Red Alert 3 Hands-on Preview

All Awash

Sometimes people look at things with rose-tinted glasses and never is that more true than when nostalgia kicks in and people start remembering how things used to be.

That’s especially true with Red Alert 3 and, without meaning to sound yet more controversial about the Command and Conquer series after placing Kane at number five in the Top Ten Computer Game NPCs, Red Alert did have some problems.

I’m talking about tank rushing, which was a huge issue for the earlier Red Alert games where players could be assured victory simply by bulking up on a ton of mammoth tanks and sending them into the enemy base before any effective defences could be erected.

Huh, erect.

Red Alert 3 has adjusted things though to try and counter this tactic and that’s something I found out to my chagrin in a one-on-one match against another journalist – damn you, PC Zone! There really is nothing more shaming than having your tank rush roundly defeated, only to then have your ninjas wiped out by an army of Shardik wannabes.



One of the ways that EA has re-structured and rebalanced the game then has been through expanding areas that have previously been undernourished to the point of expiration – namely, waterbourne tactics.

Combat over water plays a much, much bigger role in Red Alert 3 than we’ve seen in most other strategy games and the tactics aren’t just limited to using ships either – there are submarines, naval artillery, hovercraft tanks and helicopters that can collapse into naval units too on the Japanese side of things.

This wide selection of units, all of which have their own strengths and weaknesses, isn’t all either. There’s also a selection of naval units inspired by the musical masterpieces of The Beatles, such as The Walrus.

N’ah, not really.

What there is though is the ability to build structures over water, and not just harbours and docks either but entire facilities. Some buildings naturally have to be built over land. It’s no good having a barracks put together over the Pacific ocean if some of your troops are just going to end up walking through the doors and drowning in the drink like lolcats in a sack.


The rest of the buildings though – and by rest we mean the vast majority – can all be assembled over water or land. Off-shore power stations, radar outposts and research labs are all standard fare for Red Alert 3 and the whole thing comes together like an ecologists nightmare – assuming they are boring enough to dream about their work all the time.

The addition and development of oceanic base-building and naval combat is something which really helps make Red Alert 3 stand out. It also makes, as one of the games producers told me as I played a game, “a bitch to design levels for”

In fact, it’s easy to forget about how important the naval side of things can be when you’re playing Red Alert 3, as I found out for myself in a match against one of the writers from PC Zone. At the start of the game I started gearing myself up for a big tank rush – but one lead over water.

With a medium sized fleet/squadron of hovertanks in formation, I launched them into the water and bought them around the back of the enemy base. Half the group broke off and transformed on a nearby peninsula to mop up resistance while the remainder stayed off-shore and shelled the construction yard.

All was going fine until a few moments later when I heard a warning from the UI telling me that structures were under attack – only then did it dawn on me that although I’d spent a fair bit of time building up my coastal defences, my inland structures were completely unprotected. Within minutes my forces were crippled and I was left sobbing on the keyboard, crying for my muffin.