3 engine) lends each level a serious amount of detail and prettiness. The initial levels set amongst the ruins of the Russian heartland are brilliant, and there's plenty of collateral damage to see when things get nasty in the heat of battle.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Earlier though, I did ask the key question any Red Alert fan should be asking. How has the series progressed? How has it evolved? The truth is that EA have pretty much done what they should've done with this - kept the core gameplay virtually identical to previous games, but added in a lot of extra embellishments that keep things spicy, like the command abilities (being able to bring down air strikes as secondary abilities for your key characters, or being able to introduce timed "ballbreaker" weapons that can turn the tide of battle in an instant.
Sure you can still do the old Tank Rush thing if you want, but RA3 does at least cap that a little by making it insanely hard to build that big a task force up quickly. You'd have to play one hell of a stalling game to overcome your enemy by sheer numbers alone and I doubt that anyone but the most accomplished players could last that long in battle by stockpiling units.
What makes the difference is the balance. As with the mighty Starcraft, Red Alert 3 gets the balance absolutely spot on ensuring that there's never a 100% clear advantage for any of the factions during the main campaign mode. This is how it should be and this ensures that most players will want to try each of the factions out rather than just sticking with a favourite.
So that's a neat summary for the single player but wait, what's this? Oh it's that flavour-of-the-month-that-has-to-be-in-every-game-ever, Co-op mode. Red Alert 3 allows you to team up with a buddy online or LAN, and work through campaign mode together. I had my doubts about this idea but after a ludicrously long 3 hour session over the weekend, I have to admit that co-op mode in Red Alert 3 should pretty much ensure that any future RTS game without such a mode will feel like a strangely empty experience. Maybe you're not the world's most sociable gamer and the very thought of it repels you, but if you don't try co-op mode in this you're seriously going to be missing out on some of the best gameplay the title has to offer.
If you're more confrontational there are the usual head-to-head modes. Mixing it up with all three factions and two other human players is also a fantastic way to get the most out of the game.
As we go to press, there are console versions of Red Alert 3 waiting in the wings (360 owners will already be wrestling with their joypads trying to command countless units, no doubt - but PS3 owners have to wait a little longer). In all honesty, there really is at least one good reason why owning a gaming PC will always be a good idea - and the RTS game is it. There is no finer way to experience Red Alert 3 than on a PC that doesn't try to tear your eyeballs out of their sockets every time you pan your viewpoint around - and doesn't start to stutter like Elmer Fudd every time there are insane numbers of units on screen. Oh and the mouse thing - yeah that. Who the hell plays RTS games with a joypad anyway? What are you, some sort of freak?
In essence, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 is proof positive that the granddaddy of all RTS games isn't some toothless old crone counted out of the market but certainly as far as the Red Alert side of things goes, is as essential a gaming experience as ever it was. If I was on the team at EA I'd have put that whole Tiberium side of things firmly to bed and would be concentrating on the prettier and more charismatic half of the Command and Conquer lineup - and judging by the amount of attention to detail and ludicrously high production values poured into this game, someone in the upper echelons at EA seems to be singing from the same hymn sheet.
Chillingo Game Sale
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billdoor - on 17/11/2008 at 15:14 wrote:
Red Alert was one of my fave PS1 games (with mouse of course!), but I've not really played a C&C since (on the PC I got sidetracked with the Total War series). Is this much better than Tiberium Wars? Only I picked up the 360 version of that for a tenner recently and haven't played it yet...
peej - on 17/11/2008 at 15:16 wrote:
Anything on the "flip" side of the C & C universe can pretty much be ditched in favour of any of the Red Alert games tbh. Tiberium Wars went too far down the "soulless unit design" route. Red Alert is brilliant fun though, really tongue in cheek and a far better game for it.
You get a free poster of the Red Alert Uber-babes too but one of them really does look like someone carved a chunk out of her back with Photoshop!
billdoor - on 17/11/2008 at 15:20 wrote:
Damnit- you were supposed to say "nothing really to chose" :)
Still, a session on Tib Wars will tell me whether the 360 controller is up to it I suppose.
peej - on 17/11/2008 at 15:29 wrote:
I'd rather put my john thomas in the hands of a naked lunatic with a pair of sheep shears than recommend you play any RTS on the 360.
The control method for the C & C games is particularly fiddly. And don't repeat DO NOT be tempted by Supreme Commander on 360. It's so bad that even the dog won't touch it.
billdoor - on 17/11/2008 at 15:47 wrote:
Arse. If the PS1 could manage mouse support, why the flip can't the 360? Especially for RTS's :(
peej - on 17/11/2008 at 17:20 wrote:
It's a common question. Though for some reason developers would rather spend hour after hour trying to make an RTS control system that works for consoles rather than manfully admitting it'd probably be quicker to just stick mouse support in there and have done with it.
billdoor - on 18/11/2008 at 08:41 wrote:
As has been suggested, shove the drivers on the disk, so the mouse support wouldn't be universal.
/emails EA
Syrok - on 20/03/2009 at 11:01 wrote:
I've had a go at the PS3 demo just now and it really didn't work for me. I need a mouse to play these sort of games.