Red Alert 3 Hands-on Preview

Black Alert

A lot of things have changed in Command and Conquer over the years and we as gamers have seen the original game mutate in about a hundred different ways – and a lot of changes have been made plain in Red Alert 3 too.

The move to water-based tactics, the introduction of the new factions and the new and retooled graphics engine based on that used in Command and Conquer: Tiberium Wars – all these are new things.

Fundamentally though, Red Alert 3 still seems to be the same game we know and love. Or at least, it does from what we’ve seen of the gameplay. Unfortunately we didn’t get a chance to take a peek at the oh-so-critical FMV cutscenes or hear the details of how the plot will evolve in the end-game.

The user interface for example, which is absolutely key to how playable to game is and how accessible it will be to those players who still need to be baptised in the ways of Yuri and Tanya (the latter of which shall be returning, yes), is almost identical to how it always has been.

There’s still the huge status bar on the right hand side, which you navigate through contextually by selecting buildings or by using tabs. There are still wait periods and queues and you can still cancel unfinished items to regain funds if you find yourself in dire need of those crucial resources. It’s good to see that some things never change.


Resources though, it has to be said, were one aspect of the game which we just couldn’t get our heads around. This is Red Alert, not the Tiberium Universe, so there’s no tiberium to be harvested obviously.

Instead, what there is is ore. Ore is produced by pre-existing points on the map, rather than being scattered across the map. That means that instead of sending out harvesters to gather up these crystalline nuggets, you have to send your processors forwards and back between buildings.

On the plus side, this means that one team won’t find themselves being starved out of the market by an enemy who wields an entire legion of harvesters. On the downside, it reduces (or focuses, if you prefer) the resource conflicts to being a case of capture the flag where battles are fought over single points.

Still, for every negative we can find there are a handful of positives too and it’s good to see that EA has finally seemed to have found a decent compromise between what it wants to do with the series and what the fans expect of the game.

Thus, there’s a shiny new game here for the PC that stays true to ethic of the original game, but which will also offer a bunch of new features. For example, the entire game will be made to run entirely in co-op mode if you fancy it.


There’s the Xbox 360 version too to bear in mind, which will use a brand new control system that Jim Vessella previously hinted to us about in a producer interview about Kanes Wrath. The Xbox 360 version will be scaled down in a few other ways too, able to handle multiplayer for only four players at once, instead of the PC’s six.

Artistically, that’s still true. EA has re-recruited Frank Klepacki, the composer for the original games in the series, and put him to work creating and remixing new music for the game. In an effort to put its own brand on the game though EA has used a brand new art style which is equal parts of awesome and cool.

In other words, though there are still a few flies in the ointment, Red Alert 3 is still shaping up to be a fantastic a game by the look of things. The best news of all though is that you may soon be able to find out for yourself – the game is about to go into beta after all, so if you were one of the lucky ones who signed up via the Kane’s Wrath offer then you can fully expect to see an invitation in the post in the next few months.

We’ll see you there.

Red Alert 3 is set for release on PC and Xbox 360 in November this year, but if you’ve got any questions or comments in the meantime then let us know in the forums.