The Red Alert series, it has to be said, are the funny uncles of real-time strategy gaming. The original Red Alert was good fun as it made light of the straight-faced, chest beating style of the Command and Conquer games. Red Alert 2 continued the trend and, surprisingly, managed to give Starcraft's cage a damn good rattling at the same time. It'd be a close run thing, and slightly blasphemous, but we'd still probably pick RA2 over Starcraft for an afternoon of retro pixel bashing. The first two Red Alert's, however, were both convinced that their commie-bashing bombast and deliberately z-grade cut scenes were frickin' hilarious! At best the comedy stylings of Red Alert would stray into the realms of the mildly amusing, while mostly provoking chirping crickets and rolling tumbleweed.
Red Alert 3 continues this great tradition. While the full motion video is more full of motion than ever before, this is the same old routine that felt a bit tired years ago. The problem, more than anything, is that any attempt to make something deliberately bad and cheesy will always come across as smug and self-satisfied. Look how knowingly bad this is! Admire our deliberate shonkiness! We could forgive it if any of it was funny or clever, but it isn't. Red Alert 3's carefully constructed coating of shiny, plastic cheese is a relentless bore.
It's nothing if not colourful.
The game itself, once you chisel through the protective barrier of hilarity, turns out to be quite alright. It is mostly a tarted up version of what's gone before, though it brings at least one new trick to the table which we'll get to in a minute. It's an action real-time strategy game, with more emphasis on the real-time than the strategy. As long as you remember to take out the anti-air defences before sending in the 'copters, and keep your tanks away from specific tank-busting units, you should do fine. It's a game that rewards immediate and constant aggression over thoughtful planning, so fumbling the first few minutes of a game can be more costly than not really having any idea about what you're going to do once you reach an enemy base. Hit 'em with everything you've got, enjoy the explosions and repeat until finished.
The real point of difference is the presence of co-commanders in campaign missions. Any mission can be played co-operatively with either a human or an AI commander. We've been able to team up against an AI in skirmish battles in countless other RTS titles over the years, but this is the first time, to our knowledge, that a whole RTS campaign can be played through with a friend. It works well and is easy to set up. Every campaign mission gives you the option to play co-op or solo, and clicking on co-op takes you through to an online lobby where you can invite a friend or, if you're feeling particularly brave, a total stranger. It's a neat idea and something we'd like to see more of in the future.
Any enthusiasm for co-op campaigning is likely to be dampened by the underwhelming nature of the campaign however. It's just not that interesting. While we didn't expect to find good storytelling in an RTS, everything feels a little perfunctory. Spectacularly perfunctory, maybe, as best illustrated by a mission that sees you guiding a monstrously huge three-headed samurai robot across the map, crushing everything in its path. It looks cool, freeways crumble, bases shatter and carnage ensues, but it's not the least bit strategic. Factor in the constant video clips of (intentionally!) bad acting that obscure the mini-map at irritating intervals and it all feels more like work than it should.
Skirmish mode has been the saviour of many an RTS game with a dodgy campaign, and it's no exception here. There are plenty of maps to play with that can support anywhere from two to eight players. Players can arrange themselves into however many teams they want, or keep the game as a one-against-all battle for survival. It's pretty much what you'd expect in an RTS skirmish mode but, stripped of all the mugging and eyebrow waggling of the campaign, the gameplay gets the freedom it needs to come alive.
Tempers flare at the Christmas parade.
The three different factions - Allies, Soviets and Rising Sun - are different enough to all be worth exploring, while maintaining enough similarities to keep the learning curve comfortable. They each take a different approach to base building, ranging from the 'build it here and now' philosophy of the Russian, to the more adaptable 'build it and put it somewhere later' plans of the Allies and Rising Sun. The price of flexibility is micromanagement, and Red Alert 3 isn't afraid to demand a player's constant clicky-clicky involvement in proceedings. Expect to spend a lot of time skipping around the map as you try to keep things under control. A game speed slider would have been appreciated, or the ability to issue orders while paused, but Red Alert 3 keeps the pedal to the metal at all times.
While Red Alert 3 provides some of the best looking RTS action around - special mention to some truly gorgeous water effects - it still doesn't quite hang together. The colourfully chaotic nature of things means that selected units need to be highlighted with thick, inelegant borders when selected, so that they have a chance of standing out against the background. We also had constant trouble finding the mouse pointer on the screen, which is deeply annoying when the pace of the game demands fast and accurate control of units. It is perhaps inevitable that Red Alert 3's compulsion to throw everything at you all at once, with a splurt of extra FMV topping, results in small but crucial gameplay elements being buried under the bluster.
And yet, despite all our problems with game, there is fun to be had. Each faction has a series of Secret Protocols that can be unlocked throughout a battle, granting a player access to a variety of gleefully destructive, and potentially game altering, super weapons. At its best, with a large scale air assault hammering an enemy base into dust while a gravity well deals with the hapless ground forces, Red Alert 3 can come across as the gaming equivalent of a Michael Bay summer blockbuster - loud, pretty and crowd-pleasing.
In the end, though, Red Alert 3 needs more than a pretty face to compensate for its love-me-'cos-I'm-funny personality and intermittently irritating gameplay. Too much flash, not enough substance.
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