This is the second article on the Red Alert 3 beta. As in coordination with the first article (which you can read at an earlier date than this one) this entry will cover the remaining topics of the beta including the third faction; Empire of the Rising Sun, power system the game offers and other game play elements. To participate in the beta, you must purchase a copy of Kane’s Wrath, the expansion pack to Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars before the beta offer ends. By this weekend they are launching over 40,000 new keys to be played! If you’re waiting to get in the beta, unable to get in the beta or just wanting to know a little about Red Alert 3 then keep on reading!

Now about the third faction, which happens to be one of my top three favorite in Red Alert 3. Empire of the Rising Sun, who are essentially Japan, have apparently been waiting in the dark and secretly building a massive high tech army of their own while spying on the Allies and Soviets. Their army consists of large robots or mechas that can quite literally tackle buildings,  stealthy elite ninja who are excellent in infiltrating an enemy base and leaving without a trace or can instantly assinate enemy infantry with his ninja star. You can even use a distressed, confused psychically gifted girl who will tear apart buildings and vehicles with her mind! It’s quite the arsenal to say the least.

Japan’s building mechanic is unlike either of the other two factions. There is no ground control to mess with (at first glance at least) as each building is created from your MCV and arrives as a pod or nicknamed an “egg”. You order your eggs to deploy where you want and it will arise as the building you initially created from your MCV after its construction time. This opens up a lot of strategy as you can move around the map and set up bases very effectively but be warned the eggs are fragile and if they die you lose the cost of the building you spent to make the pod. Each building however does provide ground control but the only thing I’ve been able to see actually use this are walls. Walls build up from the ground and don’t use a pod however. It’s also worth mentioning you can place 10 segments at a time after you place the first one where as in Red Alert 2 you could place only 5 and walls cost a measly $10! Wall fans rejoice!

Japan’s units are extremely versatile on the whole as a lot of them transform into another unit with a different role. The transforming time has a recharge so you can’t simply fly, land, fly, land, fly, land all the time, but it’s short enough to get your units out of a pinch or come in for a sneak attack. Your basic vehicle, the Mecha Tengu (seen in the top right picture as the plane looking units) comes hovering out of the the Mecha Bay (war factory) and is able to transform into that jet with larger vision radius and much more speed. These units are good for scouting out your enemy, light skirmishes against infantry or harassment against harvesters. While in plane mode they are dedicated anti-air with speed to boot. Since they can traverse any terrain and hover over water having a pack of these hanging around is ideal as you can reinforce your battles with their speed and versatility.

Other vehicles, such as the King Oni and Tsunami tank (both seen in the bottom left picture) are a blast to play with as well. The King Oni, being your strongest vehicle is unable to transform but makes up for it in its powerful lasers it can emit from its eyes and a sort of football shoulder charge it can do against enemy targets effectively smashing tanks and bashing buildings. It can ruin your day. The Tsunami tank is able to traverse both land and water and boasts an ability to dramatically boost its armor at the cost of not using its main cannon and gain a speed boost while using this ability. This tank’s versatility is crucial because you can take on land or water depending on where you need firepower and how you want to attack.

Japans infantry line provides an excellent cheap and early game scout, the Burst Drone, which basically looks like a mechanical dragonfly and is able to fly high over your enemy and scout them out. It can also attach itself to vehicles to slow them down and self destruct to hurt them. The only way to remove the drone is to force fire on yourself if one finds its way on your vehicles. Their basica infantry uses a laser rifle and can switch to a energy sword which kills enemy infantry in one swing and dramatically boosts their speed. Their anti-tank infantry use a strong laser gun and can “borrow” in the ground to avoid enemy fire and boost their armor dramatically. Lastly, once you hit tier 3 your able to train the more than likely anime influenced Rocket Angles who can launch an unheard of amount of rockets at your enemies, both land and air.

Soviet forces move in on Japan proudly boasting the color… purple?

Red Alert 3’s art direction is distinct to say the least. It’s not very realistic and doesn’t try to be. The game has Helicopters which freeze and shrink enemies, bombing blimps, laser swords, dolphin with sonic attacks and the Apocalypse tank jiggles around so much it looked like it was straight out of a Disney movie… but it works. The goal is fun, fast game play not how real they can make it. When you’ve got this many crazy things in the game you give yourself a lot of room for creativity and fun and I applaud EA’s efforts in moving in this direction with Red Alert. Most will like it but some will not be pleased and there will be no pleasing them. It’s as simple as: they will miss out on the fun and we didn’t want to hear their complaining anyway.

The way each team techs up is different. Soviets are the most straight forward in which you build your buildings in order to climb the tech tree, pretty much like most RTS games. The allies however have one tech center, which is avaliable after the first level of clearance is purchased. (I think…) Your MCV’s build radius is also its dictation of how high tech your buildings are and what can be produced from them. When you construct a war factory you are unable to produce tier 2 units until the MCV’s build radius that war factory is within has clearance level 1 completed. Then all structures near that MCV are able to produce tier 2. The same thing must be attained for tier 3 units with the second level of clearance. Allied ore trucks are able to deploy into outposts which provide ground control are also able to attain this clearance so if you plan on making a hidden naval base or something you are still able to acquire high tech navy without an MCV near by. Very cool. Japan’s tech is similar to the Allies but a sort of upgrade must be purchased for each building you want to gain a tier. So for example, I could have a tier 1 war factory able to produce only my basic vehicles while I have a tier 3 barracks producing my elite infantry. Japan also has a tech center which allows you to reach tier 3.

Each team has specialized powers, if you are familiar with Command & Conquer Generals you will already understand how these work. As you fight your opponent you gain experience (or very slowly over time of not doing anything actually) and gain a limited number of points to spend (I think it’s like 7 or 10 or something) in three lines of abilities. Some are destructive powers, upgrades or intelligence powers, but all are fun and effective and some have silliness to go along with them. Speaking of powers, there are also two super weapons avaliable per team. The first one is a tier 2 super weapon which doesn’t actually damage anything but instead provides a sort of service such as the Soviet Iron Curtain which can make vehicles, navy or buildings invulnerable for a short time, the Allied Chronosphere, which can teleport vehicles or navy any distance in a moment’s notice or Japan’s Nano Core… thing, which effectively seals off a large area of your choosing so that nothing can get in or out! The tier 3 super weapons are destructive ones but are not included in the beta… as of yet. (muhahaha…)

 All in all Red Alert 3 is shaping up to be a very promising game. I hope this has provided you with some insight and answered some of your questions. If you enjoy this kind of game play you will certainly enjoy this game. For me, the only thing left is for EA to come through with their promises of support! Don’t let Command & Conquer die, EA!

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