Let's all take a trip back to the year 2000. Westwood are riding high after the release of Red Alert 2, and the world is breathing a collective sigh of relief because they didn't have to play through something as bad as Tiberium Sun all over again. Of course, things happened and Westwood ended up getting absorbed into the machine. The resulting products have been a bit of a bumpy ride. Still, Red Alert was always much too prominent a franchise to waste.

Of course, the trouble with making sequels to near-dormant intellectual properties is that developers have to cater to an extremely protective legion of fans with imaginations clouded by eight years of rose-tinted nostalgia. They're also forced to take the series in exciting new directions to please stroppy critics. Rounding the whole affair off, there's a compulsory shift towards simplification and streamlining so that publishers can attempt to cater to new players who haven't been playing the series since 1995. All in all, that's a bit of a tall order. I don't envy EA Los Angeles.

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Like most games, Red Alert 3 contains such an intense duality in its presentation that I consider the relationship between single and modes analogous to siblings: they look sort of similar and live under the same roof, but at the end of the day they're different in too many ways to list. It makes detailing such a game a tricky affair, but it's a point worth keeping at the front of your mind when you're considering the Red Alert 3 experience.

One thing that does remain constant over both modes is an emphasis on ocean warfare. Fighting on the sea is as crucial as the land, and to be fair to EA this new design feature opens up the entire RTS genre in a way that I've never really experienced before. It's a very pleasing touch, and there's a certain satisfaction in fighting on two different fronts. So, there's the innovation part of the game sorted.

The units, too, are a lovely little bunch. Flamboyant, colourful and ridiculous, the motley ensemble of over-the-top stereotypes march around with an impressive swagger. The distinctively bold art style works very much in the game's favour, and Red Alert 3 is all the better for it. Levels feature a hugely diverse collection of colour and scenery, and this is so much more satisfying than the various drab hues on display in most modern games, as exemplified by the last C&C game. For the first time in eight years, Command & Conquer has its pride back.

It's slick, then. Very slick. If the presentation were any smoother the game would slip out of your hands as you tried to take it to the counter. Frank Klepacki, James Hannigan and Tim Wynn, long-time composer for the series, provides the cherry on top: he chips in a fantastically rousing soundtrack that fits the game so snugly it would give Cinderella a run for her money. The new rendition of the ever-famous Hell March theme is still divine, and the rest of the score is put out to a consistently high quality. Red Alert 3 both looks and sounds great.

But, of course, there's the question of how it actually plays. There's a displaced time vibe that runs through the whole of Red Alert, unintentionally tying the sensation of playing the game to the narrative that unfolds as you progress through it. Fellow old people will remember that the whole series kicked off with Einstein travelling back in time to kill Hitler. At the beginning of Red Alert 3, the Soviet Union's got itself into a bit of a pickle with the whole war effort, so Tim Curry decides to hoof it back in time and bump off Einstein. As you do. Upon returning to the present, there's an immediate attack by the Empire of the Rising Sun, who've managed to become a world superpower after everybody went and played with the space-time continuum. Tim Curry tries to blast them away with a ton of nukes, but they were never invented without Einstein. Oops!

In no particular order, here's who you can expect to see in the game: Tim "Muppet's Treasure Island" Curry, Jonathan "British" Pryce, J.K. "JJJ" Simmons, George "Mr Sulu" Takei, Jenny "Playboy" McCarthy, Gemma "Hollyoaks" Atkinson, Gina "Undefeated" Carano and Andrew "That weird dude from Lost who wears the eyepatch and killed Charlie" Divoff . Quite a bunch, I'm sure you'll agree.