Customer Reviews

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Premier Edition

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Here are the facts:

Electronic Arts Says:
"Authorization limits
... you are limited to five authorizations. So what's an authorization? The first time you actually run the game on a machine, we will authorize that machine. If you reach the authorization limit, the game will not run on a new machine. If you make major changes to the computer (switching out multiple pieces of hardware, install a new OS, etc.) you might need to reauthorize the machine."

What they don't mention here is that a "major change" to your computer can be quite a bit less than changing out multiple pieces of hardware. In fact, changing a keyboard, mouse, or joystick or any number of USB devices could be regarded as a "major change". Upgrading drivers for you sound or video card might be a major change. The rules are not defined and you will not know for sure what may or may not use up an authorization.

So if you use up all of your Authorizations? Electronic Arts says:
"Just give us a call...
If you had a run of bad luck, some hardware failures, a botched OS install, your notebook was stolen, you spilled a coke on your keyboard - you get the idea - and all five of your authorizations have been used up, just give us a call. We'll work with you and provide as many additional authorizations as are appropriate."

What they fail to mention here is that calling Electronic Arts for technical support is not free. You will be charged 2.50/minute plus any toll charges.

Now consider the idea that you have bought 5 Electronic Arts games over time and one by one they all run out of authorizations. When the authorizations start running out, do you honestly want to call EA every time you make a hardware change to ask them to allow you to play a game you already paid for? What a hassle!

Please don't buy this game; don't support this kind of DRM scheme. I don't know if this scheme is to prevent used-game resales or if they really believe it makes a dent in piracy. It doesn't matter why, they are going too far and punishing the honest consumer, so it's time to punish their sales.

Regardless of the game's true rating - in terms of fun, thrill, excitement - I have to recommend one star and suggest you not purchase it, but find an alternative. At the end of the day, however, you know the type of gamer you are and whether the DRM scheme will interfere with you or not.

This is an excerpt of a letter that I have sent to EA regarding RA3. This is my view - and while to late to stop this purchase, I will be aware the next time.

Letter to EA regarding Red Alert 3 (RA3):
*****************************************
This past week I took my son to purchase Red Alert 3 for my son. It was nostalgic since I was a big C&C and RA2 fan so many years ago. In fact, I still have the CDs and would reinstall and play them every once in a while. His interest in RA3 came from my RA2 discs, which he's played a few times.

He installed RA3 on his sister's laptop, since his 5 year old Dell doesn't meet the minimum requirements. He's getting a new laptop this Christmas, he's quite happy. His first concern: I only have 4 installs left of RA3. Excuse me? He informed me of the 5 installs per game before requiring additional activations.

Some folks never learn. Or they do it the hard way.

I understand the difficulties of piracy. I am a software developer. But you should take a moment and learn from those that came before you. What will your game fans have to work through when they've installed the game on their numerous reformatted machines and find out that the the game can no longer be installed? Gamers tend to be the ones that constantly restore or reinstall fresh machines to keep the machine in optimal running conditions; removing demos, games no longer played, mods and a handful of other 'wares that end up on a machine after a year. What about when the game is no longer supported by EA, albeit the gaming community has a huge following and wants to continue playing it, but the activation servers are offline?

Am I just renting this game from you? Since I must ask for permission after five installs to install a sixth time it sure seems like it. This would be akin to calling Warner Brothers to allow me watch Batman Return past 10 viewings.

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!

The game is good as expected since I am a fan of this series. And so I am very bias at the same time. The securom is really the culprit in killing the fun for me. The start-up of the game is VERY SLOW. I have a very fast computer with the latest hardware but I guess that's how the securom works. Its a thrill killer. And it conflicts with my firewall too. Such a HASSLE! I feel sorry for the guys who made this when it got packed with this Securom. I haven't bought another game with Securom after this. It's not worth the hassle. It used to be fun when you play this kind of games especially if you BOUGHT it! Now it feels like their meddling in my computer's system as well. Somehow, it feels wrong.

Okay, DRM is bad and all, and this public marketing campaign needs to keep up-it's the ONLY thing getting these companies to reconsider using it. However, this is more about the game..

Gameplay: 1/5. The controls and interface, along with the rock-paper-scissors units are well suited to casual console gamers. The general powers were overpowered and the economy in the game was the only thing keeping these games from lasting more than 5 minutes.

The building on water, while supposed to add a new aspect to gameplay, is a nuisance combined with overall inefficacy of defense buildings and poor economy. In other words, the only viable gameplay types are rushing and land grabbing.

Storyline: 2/5. The story is mostly recycled from red alert 1 and 2, with some slight creativity but mostly stereotypical asian empire/dynasty team using stereotypical japanese giant robots. Most of it was literally pulled off of red alert 1 and 2.

Graphics: 2/5. The graphics were bright, cartoony, and obnoxious. Red alert, while it had humor, was never obnoxious like this. It's unfortunate at best, and for me it actually caused eyestrain even with gamma and contrast tweaks. Boo.

Multiplayer: 1/5. The co-op campaign is for online play only, no LAN play supported. Why? It's apparently an attempt to curb piracy, but some dedicated hackers are making it work. Normal online matches are all rush games with no strategy.

Music: 3/5. I feel this is worth mentioning because they managed to convince frank klepacki to come back and compose for red alert 3. Unfortunately it looks like they really heavily interfered with his creative process, and much of the music feels forced or obnoxious, such as the title music. Hell march 3 was a complete and utter disappointment, it was 2 with new instruments.

Overall: 1/5, +1 star of franchise loyalty, 2/5.
Unfortunately this game is lacking in everything that a game bearing the 'command and conquer' name should have. It's catering towards console gamers, balanced to simplistic 'rock paper scissors' players, and advertised as a strategy game.

The graphics are annoying, the music is annoying, the characters are always presented in a 'look at their chest!' way, and the storyline is lacking.

If it weren't bad enough that this game was ridiculously easy on 'normal' settings, the co-op campaign with a friend doesn't work over LAN, meaning no hamachi if EA's servers don't co-operate with you.

And lastly this game uses DRM that restricts your ability to resale it. That's right, you cannot sell your used copy of this game. When you register your CD-key to your account, it's yours for 5 installs, then you get to call EA. I hope you've heard this enough times.

Buyer be warned, bargain bin material.

It's sad to see all the EA haters who never even played the game comment...

There are (or were, after recent patches came out) some SecuROM issues. However, with the recent patches you should have no trouble getting the game installed, and they allow you to deauthorize a copy at any time in the event you are going to format or reinstall for any reason. In the event that's not good enough, just call and get them to reset it -- sure it's a pain, but most of us aren't 12 anymore -- if that's too hard, what isn't?

Here are some actual facts: Myself, I have had no issues, nor have my friends. So after seeing 100% success rate with recent patches, so if this was an issue once, it is now blown out of proportion. You don't even need the disc in the drive to play. If it was like other EA gamees that use SecuROM such as Battlefield 2142 that incorrectly recognizes most SATA DVD drives as "emulators", there would be something to complain about (I still can't play that game -- but I prefer BF2 anyway).

The game itself is exactly what you should expect from Red Alert. Cartoonish graphics, a cheesey over the top storyline, and a full arsenal of destructive units at your disposal.

The game isn't the most advanced graphically, but the graphics are very fitting for the game itself and the game looks good. Additionally, the game runs nicely even on older hardware, so many of those who cannot afford to upgrade should be able to run it.

Each mission in each campaign gets progressively harder -- to the point when you are playing on medium difficulty, it feels like you moved up to hard (or even brutal comparing the first mission to the last!). This makes for some great challenging missions toward the end of each campaign - the last four missions in each campaign are absolutely fantastic in the sense that they force you to employ the right strategies for the situation, as one wrong move can make things a whole lot harder for yourself.

Playing skirmishes against the computer is also very good in this game. Even on medium, the A.I. is fairly intelligent. Each commander you play against has their own style of play - some prefer air, some prefer ground, etc.

The one thing in the gameplay that I would like to see is in the campaigns, by default you always have a co-commander, or an ally to help you out. This is both good and bad, as it means you can play campaigns in co-op with your friends and that works great. But it would be nice to have the option to play campaigns solo too.


If you're a fan of Command & Conquer, and especially Red Alert 1 & 2, you won't be let disappointed with Red Alert 3.

I waited for this game for a long time as Red Alert 2 was a pure classic in my book. Unfortunately EA screwed it up with no big surprise I suppose just utter disappointment.

I ordered a physical copy of this premier edition because EA offered a special where you would get a free copy of Red Alert 2 (I lost my copy a long time ago and wanted to play through it again). Unfortunately EA did nothing to modify or fix the original game so that it would run on Windows Vista. So essentially I have a couple of extra Red Alert coasters for my desk now.

My pre-order was screwed up like a soup sandwich and I failed to receive the actual game till 1.5 weeks after release. Aside from that debacle lets get to the actual content. I will add to the review as I play through more of the game. The following is my initial assessment.

Zoom: The view of the game needs two more notches to zoom in and zoom out. I never feel like I can see a large enough portion of the screen.

Graphics: The game is a bit too cartoon-like for my taste. I enjoyed Starcraft as much as the next person but one thing I enjoyed about the C&C universe was their clear lines and attempted detail/realism. With Red Alert 3 I feel like I'm playing a violent Sesame Street game. Where is the detail and realism of C&C 3???

Sounds: Good so far. I am happy to see the abundant use of Hell March as that was a classic part of the Red Alert series.

Gameplay: So far so good. More to follow.

Overall I am interested in playing through this and trying out the CO-OP mode but I must confess I'm a bit disappointed in the move toward a 'Starcraft' like graphic rendition.

More to follow...

My follow up is - I posted this review November 2008 and I actually haven't touched it since. I have gone back to Command & Conquer 3 however if that tells you anything.

It was an expensive game and I used my money that I got for my birthday. And, when I got it, the product didn't have a game disc, but I got two bonus discs and a disc that talks about the history of CnC brand & strategies to win a game with any side. I wish I could have played the game to see how gameplay is like. The worst part is that I got the pin number for the game, and couldn't put it in to install the game. Again, if I had the all important disc.

So, now I use my game cover for swat-ing fleas and killing spiders. That's its only use now. In addition to this, I already stopped buying things from Amazon and Ebay because of ordeals quite like this one. Now, I only buy stuff from stores that I can personally go inside and make a formal complaint face to face. I had trouble with ebay because the seller didn't want to take my money and had the nerve to say that I didn't want to pay and he is teminating the product order that I was going to purchase.

I don't really understand much about computers and business services online but I do know that being cheated, or refusal to sale a product that is offered for sale is never alright, and the fact that Red Alert 3 game disc wasn't in the cover made me apprehensive in the seller's ability to supply me with more expensive items such as gaming pc(s); then, I will be really out of money, and even more appalled that this can happen to me. I kind of wished that the Amazon company did something about it, so that, "I can be able to play the game for the first time!!" Now this explains why I gave this product such a low rating.

I've never played any of the other Command & Conquer games so I didn't even know what this game was about. Apparently, it's an alternate history where the Soviet Union, the United States, and Japan are locked in combat over the fate of the world. You have a bunch of silly units to play with and the game is generally fast paced. It's similar to Starcraft in a lot of ways. You build a base, collect resources, and construct units. The missions are interesting and it's fun to play online against other people. The graphics are really well done. They use live actors for the cut scenes.

The only downside to this game would be that it's kind of bland. I think it's interesting and fun, but there are other things that will be able to hold your attention for a lot longer. I know this isn't a very objective thought, but that's all I can say.

As for the premier edition, you get a few extra goodies that don't really add to the gameplay. You just get access to some behind the scenes things. I didn't mind getting this game, but I wouldn't say it's something you are compelled to get.

So yeah, I ordered it and it was a russian version... yeah... pretty sweet, but I'm going to order just a regular version of this for the fact I can't switch the language. I highly respect it though... love russia, but just can't speak the language. I love the game though.