Once again it was time to sample the latest outing from the Command & Conquer series. And to be perfectly honest i must say that i felt incredibly let down!

Now dont get me wrong i have been a fan of command & conquer ever since the very first game C&C 95 (later named Tiberian dawn) and i will be till the day i die, but i just feel that their recent outing could have been so much better than it actually was... The 3rd installment of the red alert series see's the return of the allies and the soviets. For those who have never played the game the basic premise is that Albert Einstein went back in time and killed Hitler to prevent WW2. This however opened a whole new time line where instead of going to war with the Nazi's, Joseph Stalin and soviet Russia rose to power. The red alert series has always been know for its wacky storyline and even wackier units (namely the chrono technology, Kirov airship and Tesla Trooper) and red alert 3 is no exception. The storyline this time is that the soviets managed to develop a time machine and traveled back in time in an effort to take out Albert Einstein. Mission complete! or so they thought... upon returning to the present the soviets found that they had given rise to a new superpower and the newest faction to join the red alert universe.. The Empire of the rising sun! The empire are a Asian faction that use a lot of mecha technology (kinda like transformers), namely units that morph to serve different purposes.

With the premise of the game out of the way, we can get down to why this game is a letdown. The first point i would like to make is that actually the game has made some headway in naval warfare, making it possible to build your base on the water (not including barracks and war factory's) and to be fair they have made a lot of improvements to air based warfare (the soviet migs rock). However, this is all paled by the fact that i just could not get into the single player campaigns. With the implementation of co-op play for single player campaigns and the new method of harvesting resources money can be very tight at times. The multiplayer online aspect of the game is (to date) also a major letdown. Multiplayer maps cannot currently be transferred between host and players leaving the community playing the same old maps. Hosting games has also now become more trouble than its worth since ea are using their own shitty unreliable servers. A new breed of player has also come along intent on rushing and games often now end within 3 minutes. Now maybe its just my opinion but i remember the days of RA2 where online games could often last for hours with all players having to really put their thinking caps on to beat other players defensive tactics. The empire also have a kick ass navy which kinda makes naval maps difficult to enjoy when put up against the empire. Maybe its just me being nostalgic but i prefer C&C back when it was developed and maintained by westwood studios. As we see more of the smaller games development companies fold into the superpower that is EA, we will also see a major decline in the enjoyability and sheer class of the games of my childhood. This game can be fun for the first few weeks but it is easy to lose interest and therefore it may not be worth the money to purchase. I rate this game at a 4/10 but i will give the multiplayer a little more credit for its fun factor when playing no rush games 6/10.

Please share with us your thoughts on this game...