When I was a freshman in high school, I went out a couple of times with a nice, attractive girl that I met while on a youth function with my church. We went to the movies and sat awkwardly through As Good as it Gets (not a good choice for an adolescent date movie), and I took her to a school dance, where everyone agreed she was too good for me.
I felt like I had really lucked out, but then things started to get kind of weird. She began to forget when we had made plans and even when she would show up, she would be late. The last straw was when she stood me up on my birthday, stranding me at home, all dressed up and no place to go.
As I waited and the hours wore on, the truth of her rejection became clear. Now the sad part is that I didn’t really care. You see, my parents had given me the original Command and Conquer video game for the Sega Saturn the night before, and the seemingly tragic circumstances of this romantic rebuff just gave me more time to play. By the end of the day, I considered it a fair trade. I may have been a failure in love, but at least I could confidently command a massive military force in battle against a ruthless global terror organization.
You have to have priorities.
Ever since that solemn birthday, I’ve been a fan of the Command and Conquer series. It isn’t the best of the real-time strategy genre, but the games are charmingly cheesy and they tend to find a happy balance between complexity and accessibility. As the games have evolved and embraced an ever greater strategic depth, they have still maintained the spirit of ludicrous fun and tongue-in-cheek bravado that earned them a solid following.
While the main franchise has continued to follow the struggle between the Global Defense Initiative and the Brotherhood of Nod for control of a mysterious extraterrestrial power source, the Red Alert titles have followed a different and more intriguing vein.
In the first title, Allied scientists, led by Albert Einstein, developed a time machine and used it to travel back to 1920s Vienna and murder Adolf Hitler while he was still little more than a struggling artist. Unfortunately, upon their return, they discovered a world in the midst of brutal war between the West and a powerful Soviet Empire, which had grown unchecked by the invasions of the Nazis.
As Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 opens, the Soviets are on the brink of utter defeat at the hand of the Western Allies. In a last ditch effort, the Soviets themselves travel back in time and destroy Albert Einstein. They had hoped that by removing the Allies’ greatest scientist they could deprive the West of its technological superiority, but in altering the timeline, the Russians have unleashed a new threat upon the world: the Empire of the Rising Sun.
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, which is available on PC, X-Box 360, and Playstation 3, allows players to take control of each of these three factions and do battle across a scripted campaign, or head out into the wilds of the World Wide Web to face off against cunning human opponents. Each faction’s campaign features nine missions, and in a first for the series, a co-commander, controlled either by the computer or by a friend via an internet connection, will fight by your side every step of the way.
The title is blessed with a hefty production budget and a wealth of quirky personality. Every aspect of the game – especially the gloriously campy full-motion video cut scenes - is infused with a gleefully self-aware B-movie sensibility. While it is somewhat stereotypical (although I suspect the development team deliberately emphasized such stereotypes), I particularly appreciated how each faction’s units and structures highlight the distinctive aspects of each culture and directly affect how players strategically evaluate each tactical situation.
The Allied units are the most basic and will be the most familiar to anyone who has played a real-time strategy game. Unit and structure construction is straightforward, and most units fit the typical “good guy” mold, filling the role of basic riflemen, sleek battle tanks, and flying wing bombers. Some of the Allied units, like sonar-enhanced dolphins, tanks camouflaged as trees, and laser cannons that respond to your commands with an automated deadpan, “Please hold. Your call is important to us”, are endearingly silly and fun to control.
The Soviet forces epitomize the coldly collective nature of the Evil Empire. The Red Army’s ranks are filled with bitter, conscripted recruits; menacing battle bears that can sniff out Allied and Japanese spies; mammoth monster tanks; and wicked-looking war blimps. Soviet structures are hastily built on the open battlefield, leaving them vulnerable to attack, but the Russian emphasis on industry and manpower allows this faction to quickly construct units and structures on multiple build queues.
The Empire of the Rising Sun features the most unique units and construction options. The Japanese technology tree is heavily supported by computers and robotics and each structure emerges from your command center as a generic core that must be transported and unfurled at the construction site. The Empire’s armies seem to have raided my childhood toy chest and come complete with land units that transform into super-sonic jets, samurai armed with light sabers, psychic Japanese school girls; and giant, lumbering robot warriors.
Red Alert 3 expands the battlefield by opening up waterways on the game’s tactical map and placing a new emphasis on naval combat. Almost all of your units are amphibious and most structures can actually be constructed on top of the water.
In each battle, you will be tasked with harvesting and refining iron ore. With the revenue generated from harvesting, you will build a number of specialized structures - like airfields, armor factories, or military barracks - each of which requires sufficient power to operate. From these structures you will construct a variety of land, sea, and air units. Each of these units has strengthens and weakness that you must cleverly play against your opponent’s units and defenses.
In addition to the standard units, each faction also has specialized units like spies, commandos, snipers, and ninjas, that can infiltrate enemy bases or quickly disable enemy defenses.
Players must work with their co-commander to manage their resources and successfully marshal every available combat unit to defend their base, complete mission objectives, and ultimately destroy their opponent’s forces.
For the first time in the history of the series, each unit has a unique special ability that can give commanders more options and - if they are used wisely - perhaps even a tactical advantage in battle. Units that perform well are awarded with veteran status and a jump in defensive and offensive strength.
As the player is attacked and as they destroy enemy units and structures, the game’s “Threat Meter” grows. The higher the meter goes, the faster players earn points they can use to purchase “Top Secret Protocols”. These special support options can be offensive or tactical (such as giving the commander access to a freezing ray that will stop enemy units in their tracks or a satellite sweep that will reveal undiscovered portions of the map), or they can be used to upgrade unit performance.
The game’s main control interface utilizes a command wheel that provides access to all of your units, structures, and options. The wheel is useful and largely intuitive, but the myriad of options it offers and the daunting maze of menus it opens up can be quite intimidating. On the whole, the interface is deftly constructed and well thought-out, but it will take a good deal of practice for most players to get a handle on the complicated controls and strategies.
Thankfully, the game comes packaged with a number of in-depth training tutorials that bring players up to speed on the basics of base building, managing resources, commanding units, and utilizing special tactical options. Unlike most games, Red Alert 3’s tutorials are both informative and surprisingly fun; and they’re narrated by a trio of bickering battle tanks from each of the three factions. The tanks have a lot of personality and I found myself laughing out loud at their humorous and pointlessly hostile banter.
As a veteran of earlier, less sophisticated real-time strategy games, I still subscribe to doctrine of overwhelming force. In the past, if you could amass enough tanks and simply throw them at your opponent’s base, you could eventually beat them into submission. For better or worse, modern strategy games require a bit more…well, strategy.
Not only are you limited to a set number of units, but each unit is also particularly vulnerable to certain enemy units and defenses. In order to succeed, players must vary their forces and think beyond the simplistic virtues of a frontal, brute force assault.
Thankfully, Red Alert 3 allows you to group your units into separate task forces that you can command individually and even lets you set up waypoints for them to follow on their way to an ultimate destination. Combined with the ability to alter units’ offensive and defensive protocols, order methodical retreats, and orchestrate rearguard defenses, the game gives players a wealth of control options.
The game’s graphics aren’t spectacular, but they are certainly serviceable. The color scheme is pleasantly bright and vibrant, and buildings and structures are nicely detailed; but the character models of individual units, particularly basic infantry units, are crude and simplistic. I also thought the onscreen map was ugly and lacking in detail.
As is the case with many titles in this genre, once the action heats up, the frame rate begins to drop. Infantry units are again the most affected, with many seeming to move in slow-motion across the battlefield.
The sound design is adequate and the music is appropriate. Explosions and gun blasts sound as they should, but the unit voice responses to your commands are repeated far too often.
Despite these minor flaws, the game is highly polished and showcases a ton of cool features. The campaigns boast over an hour of full-motion video cut scenes. Long a hallmark of the series, these cut scenes are blessed with a roster full of well-known actors like J. K. Simmons, George Takei, Tim Curry, and Jonathan Pryce; and they’re all filmed in glorious high definition. The cast seems to revel in the script’s ridiculously unabashed camp, and it’s a blast watching them have so much fun.
As you might expect from a game dedicated to combat, Red Alert 3 deals out a heavy dose of explosive destruction. Buildings are brought down in a hail of flames, tanks and helicopters are shattered, and soldiers are mauled by bears and dogs, crushed under the treads of mammoth tanks, mowed down by automatic gunfire, or incinerated in massive explosions. Violence in a game like this is ubiquitous, but except for a bit of blood, none of it is particularly graphic, and it all fits well within the range of a “Teen” rating.
There is some mild language, but what many parents will find most troubling is the highly sexualized nature of every female character in the game. Apparently, in this alternate universe, nearly every woman is under 40, boasts a killer body, and likes to show it off by wearing non-regulation uniforms. To be honest, it’s all pretty tame, but while nothing here is really explicit and it all seems to be done in good fun, you can’t shake the notion that every woman in the game was simply cast and exploited to appeal to the visual appetite of the title’s target audience.
On the whole, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 is a successful and enjoyable game. The core mechanics are complicated, but they aren’t unduly frustrating and they offer a rewarding depth of strategic options for players who invest time in learning them. But, while there are certainly more violent and objectionable games out there (and its amusingly cheesy tone goes a long way toward winning hearts), Red Alert 3 still carries a few burdens that should give parents pause.
But, then again - and on a positive note - this title demands careful planning and the ability to think a few steps ahead. Players are rewarded for successfully managing their limited resources and are encouraged to keep track of multiple tasks. While it’s always wise to have a plan, you must be willing to adapt to the ever-changing environment on the ground.
This might just be a silly strategy game, but those are pretty good life lessons that teach skills your children will need when they venture out into the adult world. Once again, when it comes to entertainment, some times you have to take the good with the bad.
Caution Rating: 6.5
