That makes what happened next all the more baffling. More than any other you could still re-release it today as-is and find it a strong experience. In my journey back through the C&C series, it's Red Alert 3 that has stuck with me the hardest. Red Alert 3 is honestly excellent it's up there with its beloved predecessor, in fact. The entire game is micro-heavy, in fact, with a simplified economy designed in many ways to let you focus on toggling unit special abilities and stances right from the start of a match. The new Empire faction is superior at sea, but also has units that can fill multiple roles within your army at the press of a button, making it a micro-heavy, high risk yet rewarding play. The Soviets are superior on the ground, with powerful, specialised units. The three form a classic sort of rock-paper-scissors relationship: the Allies have air superiority and fairly multi-utility units. The actors are having fun with how camp and silly it is - it's no wonder part of Tim Curry's performance has become a meme in recent years. The minor celebrity-laden full-motion video story screens have just enough of a high production value to be convincing at a high resolution while remaining just crap-looking enough to evoke the wobbly-set nature of the original games. Red Alert 3, in particular, is clearly a studio that has come to grips with the franchise that it has inherited having a lot of fun. Red Alert's third entry was the most traditional, more of a direct continuation of ideas from the first four games.Īll of these games are bloody great in their own way.
#Red alert 2 1920x1080 series#
The Tiberian series continued by borrowing more ideas from other RTS franchises, adding a greater scale to battles with units made up of entire squads of soldiers. Generals took the series in an all-new direction with a slightly more grounded, real-world style setting.
In fact, while Westwood's C&C evolved along one path for those first four games and multiple expansion packs, EA's C&C split into three distinct directions. And while this was met with anger and distaste by some fans, EA LA produced some all-time classic C&C titles. C&C transferred to other teams, primarily one within EA Los Angeles. Quite famously, in the wake of Red Alert 2 C&C developer Westwood was essentially killed by a variety of circumstances, another studio thrown onto the scrapheap by EA. And, to be fair, it is - but everything after that isn't so bad, either. The main thing fans are already screaming for after the Remastered Collection is for a second round - a Remastered Collection 2 that pulls together C&C Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 - the latter of which is widely considered to be one of the best RTS titles of all time.
