Red Alert

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
$19.99
Having heard all of the bashings on RTS games for consoles, I was not expecting much. However, this game was impossible to play. I plowed through a dozen missions just because 1) I like Tim Curry and 2) there was a lot of cleavage in the cut scenes. Unfortunately, the novelty soon wore off and I plan on never ever playing this game again.

The Command and Conquer Collection
$9.99
This is one of the best games ever made.. C&C is a game you can play again and again.. for yrs to come

Red Alert
$4.00
This book shows how bloated most novels are. A lot of story in relatively few pages. Too bad they didn't make a movie from this story as written.

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Premier Edition
$29.99
I really miss Westwood, and I loved loved loved Red Alert 2! So Red Alert 3 had some big shoes to fill. Unfortunately, the latest game doesn't quite live up to those expectations for a lot of different reasons.

Firstly, the DRM - I bought this game about a year after it was first released. When I tried to deauthorize the game, the server could not be connected to. So there's a very real danger that people could buy this game and are unable to authenticate it because EA have screwed up their servers.

Secondly, rather than being a direct sequel, EA's new storyline completely erases the events of the first two games. I think they could've easily introduced the Empire of the Rising Sun without erasing Westwood's original storyline. Part of Westwood's charm was their utilizing Einstein as the B-Grade Mad Scientist. It's almost as though by erasing Einstein, EA are symbolically removing any spontaneity or fun from the game. As a result, I think Red Alert 3 takes itself a bit too seriously. There's none of the nudge nudge wink wink from both the actors and developers that made Red Alert 2 so much fun. The only actor who really gets it is JK Simmons, who plays the US President.

The game design doesn't seem to encourage the kind of insane tactics that made RA2 so special. I wouldn't dream of capturing a Soviet and Allied construction yard and wasting money on building rows and rows of Prism and Tesla towers (ahem). Or packing Tesla troopers into IFV's and using them to electrocute an entire base. Or producing packs of dogs just to kill an entire squad of Russian Conscripts...only to be run over by Soviet tanks. Ah! The memories!

And that is this game's biggest problem - Westwood and its legacy cast a long shadow. EA developing Red Alert 3 is akin to a Cover Band playing the Beatles greatest hits. The sound and fury might be there but the charisma, charm and insane daring of the original is missing. If EA really wanted to do us a favour, they'd create a REAL time machine, go back in time and stop themselves from disbanding Westwood. Can you imagine Red Alert 3 or C&C 4 produced by the REAL Westwood? Now that'd be games worth playing!