ReviewCommand & Conquer: Red Alert 3 Review
Only a few screenies at the moment, grab them from the gallery on this page.
Red Alert 3 is the next in the Command and Conquer franchise from EA. It is due for release sometime late this year, however a public beta is available to FilePlanet subscribers.
EA original stated release was for the PC, X360 and PS3, although now the PS3 release is on hold. Red Alert 3 will be using the RNA engine, an upgraded version of the SAGE engine which EA have used since the days of Westwood in other C&C titles and the Lord of the Rings franchise.
In Red Alert 3, the desperate leadership of a doomed Soviet Union travels back in time to change history and restore the glory of Mother Russia. The time travel mission goes awry, creating an alternate timeline where technology has followed an entirely different evolution, a new superpower has been thrust on to the world stage, and World War III is raging. The Empire of the Rising Sun has risen in the East, making World War III a three-way struggle between the Soviets, the Allies, and the Empire with armies fielding wacky and wonderful weapons and technologies like Tesla coils, heavily armed War Blimps, teleportation, armored bears, intelligent dolphins, floating island fortresses, and transforming tanks.
Impressions From The Beta
For people that bought Kane's Wrath or those that are FilePlanet subscribers, you should be able to get your hands on the Red Alert 3 public beta.
The beta delivers us with 2 multiplayer (online only) levels - a 2 player level and a fully symmetric 4 player level. There is no AI or skirmish support, so it's up to playing online to learn the game. You can play as 3 factions, The Empire (Japs), U.S. and Soviets.
Graphics / GUI
EA have clearly been trying to keep the spirit of Red Alert. Unlike the perhaps successively failed attempts with the original C&C franchise to keep the perfect game that was Tiberium Dawn, the Red Alert franchise has done well in keeping it's original nature - so is true with Red Alert 3. You'll notice a cartoony GUI with buttons that aren't even obvious until you get used to the interface. First impressions are distasteful as it's an unorthodox and incomplete interface. Perhaps when optimised it will flow better.
The in-game graphics are a combination of cartoon style effects, such as thickly outlined units when hovering/selected, mixed with very pretty fire and water effects. The detail of the ocean floor visible under the surface reminds me of Crysis, one of the few games that figured we should expect to see more than sand down there. After a good fight you'll expect to see sunken subs and battleships on the ocean floor.
Units on the surface won't stick around persistently after death, however. This battlespace is reserved for a rather vicious battle that makes you feel good even when you're losing as the glorious destruction looks so impressive.
Gameplay
It will take a little while to adjust to the game play if you're expecting Red Alert 1 style play. Red Alert 1 was all about tanks killing tanks and destroyers killing destroyers. Red Alert 2 decided to go a bit further and added more fantasy with the introduction of squids, dolphins and unusual combat machines. Red Alert 3 keeps the dolphins, but gives us back our good ol' fashioned tanks, bigger tanks and bigger ships. You'll see subs, destroyers, cruisers and aircraft carriers constituting the bulk of naval battles, on the ground there'll be plenty of infantry and armour rolling around in the traditional sense. In the skies you'll see Migs, blimps, conventional fighters, choppers, etc - and then we meet The Empire. The Japs mix things up a bit here, they're two main aerial units are spitting images of a couple Transformers, I forget their real names so I call them Starcream and Blackout. Which is pretty much what they are: Walking units that jump into the sky and transform. Go figure..
We also see our spies and dogs, the Russians obviously figured they needed a dog-style unit too, so they went one step further and came up with bears. Yes, you'll see quick rushes of dogs and bears running over the map at the start of the game chasing after engineers. Engineers still have their unique touch to dirty tactics - they are still used to capture oil derricks and, if you're one of those sort of people, steal enemy buildings. They're a little slow jumping in, so it's not quite as bad as the old-school engie dumps in the middle of you base and before you know it your own base is working against you. Keep a few sentries about just in case though.
Bases are now almost completely amphibious - when building you chose a nice spot of fresh green grass to turn into your giant power plant, or stick it on some pylons and put it out at sea, safe from tanks. Pretty much all buildings, including defence structures can be built on land or water. The exceptions are a navy yard can't be built on land, and a barracks and war factory can't be build in the water. Air factories and ore refineries can, however. Engineers, dogs, bears and ore trucks are all amphibious now. Each faction has their own unique set of amphibious armour, for example, the U.S. can walk their destroyers up onto land (similar to the Cybran Destroyer in SupCom).
Superweapons
Red Alert 3 shares a similar "Generals Points" system as C&C Generals - or if you haven't played that then think of the Company of Heroes experience points. In the average game I achieve around half of the available options, I don't know if it has an end, it seems to take exponentially longer to get the next "point" as the game progresses. These achievements allow you to do some nasty tricks, like suck armoured units up into space, throw anything hanging around in space back down, swap a couple units around on the map, or one of my favourites, warp in a rather nasty time bomb. There are plenty more, I've only mentioned a few of the more commonly used abilities.
The above aren't really called "superweapons" in the game, although they seem to have a bigger impact than the actual superweapons. Present are the Chronosphere and Iron Curtain that you'll remember from the original Red Alert games, however these aren't the overpowered abilities you've seen in other C&C games - they don't ruin the game with a single, unstoppable blast.
Resources
The game uses the finite resource model, seen in the original Red Alert and early Command and Conquer games. However you don't harvest from large lands of ore or Tiberium any more, the ore deposits are nicely piled up for our trucks to quickly take from. The typical thing to do is place one refinery directly opposite the mine and leave 1 truck running between them. The game is designed to have one truck per mine, and in the beta if you build a refinery further away from the recommended spot (it highlights recommended positions when placing a refinery) and build more than 1 truck, the second truck will go off and look for another ore deposit - which can be a little frustrating if you're trying to set up a safer long-haul without setting up a forward base at the ore mine. When ore deposits run out, they very slowly regenerate.
Additionally to ore you also have oil derricks. These work just as they always have, send an engie to capture for a consistent, infinite income. They don't provide you with much, and won't fuel very intense late-game battles. On both beta maps there is one oil derrick per player.
Music
I couldn't not mention this - the music in the beta is as awesome as it's always been!
Final Thoughts
The Command and Conquer franchise has been an interesting journey, Westwood made some good games but EA have really struggled to modernise them. If you're worried about some of the flaws in previous C&C games, such as overpowered and unstoppable superweapons - you won't see that in this game. Game pace is rather vicious until resources run dry, then it becomes a careful game of precise tactics and strategies. Because superweapons aren't so overpowered, this stage of the game can be played out properly.
There are plenty of fun ways of playing the game with different units. There's also plenty of options for strategy, even infantry plays a considerable role now. Micromanagement is a bit of a mix - there's many small tricks you can use as every unit has a special ability or alternative mode, but that's not going to stop someone with too much money building an army of Apocalypse tanks and fighters for air cover to roll over you.
Highly recommend Red Alert fans check this one out. Other RTS and C&C fans that have previously been deterred might want to take another look as Red Alert 3 is a pleasantly enjoyable and addictive game.
