Real-time strategy basics comprise Red Alert’s core. Like nearly every RTS game that has come before--and will undoubtedly follow—you harvest natural resources to generate income. This income lets you create buildings and then buy tanks, helicopters, infantry, and other units that those structures can produce. In the game’s basic pattern, you’ll build up this infrastructure and income while defending from incoming attacks. Then when your forces are big enough, you’ll charge out to overwhelm enemy bases.
We call this New York skirmish an off-Broadway production.
But even though this premise repeats, there was enough variety to hold our interest. Each unit often has multiple uses, such as helicopters that can transport vehicles in addition to firing on targets. You can only make the most powerful units after building special, costly structures. And you’ll charge up superpowers during battles for overwhelming, rare strikes, such as bombardment from satellites.
The three factions, with differing technologies and units, add even more of this variety within the core structure. In an alternate-reality version of the mid-20th century, Russian, Japanese, and allied U.S. and British forces vie for global domination. You’ll get to play many missions from each perspective, and you can capture enemy structures within a battle to add that technology to your own—exhausting all the possibilities would take a seriously long time. Plus, online multiplayer options let you team up with a friend against the computer or enter typical skirmishes.
Red Alert’s biggest design disappointment comes from stealth levels that break up the usual pattern. These scenarios deviate too much from the real-time strategy core and don’t quite match the rest of the game.
Worse, Red Alert is mired in technical problems. The graphics look bright and clear in general, but we constantly saw rendering problems that made shadows blocky. And we often had visuals with errors ranging from minor to major, including problems that caused us to restart the game about every hour or half-hour.
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 succeeds by inserting lots of value and variety into its repeating structure. Even with technical problems, we had fun conquering the world three ways.
Familiar structure, yet repetition doesn't bore. A- and B- level actors ham up roles in pulp story. Lots of missions to play as three different factions. Can play with or against friends online. ESRB rating: Teen.
Significant visual and technical bugs. We wanted to be able to zoom out a little more for a wider view. Stealth missions usually dissappoint.
