Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3

Command & Conquer: Red Alert rests soundly in the hearts and pointer-fingers of countless 90s gamers. EA certainly have piled a lot on their plate with Red Alert 3, having to struggle uphill against silent expectations from fans alongside competition from imminent RTS behemoths Dawn of War 2 and StarCraft 2, both of which are smugly perched firmly on the horizon. Such a competitive market demands a hard sell, with EA having to pull out an entire multi-pack of stops to coax players away from misguided nostalgia and those other RTS tour-de-forces.

The Red Alert 3 multiplayer beta, then, is an unashamedly sly ploy that nicely drums up hype for the game in general as well as having potentially-useful creative input from the very people they'll be attempting to lighten the wallets of in a couple of months. There's obviously no current indication as to the content of the single-player campaign, although I am going to go out on a limb and guess that Gemma Atkinson will be poised determinedly over every desk that magically manages to permeate each cut-scene.

After a solid week with the beta, I can say that there's a lot shiny to Red Alert 3. There's enough whizz in the presentation and adequate depth in the gameplay to whet even the most satiated of RTS appetites. But, whilst there's a lot of flash, there's not much that's fundamentally new. Sure, there's lots of new units (attack bears!) with different statistics and an entirely new third faction that help shake up the game; but at Red Alert 3's conflict-scarred heart is that pure, undiluted and largely unchanged Command & Conquer style that's endured for the past ten years. Its multiplayer component is a nice, safe, natural expansion on previous games with a slight hint of nuanced refinement. It's undoubtedly a solid bet for fans of the genre, who have undoubtedly already decided to buy it and thus render this preview article obsolete for them before I've even saved it.

For those who haven't ever seriously played an RTS game online, Red Alert 3 will do little to hold your hand and guide you in. It's a safe bet that you're going to get smashed and eradicated multiple times before you can start pulling in wins. Currently the beta doesn't offer match rankings, so at least for now there's no permanent statistical representation of my own strategic ineptitude.

As for strategy, the tech trees are humongous, proffering you multiple ways to strategise and claim victory. There's a lot of ways to blow things up. Yet in the online world - as is really the case with most online RTS games - you won't really get to experience much of it. Your basic, solid, fundamental need is to build a barracks the very second the game starts and get straight in with an aggressive play-style. There's simply no need in your average game to build a complete base. If you spend time peppering your war pasture with static defences and ultimately useless things like walls, you're going to be utterly battered within about five minutes.

The beta is supplied with two maps. One is designed primarily for two-versus-two warfare and is a centred lump of land with valuable resource-laden islands scattered around its edges. The second map is smaller and more intimate, a symmetrical beach map with bases on the bottom-left and right. Both are well designed, have decent choke points and symmetry, and feel adequately fair when played. I imagine they'll probably end up as the favourite maps in the final release because of their engaging simplicity.

With the Soviet and Allied forces, you'll usually see most players starting the game by pushing out a couple of infantry-slaughtering attack bears or dogs. This appears to be the fundamental scouting unit, and you'll usually use them to try and kill an opposing engineer so the enemy can't get a decent oil supply going as well as peeking into the enemy base so you can decide your next step. With the Soviets it's not uncommon to see Terror Drones being pushed off the production line, alongside Apocalypse tanks, honking great Kirov bombers, Stingrays and Tesla troopers. The Allies sport shiny new upgraded Mirage tanks and Athena cannons, which pack some serious wallop, alongside time-bending Cryocopters. They also have attack dolphins.

The final faction, The Empire of the Rising Sun, heralds from Japan and features psychic schoolgirls, robots, ninjas and nanotechnology. Their tech tree is probably the most gratuitously over-the-top, although it's also the most complicated. Playing as the Empire is radically different to the other two factions, for a start their scouting ability is weaker than the others and it's virtually impossible for them to take out enemy engineers in the early game, giving the opposing team an early advantage over oil. Their structures are upgraded individually, giving the faction a pay-as-you-go approach that sacrifices overall convenience for specifics.

Needless to say, as you might guess from these units, Red Alert 3 does not take itself too seriously.

The balance is still being tweaked, and in its current state some units are rarely seen because they're simply too weak. Patches are quite rare in the beta, but when they hit they are massive - 1.03 came out this weekend and weighs in at over 800mb.

But, ultimately, the most pressing question with the Red Alert 3 beta is how well it all plays. There are a few bugs here and there, but the most distressingly present one is EA/Gamespy's login system itself, effectively destroying its victims online experience before it can even begin (this problem is allegedly being looked into, but I couldn't get any word from EA that sheds any light on the situation). The actual gameplay is just as over-the-top and slick as it was back in Red Alert's heyday. Games are quick, rarely going past twenty minutes, and are deliciously moreish to the point that one is never enough. Recent iterations of Command & Conquer have been a little disappointing - all spit and no polish - but Red Alert 3 seems to have had the fun injected back in, which should quite frankly delight everyone ahead of the game's October release.