Command And Conquer Red Alert 1

[Eleanora Parrot]

Likethe previous entries in the Red Alert series, the game is set in an alternate reality from World War II, in which the Western Allies fight the Soviet Union. In Red Alert 3 the Soviet leadership, facing defeat, goes back in time to kill Albert Einstein and prevent his assistance to the allies, paving the way for Soviet domination in the present. However, as an unintended consequence, a third world power, the Empire of the Rising Sun, is created and all three sides go to war. The three factions are playable, with the gameplay involving constructing building and factories, gathering resources and training armies to defeat other players. Each faction has a fully co-operative campaign, playable with either an artificial intelligence partner or with another player online. The game intersperses strategy missions with full motion video footage featuring an ensemble cast starring J. K. Simmons, Tim Curry and George Takei as the leaders of the three factions.

The game received mostly positive reviews, with reviewers citing the co-operative and multiplayer components as strengths, along with the enhanced role of naval combat compared to other real-time strategy games. Commonly cited weaknesses included aspects such as unit pathfinding and an unstable netcode.

Red Alert 3 retains the core real-time strategy mechanics of the Command & Conquer series. Warring factions harvest resources using vulnerable collectors and use those resources to construct military bases and forces on-site. Structures form a shallow but wide tech tree with a variety of units and elusive superweapons. Weapon types are specialized to the point where a rifleman can withstand direct hits from an anti-tank cannon. Red Alert 3's major refinements are the addition of the Empire of the Rising Sun to the factions of the sub-series, a co-operative campaign, and expanded naval warfare.

The single-player campaign is fully co-operative. Each mission is played alongside an ally. These can be played online, with another player. Offline it is one of several computer-controlled characters. Teams share income and generally start with the same forces. Computerized characters can be given simple commands, such as an order to take a specific position or to strike a specific target. The campaign has nine missions for each side. Each side's plotlines are mutually exclusive.

Naval warfare is emphasized as another front. Executive producer Chris Corry has stated that many units are amphibious, trading effectiveness for increased flexibility. Buildings and entire bases can be constructed on water, save for such things as ground or naval unit production facilities (e.g. tank factories are ground-only, but tsunami tanks are amphibious and can be produced in Naval Yards),[12] and players who "ignore the ocean [are] likely forfeiting a significant part of their potential economy to their opponents". Further stressing this is the fact that, despite some campaign maps being entirely land based, all multiplayer maps have significant bodies of water in them. The use of naval units and various unit abilities also helped players counterattack their opponent's units specific to that unit's strongpoint.

Almost every unit in the game has a secondary ability. Their usage varies: some are toggled on or off, others are targeted, and still others are triggered the instant one presses the button. The Imperial King Oni can bull-rush enemy units as a secondary ability, a Soviet Hammer Tank can toggle between a tank gun and a laser beam that can leech HP from enemies, and an Allied Athena Cannon can engage its energy shields with a button press but with a cooldown period before they can be used again. All abilities are bound to the same key. The game also features experience points that are used to upgrade unit types and to buy "commander abilities", which call in air strikes, recon sweeps, magnetic satellite beams, etc. Commander abilities have no resource costs but do have significant cooldown periods.

Ore fields as resource sites have been removed. These originated in the first Red Alert as a functionally identical equivalent to Tiberium, and what were ostensibly strip mines had ore growing out of the ground. Gameplay mechanics have not changed a great deal since fields have been replaced with stationary ore mines. Strategic ore refinery placement and covert refining are impacted to an extent.

The first Red Alert revolved around a different World War II between the Allies (including Germany) and the Soviet Union, with some high-tech esoterica, such as weaponized tesla coils linked to Tesla's abortive death rays and limited time travel linked to the rumored Philadelphia Experiment. Red Alert 2 featured a Soviet invasion of North America with tanks, conscripts, gargantuan airships, and psychically dominated anti-ship giant squids; its expansion, Yuri's Revenge, escalated matters up to UFOs and Soviets on the Moon. Executive producer Chris Corry stated in a pre-release interview that Red Alert 3 further differentiates the playable factions from each other and "[play] up the silliness in their faction design whenever possible".[13]

The Soviets and Allies have a mix of old and new features. Soviet units lean towards ruthlessness and brute force: giant Kirov airships are retained and flak troopers are now penal troops, while attack dogs are an Allied unit that the Soviets have replaced with functionally identical armored war bears. New units include heavy tanks known as "Hammer Tanks" that can tear weapons from the enemies they destroy with a magnetic beam, light anti-infantry walkers known as "Sickles" that can jump over terrain elevations, the amphibious "Stingray" attack craft with twin-mounted tesla coils, and amphibious AA-only "Bullfrog" transports that can only shoot their passengers out of a "man cannon". The Soviets have lost their nuclear technology due to the events of the backstory, but can leverage their simple tech, cheap units and "quick fix" structures like the Super Reactor and Crusher Crane, enabling them to easily overwhelm enemy bases. Soviet armour are considerably tougher than Allied and Japanese on the whole, and augmented with their infamous Iron Curtain, can be extremely dangerous.

A major change from Red Alert 2 is the Soviet Air Force: in addition to Kirovs, the Soviets have access to MiG ("Mikevich and Guroyan", a play on the real-life Mikoyan and Gurevich) fighters and versatile attack helicopters. In lieu of nuclear bombs, the Soviets have developed the Vacuum Imploder, a warhead which sucks humans, vehicles and damaged buildings into a dense hole before exploding.

The Allies come with a wide variety of gadgetry (mostly nonlethal), much of it as a comeback of Red Alert 2's advanced units. New units include hydrofoils with weapon-scrambling rays, unarmed helicopters with freeze and shrink rays, and an amphibious destroyer with treads and magnetic armor that can draw enemy fire. Allied units have a variety of different accents and "good guy" overtones: their basic infantry unit is the Peacekeeper, which seems to have been derived from riot police. Red Alert 2's advanced chrono-technology has been largely but not completely lost, so that the Chronosphere superweapon remains and the returning Tanya unit is now equipped with a "time belt" that allows her to wind her location and health back a few seconds. Allied advances are driven by the FutureTech corporation in Einstein's absence. Since the tech and base building takes some time the Allies are more patience-friendly.[14] The Allies' predominant strength is in airpower, with the best selection of aircraft available ranging from bombers to air superiority fighters. The Allies' ultimate weapon is now the Proton Collider, a cannon which fires five bolts of energy that explodes in a series of atomic-scale explosions.

The campaign mode maintains the theme of camp warfare played straight, with a secret volcano lair, android infiltrator (Empire of the Rising Sun campaign) or an anti-Soviet madman as the President of the United States, and more than one thing shooting lasers out of its eyes. It also continues the use of full motion video cutscenes featuring real-life actors. Filming started in April 2008.

The game features online multiplayer, originally via GameSpy servers. Due to the shutdown of GameSpy, original Red Alert 3 online services are no longer available. A separate online solution, provided by Revora, is called C&C Online.

As the Soviet Union faces defeat at the hands of the Allied Nations, Soviet General Nikolai Krukov (played by Andrew Divoff) and Colonel Anatoly Cherdenko [ru] (Tim Curry) use a time machine beneath the Kremlin to travel back to Brussels in the year 1927 at the Solvay International Physics Conference and eliminate Albert Einstein, thus changing the future.[15] Returning to the present, they discover that Cherdenko is the Premier of the Soviet Union, much to General Krukov's chagrin; in this timeline the Soviets are on the brink of conquering Europe, when the Empire of the Rising Sun (Japanese Empire) declares war on both the Soviet Union and the Allies with a desire for complete world domination, something they perceive as their divine destiny. Due to the elimination of Einstein, nuclear weapons have not been invented and the Soviet Union is unable to stop the invasion. This begins a new Third World War, which is now a three-way war between the Soviet Union, the Allies and the Empire.

In the Soviet campaign, the player assumes the role of a Soviet commander whose first task is to expel the Imperial Japanese forces from Soviet territory by defending the city of Leningrad, securing a satellite launch facility and eventually re-taking a Soviet naval base on the Pacific coastline in the city of Vladivostok.

Afterwards the Allies are rallied together by U.S. President Ackerman (J. K. Simmons), forcing the commander to lead attacks in Europe on their HQ in Geneva, and later capturing and securing a research lab in Mykonos; during these assaults, an attempt is made on Premier Cherdenko's life. The fight against the Allies in Europe culminates in a strike against the Von Esling Airbase in Iceland; during the conflict, Cherdenko names General Krukov as the traitor who tried to take his life, ordering the commander to kill him.

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