Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3

Title: Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
Platform Played On: Xbox 360
Release Date: October 28, 2008
Date Played: November-December 2008
Time Played: 20 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 3/5



Opinion:
I had a great deal of anticipation for Red Alert 3. Is is not only one of my favorite franchises, but my friend Gavin worked on this title.

Being an achievement (gardening tool) I picked up a copy of Red Alert 3 for the Xbox 360. The game looked and controlled reasonably well and I didnt have much trouble using the controller instead of the mouse and keyboard.

I will admit that Red Alert 3 is a pretty game, but thats about the only thing that is actually good about it.

Red Alert universe was always about the Soviets, who in this parallel universe replaced the Nazis by the means of time travel trickery. And the Allies, the free people of the world who rallied up to stop the Soviet aggression. For whatever reason EA decided to add a 3rd faction to the mix, Japan. Not only did I have zero interest in playing as Japan, I found that their involvement was a constant 3rd wheel attached to what was actually an interesting Soviet/Allied conflict. So every time Japan played a role I found myself bored and rushing through that content. I had zero interest and wish that the developers would have spent more development time on the Soviet/Allied campaigns instead.

In Command and Conquer tradition the story is told through FMV cutscenes; however unlike its predecessors RA3 features overly sexualized characters and cringe evoking acting. Its great that EA is keeping with the tradition and sticking to the FMV format, but did they really need to hire porn stars with zero talent to do it? In a porn movie I may find them attractive.. here through.. it just makes me sad as I see them butcher one of my favorite franchises.

Several other design decisions are simply dumbfounding. For instance one of the coolest parts of the Command and Conquer games is building refineries and sending out your harvesters and protecting them while they collect gold and ore. This whole aspect was completely eliminated from the game. You now build the refinery on a source similar to Warcraft 3's night elves. That is a bummer, but to top it all of you have a harvester moving 3 feet between the mine and the refinery back and forth, which just looks silly.

A lot of the units are now amphibious, so importance of water was greatly diminished since it now basically is land. This change cut out a lot of positioning strategies out of the game.

While pretty and great to look at, the overall aesthetic of the units has a futuristic look. I much rather preferred the World War 2 style gritty design that Red Alert 1 and 2 had. The futuristic style in Red Alert 3 makes it look very similar to Tiberium Wars (C&C3), yes both share the engine, but previous games in the series didnt have this problem, and they too shared the engine.

Overall Red Alert 3 is a decent game, but as a fan of a series I would be lying if I said that it did not dissapoint me. I feel that Red Alert 3 is the lowest point in the series, as the only thing that it has going for it are the graphics. I would much rather sit down for a game of Red Alert 2, which still looks fairly good with its detailed sprite based graphics. Red Alert 3 feels like a skin on top of Command and Conquer 3, it does not have the charm or art design that made the series so great. So unless you want to get the story I would recommend to play C&C3 instead, or go back and play Red Alert 2. RA3 was a poor attempt and I hope that RA4 will return to the roots that made the series so great.