Platform

Playstation 3 (Ultimate Edition) / PC (Uprising)

Genre

Real-Time Strategy

Publisher

Electronic Arts

Developer

EA Los Angeles

ESRB

T (Teen)

Released

Ultimate Edition Mar.23/09

Red Alert 3: Uprising

Mar.12/09

- Ultimate Edition (PS3) is brimming with a good game and tons of cool extras

- Uprising (PC) concentrates on the single-player experience and I actually liked that better

- For Ultimate Edition there's quite a steep learning curve for those unfamiliar with console RTS games

- Uprising's single-player campaigns are over too fast and the Yuriko missions could have fleshed out more

Review: Red Alert 3 (PC)

Review: Red Alert 3 (360)

Review: Overlord: Raising Hell (PS3)

Review: Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge (PC)

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Red Alert 3

"Ultimate Edition" and "Uprising"

Score: 8.0 / 10

It’s not often I come back to a game and consider that it’s possible I gave it a lower score than it deserved. In fact, I can only think of one other game that, in hindsight, I should have probably scored higher – Dead Rising. The other game being this one, the Playstation 3 version of Red Alert 3 and its PC expansion, Uprising, both of which have made me think that it’s entirely possible that I scored the original PC and Xbox 360 releases lower based simply on how much I liked Red Alert 2. It’s an admission I don’t make lightly but it’s necessary in this era of full disclosure.

On the PC side, Uprising is a stand-alone expansion to Red Alert 3 and includes the same full-motion video cutscenes that typifies the series, some new weird and

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wonderful units, a Commander’s Challenge mode, and four relatively short single-player campaigns.

As much as Red Alert 3 emphasized multiplayer with its co-Commander at your side throughout and a full online multiplayer component, Uprising skins that off and you’re left with a single-player experience with a very scripted sensibility. This is especially evident with

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Yuriko’s origin campaign (the Empire of the Rising Sun’s special unit), which plays like a real-time strategy version of a dungeon hack ‘n’ slash. It’s more of a sideshow than anything else, but it does make me think that the Command & Conquer franchise could be ready to branch into other genres – or more accurately, start branching out again.

The traditional Red Alert experience of building a massive army of mixed units and pounding the enemy in swift strokes still holds true throughout the major encounters in the campaigns. I just have to admit, I really like this. Tactical battles, thinking battles are fun and all, but a lot of times I just want to see stuff blow up. There is some strategy involved but it’s no Company of Heroes.

Running through the campaign missions is a good preparation for the Commander’s Challenge – a 50-mission dance through the battlefield against ever-increasingly intelligent and better-armed opponents. The missions build upon each other – successful completion often means you’ll have more of the tech tree accessible for the next challenge. And then there’s always weird, unpredictable Red Alert-type things happening like the production of shrunken units. It’s fun even though there’s a certain amount of predictability when it comes to the AI opposition.

Between sessions of Uprising, I turned to the Playstation 3 version of Red Alert 3 (which does not support mouse and keyboard), subtitled Ultimate Edition. Having already acclimatized myself to the Xbox 360 version meant an almost flat learning curve when it came to using the controller to manage units, setup build ques, and get around the map quickly. I still stumbled a little when it came to making full use of each unit’s alternate functions, but it was much less than when I started on the 360 version. But, and you knew this was coming, if you don’t have any experience with console real-time strategy games spend time with the tutorial before jumping into the game proper.

Besides likely being the best-looking real-time strategy game on the Playstation 3, the Ultimate Edition features a lot of extra content not found in the previous release on the 360, like behind the scenes interviews, the soundtrack, and more multiplayer maps. In that sense, this really is the “ultimate edition.” All it really needed was a pewter figure of a Tesla troop to round it out completely.

What hasn’t been completely ironed out of either game is the pathfinding snags, particularly for the navel units. The pathfinding has definitely come a long way since the days of Dune II (or even Red Alert 2) but the fact it still hasn’t been completely mastered as of this date tells me there needs to be more R&D when it comes to this important aspect of real-time strategy games.

I’m a fan of the Red Alert series, warts and all. It’s just too much fun for me, whether playing with people through the co-op campaign of Red Alert 3 or the single-player aspects of Uprising, it’s all goofy fun. And that’s mainly what I want from my games: fun.

- Aaron Simmer

(April 24, 2009)