Monday, April 21, 2008

The Problem With Red Alert 3

Red Alert 3 is coming soon, but the one major failure of Red Alert 2 is now the complete and undenied focus of its sequel. Ignoring the vast success with ground combat, and the limited balance brought by some air units, EA has decided to be different rather than great, and focus on the naval combat in their newest outing.

As an RTS gamer who cut his teeth on Age of Empires (before there was a Rise of Rome, let alone an Age of Kings), I was shocked and awed by Red Alert 2. The fast paced action, the ginormous army size (no 50 unit population cap here) and the cut-throat multiplayer (engineer rush, dolphin rush).

Limited Ore resources emphasized forethought (no secondary, unlimited resources here as in Generals). Keeping most of the conflict to strictly ground forces (no air-to-air combat, with the exception of the Rocketeer) kept the focus on fast offense and strong defense, yet the power of offensive units benefitted from a balancing following the defensive juggernaut that was Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun.

The one flaw that angered me then, and to this day remains the major gap in RA2's armor is Naval combat. One can dominate most water maps with nothing but a superfluous amount of dolphins. In fact, most maps involving water were simply a race to dolphin supremacy.

GTA IV? Call of Duty IV? Forget 'em. Electronic Arts realizes that to defeat these behemoths they need to deploy something different. They need navies! Horrible, unbalanced, robotic navies!

Thank goodness Westwood is gone. Had the former members not found tremendous success elsewhere, they may be bothered by what has happened to their storied franchises under EA.

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