2 Fast 2 Superfluous
11/3/2008 9:30 PM | 26 Comments | Page 1 of 4
What's Hot: Superfast gameplay, if you're into that sort of thing
What's Not: Bad pacing; Uninspired design; Derivative units; Cartoony graphics; Juvenile cut scenes
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 may be one of the most unnecessary real-time strategy games ever created. It's little more than a sped-up and repurposed version of
Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath, which was already quite nice, thankyouverymuch. It's certainly not much of a follow-up to 2000's
Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2, which was fast, but never this fiddly. It's unlovely, unimaginative and creatively bereft, adding nothing to the genre that wasn't already there and improved in other games. And when it comes to embarrassingly bad cut scenes, they don't get much more expensive than this.
Need for speed?
The objective is usually to destroy your opponent's base, which will happen quickly.
The problem isn't necessarily that the game is too fast. Speed is a staple of action-RTSes. In fact, the last two games from the developers of
Red Alert 3 were also fast:
The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II and
Command & Conquer 3, both from Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio, were built to ramp up quickly, resolve dramatically, and leave you ready for a second round. With these games, the lunch-hour RTS was perfected to the point that you could get in a couple of matches and still have time for actual lunch. And the genius of EALA was that they didn't have to compromise the basic gameplay -- both titles were diverse and tactically rich.
But then there's the issue of pacing. In other words, how much does the player need to do in a given amount of time? In
The Battle for Middle-earth II and
Command & Conquer 3, there was always something happening, but they avoided overdoing it. Special abilities were rare enough, and armies fought long enough, that you could turn the tide of a battle with a Ring power or an air strike. These games were an excellent balance of action and interactivity. For similar examples of fast games with excellent pacing, see
Multiwinia and
Tom Clancy's EndWar, both of which prove that speed doesn't have to be a dirty word.
<insert scratching needle sound here>
But for its utter lack of pacing,
Red Alert 3 is one of the worst real-time strategy games I've played in a long time. The speed of the game
when coupled with the micromanagement demanded is hopelessly broken. If I had less to do, the speed wouldn't be a problem. If I had just as much to do, but more time to do it, the micromanagement wouldn't be a problem (which is why it's utterly mystifying that there's no option to change the game speed). But
Red Alert 3 hurries forward while expecting you to manage special abilities on every single one of your units.
Water, water everywhere: Most maps have a naval component.
Let me reiterate:
every single one of your units. There is no unit here without a button that does something, usually toggling how the unit works or activating a "spell power."
Red Alert 2, which was also a very fast game, had no such special abilities, so it seems odd that its sequel was singled out for this super-fiddly feature creep. The idea seems to be that the base building and economy are streamlined so that you can manage your units. But even if
Red Alert 3 had no bases (they're still the linchpin of the game) and no economy (here mostly a matter of map control), the pace would still be unmanageable.
