Powered by EA’s SAGE 2.0 engine, Red Alert 3 is one of the most visually impressive RTS we’ve ever seen. This adds an added element of strategy, as players might have to choose different factions according not only to their playstyle but also to the map’s terrain. The three main factions have unique units for every field of battle, but each of them has a terrain which they favor. It’s all fun and games until the Allies bring out the Cryocopters. The Allied Nations predominant strength lies in its air units. And we haven’t even talked of aircraft yet. Having to keep an extra eye on naval units means that players have to keep their forces balanced to be able to engage the enemy on any terrain. Players can build almost anything offshore, giving them the possibility of constructing a predominately maritime stronghold. Unlike many other RTS games, naval combat is just as important as the battles on land in Red Alert 3. In a world without the atom bomb, protons and electricity are the ultimate tools of destruction, and there’s also more focus on naval warfare than before. Your call.Thanks to such a quirky backstory, Red Alert 3 features some outlandish and technologically impressive units for players to control. Unless you load up skirmish mode first of course, in which case in traditional RTS fashion the tech tree's completely unlocked and you can see everything RA3 has to offer in under fifteen minutes. And throughout all of it the two of you get to experience the laugh-out-loud corny voice acting, seeing the cute animations of your troops for the first time and the advent calendar-like drip-feed of new abilities and units. Missions in RA3 might limit the ability to build base defences to one player, another might order you to capture a distant island when only one of you can build land units and the other's stuck with submarines and aerial transports. And RTS teamwork against the computer only gets more fun when you've got set-pieces and personal limitations thrown into the mix. well, almost every RTS ever made, come to think of it. It just works, and that shouldn't surprise anyone who's ever tried teaming up with friends to take on hard AI in Dawn of War, Sins of a Solar Empire or. Unless you honestly vomit in your own mouth a little bit on contact with another human being, you want to play this game co-op. The Soviet squid is conspicuous by its absence and replaced by the horrible War Bears, which are like Care Bears if the Care Bears only cared about eating your face.īut you really don't want to play alone. This isn't just the option to play through each of the game's missions with a friend all of the levels are designed from the ground up for two people, and if you're playing alone then a subservient AI general fills the gap and a simple order system opens up so you can boss him around. As a feature they're completely eclipsed by the new co-op nature of the game's three campaigns. The Soviet top brass return to a future where their nation is kicking ass and taking names, although for some reason the death of Einstein also means the Japanese, now known as the Empire of the Rising Sun, are a nanotechnology-equipped world power (and third playable side).īut we can talk about the Japanese in a bit. The plot begins with the Soviets using a prototype time machine to go back to the beginning of the 20th century to kill Einstein, thereby stopping him from developing powerful super-weapons for the Allies. One of them will probably have a Russian hat on or something.įor the moment though, Red Alert 3 is still just about holding it together. Unless someone stops them, Red Alert 4 is going to come out one day and it's going to be a DVD containing nothing but an hour-long video of William H. The cheesy plot, the unbelievable national stereotypes, the comic book science, the cleavage, the animals that act as improbably effective military units, all of it is increasing at an exponential rate. It's just that with every new Red Alert game the series drops further into the gutter. Red Alert 3's an awesome continuation of the series, and the decision to make all three of its campaigns co-operative affairs is the kind of game design that makes you pray whoever it was that came up with the idea got promoted and laid on the same day. Not because their quality is going downhill, mind. Somebody needs to put a stop to the Red Alert games.
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