Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 (PC)

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The Empire of the Rising sun will appeal to all Japanese-obsessed gamers everywhere

While genre veterans won't have a problem with Red Alert 3, it's not an RTS that will feel particularly welcoming to newcomers. That the tutorial, divided up into a number of sections, feels like a slog gives you an idea of how Red Alert 3 plays. Every single unit has a secondary form, triggered by clicking on a small box on the bottom right of the screen or by pressing F. So, for example, the Empire's Striker-VX can transform Transformers style from a ground-based anti-air unit into an air-based anti-ground unit. In this way, micro-management is massively important in Red Alert 3. Effectively it doubles the number of units every race has at its disposal, and doubles the complication factor. That's cool, we can just about handle it - but often it can be one hell of a struggle trying to remember every unit's alternative mode, and what it's good for.

Where as Relic Entertainment is taking the excellent Dawn of War series in a more small-scale direction, with less emphasis on resource gathering and almost no base-building at all, EA LA has continued the Red Alert series' focus on ore gathering, masses of units and overrunning your opponent with big armies. In many cases, a decent sized force of tanks and ships, with a basic knowledge of units' secondary abilities, will be good enough to deal with the computer-controlled enemy. It's completely different in the online competitive environment, of course, but, on the whole, brute force is the name of the game, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's nothing we haven't seen before in countless RTS games before.

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What does feel fresh is the emphasis on naval warfare, which most RTS games shy away from. Most structures can now be built off shore, and most units have some kind of amphibious mode, which trigger automatically as they move from land to sea. But a sound sea strategy can be a tad overpowered at times. By building a Naval Yard (Soviets), Seaport (Allies) or Imperial Docks (Empire of the Rising Sun), you're able to pump out some of the most effective units in the game. The Soviet Dreadnought, for example, can level bases in the blink of an eye from miles away, as can the other races' equivalent units. If you build up a sizeable fleet you're going to be able to beat much of the campaign chapters in a 'sledgehammer to crack a nut' style.

While there's little in the way of innovation, Red Alert 3 is a polished, high quality RTS.

The graphics are great, with amazing water, fantastic explosions and excellent unit and structure animations. It's incredibly stylised, in opposition to the Tiberium series' focus on gritty realism, which has the added benefit of not requiring a monster of a PC to run well. Overall Red Alert 3 is an incredibly polished product. You might laugh at the quality of acting in the cut scenes and the dialogue, but the actual RTS gameplay just works. We'll point out that the pathfinding can be troublesome, with Engineers especially prone to uncontrollable fits, but on the whole you won't find yourself battling against the game and your opponent.

It's a quality game, that can't be denied. Play it with a mate and it's a lot of fun. The live action clips are so bad you can't not want to watch them, and the whole experience has that addictive quality that makes you want to play it when you're not, but it's a hugely conservative effort. The co-operative campaign is a nice addition, but we've been playing RTS games with friends on the same side for years in skirmishes, so this is more evolution than revolution. We were hoping for some genuine innovation with Red Alert 3. Perhaps, given the genre, this was an unreasonable hope. This is one for the series' army of fans.

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