As of late night on July 26th the first wave of Electronic Art’s Red Alert 3 beta was launched and sent to about 2,000 players. Periodically more keys were sent out to other players who were the owners of exclusive keys found inside Kane’s Wrath boxes, the expansion for Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars. I picked up on the bandwagon in the second wave in the very first part of launching an additional 10,000 keys, however they immediately stopped activation as they ran into a problem. I was luckily enough to still get in. As a C&C and RTS fan in general and having played quite a number of matches this article will tell the curious and the anxious what the latest installment of the Red Alert series is like; build mechanics, scouting, counters and overall gameplay.

There are three factions to choose from and in the beta you can place with any of them. The factions include the returning Allies and Soviets and the new Empire of the Rising Sun, which is essentially Japan. For those of you familiar with Red Alert 2 the playing style of Allies and Soviets is similar while Japan trains specialized and mobile drone type units that transform into their buildings wherever you can get it. Soviets have very tough tanks and trademark units such as the Apocalypse tank, Dreadnaught and Kirov Airship. The allies on the other hand have a very technological theme and “well equipped” soldiers such as the Peacekeeper, their basic infantry armed with a shotgun and riot shield. (They deal more damage the closer they are.) The allies also bring back some of their old units with slight modifications such as the Aircraft Carrier and the Mirage Tank. The third faction, Japan is armed similarly with infantry, vehicles and ships but around half of their units can transform into another form of some sort. I’ll get into this in more details later.

    The first game I played with was the Allies. If you are familiar with most of the command and conquer games you immediately are adjusted to this team’s building mechanic. You click on a building (a power plant for example) on your right tab bar and when it is completed you place it within your MCV’s build radius. The difference between older C&C games is that only the MCV and your miners, which double as a mini MCV can provide ground control. All other structures must be placed within these areas. This style of building allows you to keep a defense turret ready in case of an emergency and pop it up at the hot zone.

Walls have also made a comeback and work virtually identically to how they worked in Red Alert 2. The action in the game is very cut throat and intense; sometimes a simple mistake can cost you the game. It’s also very fast, fun and rewarding. The counters are sharp and the abilities are unique as each unit has a secondary ability such as the Peace- keepers riot shield that was mentioned earlier. Another improvement is the economy is fixed (thankfully) meaning each ore node can only have a maximum of one ore truck on it at a time. Adding others is a waste of time unless the distance between your ore refinery and the ore node is longer than the shortest distance between them or close to it. This means more emphasis on map control, scouting and keeping a vigilant eye on your enemy and makes for a much more interesting gaming experienceThe Allied army consists of high tech weaponry and very effective air craft. Their main tank, the Guardian Tank can switch to a laser mode in which the enemy it targets takes 100% additional damage. Their aircraft can be fitted with extra bombs and stronger armor via promotion points (Which I will go over later too!) Many units have a small blue water symbol next to them meaning they are able to traverse both land and water. (this is the case for all factions) There are many unique strategies you can create thanks to all the different kinds of units, transforming modes and their abilities. The Assault Destroyer, a large battleship for the Allies can drive right up on land with tank treads and blast away at your opponent and then retreat back into the sea!

    Soviets build mechanic is similar but each building can provide ground control in addition to the MCV and the mini MCV called the Sputnik. Soviet buildings build time is on the battle field instead of a side bar. You select the building and immediately select where it will be placed. Once you click it slowly rises out of the ground for its construction period. In addition Soviets are able to build a unique building called the Crusher Crane. This structure had four uses. It allows vehicles or naval units to be repaired, it gives the player an additional build queue, you can grind up vehicles for 75% of their cost and may scare off enemies with it’s billions of blades and crushingness. (Note: crushingness is a Soviet scientific word) Soviet players will be glad to know their tanks are still very mean.

 

    The mean machine of the Soviets; the Apocalypse tank, still reigns supreme on the ground and their basic Hammer tank can literally rip off the guns of enemy vehicles and use it for itself if they get the kill with their secondary ability; the leech beam. The Apocalypse also has a harpoon like ability in which it can pull in smaller vehicles can crush them with a grinder. Upon bringing Dreadnaughts to your enemy’s base, he had better be prepared or it will be game over very soon! Flak Troopers and their attitude make a return with a new anti-vehicle mine ability which they literally walk up to a vehicle and chuck at them. If they are ran over while in this mode they deal revenge damage via explosion. The Soviets are back with a grudge so watch out! (or enjoy it depending on your desired side that is)

In order to participate in the beta at this point you must purchase a copy of Kane’s Wrath, the expansion to Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars. Each week EA will launch thousands of keys until all the spots are filled and there are a limited amount of those spots so don’t miss out! There is simply too much in this beta alone for one article so this is all for the first part. In the second part we’ll look at the third faction, Empire of the Rising Sun, special powers for each faction and more! Don’t miss it!

CheatMasters Command & Conquer 3 Section