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Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Review

A disappointing co-commander system, and poor art style doesn't result in a good sequel to a great franchise.

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Red Alert 3 is a fast paced RTS game that features three different sides in battle, soviets, allies and the empire. EA have taken the art style of the series in much crazier directions but not necessarily for the better. Apart from the art style Red Alert 3 looks quite similar to C&C3 with the one exception being the outstanding water effects that were brought into the engine mostly because of the naval units. The general gameplay of resource gathering and building bases holds true from the previous games with some minor differences between the 3 factions.

As mentioned the water now is just another method of travel and combat with the option of placing most base structures on the oceans or rivers. Included in all missions is a friendly co-commander who you can try to control or just let them do what they like. Full motion video cutscenes return featuring some fairly well known actors, some acting well others quite abysmally. Mission structure is fairly standard and often times predictable although there are some fun missions mixed in. Red Alert 3 also includes a fairly good auto-save function that ensures you won’t have to repeat the whole mission if you fail at the end forgetting to save.

Graphically Red Alert 3 brings out mixed emotions, technically it’s fairly sound but artistically it feels lost. The water looks pretty amazing, reflecting the battle above, generating waves as units travel through it and rippling from explosions. This water just tops off the existing graphics engine from C&C 3 which runs fairly well on modest systems. A big problem however with the engine is the very limited bottom and top camera positions. It really feels like you are trapped in a small glass box hovering above the ground, at least you can swivel the camera full 360 rotation. I did rarely move the camera around because of the silhouette the game places on buildings with units behind.

One of the better choices for Red Alert 3 was bringing infantry squads back to single units from generals or older games, this doesn’t make a huge change but it’s nice to see it. Having played all the previous games in the series I was anxious to try the beta when it was released. I ended up being quite disappointed with the art style they had chosen and avoiding picking up the game at release. Thankfully they’ve toned this back a little from the beta; no longer does the soviet construction yard look like something from close encounters. I still think it looks pretty ridiculous and would have preferred a bit more grounded design but it’s subjective really.

All the single player missions in Red Alert 3 feature a co-commander, which sadly doesn’t really help the game. They have bases situated near you or in the equivalent position on the other side of the level. The co-commanders were introduced so all missions could be done in co-operative mode, as somebody who plays my entire single player RTS games alone I was curious to see how this works out. If there is one thing the co-commander helps with is the pacing of the missions and making them go a bit quicker if you are a turtler. The other thing it encouraged me to do was help them build defences, sometimes they’d forget to and their base would be decimated by a few small units. Another time they helpfully covered one of my larger vulnerable units from attacks. Most other times though they proved to be a nuisance than a bonus. Funds are shared between you are your co-commander, immediately you might be thinking how this means you’ll have more money. All this really means is that half of your money is going to fund a selection and group of units you have no control over.

In one of the later missions for the allies my co-commander and I were near wiped out by a scripted event. She and I survived and I used my chronosphere to travel to a safe, well funded area. My co-commander stayed at the other area and built her base back up; eventually we had excess funds to get any units. While I was busy wiping out the Imperial forces with my long range Athena cannon my co-commander was amassing a force. But this force was completely made up of about 40 dolphins, from that point I just rolled my eyes and decided perhaps ignoring them would be easier. This weird bug was not their only down fall, commanding them to take position at an enemy base in my mind does not mean move all your forces to that location, die, and leave your base completely unguarded while the enemy destroys you. The same goes for attacking targets, that doesn’t mean move up to the target but stop just far enough back that you can’t attack them. The co-commander just turned out to be a failure far more times than it helped things out. If it wasn’t for the predictable missions it would have been a frustrating game because the AI co-commander was just so annoyingly dumb.

The three sides, Soviets, Allies and Empire of the Rising Sun seem well created. Differences between units and the way they work together are refreshing when moving from one campaign to the other. There are some generally awesome units to use on all the sides, with some great long range units for some good damage dealing. These long range units were usually fairly defenceless or very poor against close range enemies so escorting them was part of the process. As you progress through the campaign you will slowly pick up each of the units abilities as the game unlocks tech levels per mission, sometimes explaining them in more detail.

An excellent feature is the help button whenever a unit is selected. This button will pause the game and display a short video to talk about and demonstrate the unit’s abilities and special ability. Unfortunately you usually only get one or two missions at the end of each campaign to truly unleash the full force of your army. One unit which cannot be constructed – shogun executioner - is an immensely powerful huge unit that is given to you in a few of the Rising Sun missions. He gains health from electricity and can decimate the entire battlefield, one mission. Most of the missions aren’t too bad in terms of difficulty some of the rising sun missions are a little tricky due to the forces you are up against. However all that’s usually needed to progress through the harder bits is a little bit of future knowledge, loading an earlier save will then let you control what happens in the mission.

The missions feel quite like previous command and conquer games, your standard double crossing and escort missions are here with some minor changes. One of the most annoying things about the general layout of missions is the tendency to mid way through throw in something that you weren’t expecting because you thought the mission was over. All this meant is that you needed to destroy a unit before it escaped when you had no units left, or you had to change your defences to defend behind you. One early soviet mission had me capturing a building with my engineer, once captured the game expanded the mission area far beyond the existing edge of the level and placed a huge army there. Needless to say that building was re-captured and I lost the mission. Reloading an earlier save and building up a huge defensive point around this building made defending it extremely easy. The tendency to use these mission changes mid way through without prior knowledge becomes a bit tiresome, as all you need to know is what will happen and set up forces to counteract that.

Videos will sometimes come over your minimap and prevent you doing anything, here I was often screaming at them to shut up while I try to just play the game. One of the disappointing things in Red Alert 3’s missions is that many of the missions start with quite a few buildings already placed. I particularly enjoy setting up a base. Part of this auto setup is due to the fact that now ore refineries are just placed right next to the ore mine. Gone are the ore fields from previous games, sadly.

Anybody who knows Red Alert knows a big part of the charm is about the full motion videos between the missions. The good news is they return, and at times are pretty cool. You are referred to as commander and the leaders of each faction are gradually impressed with your efforts on previous missions. However there is some quite bad acting and it just didn’t feel as good as C&C3 movies which featured the great Joe Kucan. One of your co-commanders on the Imperial side greatly overacted making it feel like a bad comedy. Previous Red Alert games have always had a bit of flirting between the females who brief you, Red Alert 3 takes this to extremes and makes the flirting cringe worthy when playing through the allied campaign. The good thing is that they return and despite the poor acting at times and the overly flirtatious nature of Gemma Atkinson I’d still rather have them than have nothing. Another good feature introduced here is a better mission briefing, Eva will tell you what’s happening then another will go through the mission step by step with a brief map overview. These really help to take out the ambiguity at the start of missions so are a welcome addition.

If the single player with Co-Op AI or Online does not satisfy you, there is a full range of options available for players looking for competition. Red Alert 3’s full set of online features includes basic chat rooms and lobbies that are based on geographical location, as well as skill levels. There is no filtering based on how you did in Single player, so it is up to you to find a match that is appropriately difficult. When playing against other human opponents in skirmish mashes, a lot of players simply visit lobbies that are well below their level of play just to boost their online rank and give new players a very tough time even surviving for over 15 minutes of a match. Things like “no-rush” settings do little to prevent the onslaught that appears at your doorstep the moment the timer expires. So unless you are a rush player looking for a challenge, there is little use going online trying to find a decent matchup.

If Versus isn’t your thing and Single Player Co-Op isn’t for you, there is also Skirmish Co-Op that sees you and your friends take on the AI on various maps and pre-set difficulty settings. This mode is arguably the most fun for any newer players since it allows you to play together with folks who will actually come to your aid if there is trouble. The AI is also no pushover and will work together (if there is more than 1 AI opponent) to bring you down. Overall, Red Alert 3’s online offerings are nothing but standard so there are very few surprises here.

Ultimately Red Alert 3 falls short of Command and Conquer 3 and takes its place as the poorer game of the command and conquer franchise. It has some fun moments and it’s far from terrible, but it has too many issues. The AI is at times completely stupid from following orders or countering units. There are lots of path finding issues, especially with water units who seem to get stuck around peninsulas. The camera needs a bit of work, just to let you zoom back a bit to see some of the larger units. The co-commander, one of bigger features of the game, ends up being a real disaster towards gameplay because it takes away more than it gives. Apart from some good performances in the full motion videos they aren’t particularly amazing I appreciate that they still exist in the franchise. One very good thing is that the rising sun side is fully fleshed out with a lengthy campaign, unlike the Scrin in command and conquer 3 which seemed badly tacked on. The big draw card of Red Alert 3 is the name itself, it’s good that Hellmarch also returns and there are some good tunes here especially on the soviet side. The single player is reasonably lengthy and all three sides should last you twenty hours excluding skirmishes or multiplayer.

Our ratings for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 on PC out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
Presentation
78
Great water effects. The unit and building style is exaggerated and makes it far removed from the original game.
Gameplay
81
Standard base building and sending out troops with some decent units. Some path finding problems
Single Player
68
You'll be grouped with dumb AI for all the missions making playing alone quite awful.
Multiplayer
75
Hard to get into for new players, co-op and skirmishes offer something a bit more enjoyable for those not wanting to spend hours perfecting play styles.
Performance
(Show PC Specs)
CPU: AMD Athlon AM2 5600+ @ 2.9GHz
GPU: Powercolor Radeon x2900xt 512MB
RAM: 4GB DDR2
OS: Windows Vista 32-bit
PC Specs

83
Runs fairly well, the water does require some computing power on high though.
Overall
71
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is a disappointing return for the Red Army, single player is not fun with incompetent co-commanders, bad path-finding and the general art style falls flat.
Comments
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 box art Platform:
PC
Our Review of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
71%
Good
The Verdict:
Game Ranking
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is ranked #1116 out of 1957 total reviewed games. It is ranked #25 out of 28 games reviewed in 2008.
1115. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Xbox 360
1116. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
1117. Lost Planet 2
PC
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