Commander & Conquer 3: Red Alert

CC3:RA is set in an quirky alternate future created when Russian agents travel back in time and kill Albert Einstein and prevent the development of the A-bomb. This creates a present in which The Soviet Union is besieged by two world powers; a powerful Technocratic Japanese empire and the Allies, made up primarily of Brits and Yanks. The Germans I suppose just got tired of the whole world conquest thing and sat this future out. 

Cut scenes aside the game itself looks beautiful. The level of detail in everything from your faction’s G.U.I to the individual units is astonishing. As I was playing I was perversely thrilled to watch an enemy infantry unit I’d shot slowly keel over and die. This on a unit in a battlefield that had over two dozen separate units. This level of detail is not for the “not so new Mac” crowd. On my 2008 3.06Ghz iMac with the NVIDIA 8800 GS the game choked on High settings. The best I could muster was full resolution 1900×1200 at Medium settings with one option switched to High, in my case the unit textures. I imagine the really high graphic settings are really only for Mac Pro’s that have opted for a BTO graphic cards.

Sadly the lord giveth and taketh. Some of the issues with CC3:RA are in those very beautiful details; there’s just so many of them. First of all unlike other RTS where each faction has one or two unique units, CC3:RA gives each faction standard units that vary slightly. Every unit has as secondary ability and it’s these that vary from faction to faction. The standard infantry for example has the following abilities depending on faction: Imperials have a banzai charge of speed, Allies have shields, and Soviets molotov cocktails. Multiply this by all the different types of units and you get a sense of just how complex it can get.  Sound fun right? Sort of. Here’s the rub. Since each factions units vary so much from your own, it’s a bit of a challenge keeping track of what units you need to counter your opponents. Having only played this game for a little more than a week I’ll concede that the hardcore gamer may very well figure this out with time. Initially though it proved incredibly frustrating as the fast pace of the game left little time to click on an enemy unit, figure out what it was and then choose what unit to attack it with. With the A.I at anything above Medium I was summerly handed an ass kicking every single time while i was still trying to figure out what sort of Tank would best counter their flying units. 

Second, each faction takes a different approach to constructing buildings. It breaks down like this; Imperials create buildings as separate units that are unpacked once built, Soviets place buildings and construct them out in the open on location, and Allies create buildings in a queue that can be placed instantly once finished. This adds another layer of strategy. Since Imperial buildings are actually units you could stockpile a slew of, say, turrets and deploy them all at once when an enemy approaches. Soviets build the fastest but are vulnerable to attack while being constructed. Allies are the safest since buildings are constructed in a queue and aren’t placed on the map until finished, but they take the longest to build. I didn’t much care for these differences since they force you to stick to the faction that most suites your building style. Personally I like the Allies way of constructing but much prefer the high tech Imperial units.