Red Alert 3

The third title in the Red Alert series, it was released in 2008 by EA.

In RA3 you are introduced with a third faction, the Empire of the Rising Sun. This faction uses state of the art technologies, units and buildings. The other two remain the Allies and the Soviets

All three factions are playable in the campaign and start at the same time in the game. The intro shows you the Soviet Union at the brink of the defeat by the allies, most likely at the end of Red Alert 2: Yuri’s Revenge. By using a time machine general Krukov and colonel Cherdenko travel back in time to Brussels to the year of 1927, where the International Physics Conference is held. There they murder Albert Einstein, which prevents the Allies from obtaining technology that he would have created. When they travel back, they found out that the Soviet Union is winning the Third World War. But Einstein’s disappearance has had a second outcome. Without Einstein the Empire of the Rising Sun (a.k.a. Japan) has risen and declares war against the Allies and the Soviet Union. When Krukov and Cherdenko find out that they don’t have nuclear weapons because of Einstein’s existence, they are forced into a war on multiple fronts.

From that moment onwards all faction have a different storyline, though there are some points where the different campaigns are a bit parallel to each other. But with other scenarios and outcomes of course. Every campaign ends in the same way. the faction you chose at the beginning of the campaign achieves global domination. You always play with a co-commander in the campaign. You can choose play with a computer-controlled AI or with another player online.

RA3 introduces a new range of units and only a few buildings are left from the previous parts. The allies still have the chromosphere and a variant from RA2 prism tower, only this time it’s called the Spectrum Tower. The soviets are still using their mighty Kirov airships and the famous Tesla Coils. The Empire of the Rising Sun is really the only faction that had to be build from scratch. The Allied and Soviet units can find their roots in RA and RA2. Every unit in RA3 has a secondary ability which must be activated manually.

The only thing I find disappointing the balance in the game, because it's almost non-existent. And I will tell you why. The Allies have their bombers that can tear apart almost every unit and even worse their carriers. There's is almost nothing you can do against these monsters, they have only 2 drawbacks: their drones can be destroyed and they suck at close combat. The Soviets have an almighty ground advantage with tanks that can rip through everything especially in the early minutes of a match . And last but not least the Empire of the Rising Sun. To be honest, it isn’t really good at anything as it relies more on adaptability rather than specializing itself. Some examples are transformable submarines that can turn into planes and helicopters that can morph into two-legged walkers. This means that the Empire is a difficult faction to play with, for it has no distinctive strengths or weaknesses.

Each faction has their own way of constructing their base. When playing as the soviets your buildings will be assembled in the field, while the allies are using the traditional way of base building. What’s the normal way you say? Queuing up buildings and when ready place them in the field, immediately ready for use. The Empire uses a more mobile way of building. Its Construction Yard spits out construction vehicles, which can be deployed anywhere and assemble themselves on site.

Resource gathering has been changed but only for a bit. In RA and RA2 you would find concentrated fields of ore (resources), in RA3 resources are centralized in pits which are scattered around the battlefield. You usually have two of those pits at your start position. These pits make resource make harvesting a bit easier, because refineries can be build in front of them. Both the refineries and pits use rotating platforms turn the collectors around pointing them in the right way and while doing so they load and unload the vehicles. Though they have changed one thing. All resources are evenly split between you and your team-mates.

But this has a positive and negative side. The positive side is that you also get resources even when your refineries are destroyed ( only if your partner(s) has any refineries standing). The negative side is that you never get the full amount of resources that you gather, which can sometimes mean the difference between defeat and victory.

The graphics in RA3 have been increased to a ridiculous level where it becomes cartoony. The terrain sometimes looks better than the units. But the one thing that draw my attention is the big detail of the water. It looks excellent when you compare it to the rest of the game. You can see shockwaves appearing in the water during naval battles.

To conclude this review, I had some fun playing this game. It's too bad that there's little balance in the game. But I would still recommend this game for a buy because it's not that bad and it's part of the Red Alert Universe.