Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 [PC]

Ground-bound forces have similar "shut down" abilities. While we were at first reticent to bring fragile Attack Dogs on offensive operations, their "Amplified Bark" which stuns enemy infantry made them more than useful, and they became a key combination with Allied Peacekeepers. Peacekeepers have a devastating shotgun blast at close range but tend to go down like wheat against longer-range opponents. A few Amplified Barks ended up being all we needed to get the Peacekeepers to the place where they could do the most good -- and the most damage.

The other prong of the Allies' strategic doctrine is versatility. There are certain pieces of Alliance equipment that actually change their strategic profile based on which soldier is manning it. Basic multigunner turrets, for example, become a local repair station when garrisoned by an engineer, while rocket-toting Javelin troopers turn them into anti-vehicle emplacements. The Alliance armored personnel carrier provides similar benefits on a mobile platform.

In a very real way, the ability is reminiscent of the Thrallmaster unit in EA's Rise of the Witch-King expansion for Battle for Middle-earth II -- and therein lies the danger. The Thrallmaster units in that game were badly overpowered when the game was released. While the mechanics of the changing weapons platforms aren't exactly the same, it's very possible that a player with sufficient micromanagement skill will be able to use it to run rampant over the battlefield.

There's really only one other qualm we had with the Allies and it had nothing to do with their strategic construction. It's that the Alliance simply isn't as aesthetically wacky as either the Soviets or the Empire. Of the three sides, it's the Allies that come closest to being a "normal" army. That's not to say they don't have their touches, of course. The Top Secret Time Bomb (a 10-second bomb that can drop anywhere the player has line-of-sight) is dropped onto the battlefield with an aiming sight that looks like a smiley face. When compared to the parachuting bears and transforming mecha they're facing, though, the Allies come off as rather dull by comparison.

Bear On the March

The other two forces continue to progress along their already-previewed strategic tracks. The Soviet Union is a brute-force army in contrast to the subtlety and maneuverability of its opponents. Finally getting a chance to play with the full red Army gave us a chance to appreciate the strategic elegance underneath. Unlike their opponents, any single Soviet unit is more than a match for almost any other particular unit in the other armies. Go toe-to-toe with the Soviets in a war of attrition and be prepared to wind up as goulash in the treads of a Russian tank. Their weakness is that they have to be able to see you to kill you. Both the Allies and the Empire can use superior speed and maneuverability to avoid Soviet guns, and in the Allies' case, they can use their many shutdown abilities to turn Soviet hardware into immobile targets.

Of course, the Soviets themselves are well aware of their weaknesses and have more than a few tricks up their sleeves to ensure the hammer and sickle will fly across the globe. Most of them have to do with their advantage in economics. A good Russian player in Red Alert 3 is going to be swimming in wealth. The "Cash Bounty" protocol allows the player to designate an enemy unit that awards a cash prize when killed. "Mass Production" allows them to build units at a reduced cost. The Soviet Engineers can build bunkers that can be used by any player after the payment of a fee. Even the Commando helps to minimize costs by using her "Pilot Snipe" secondary ability that kills an enemy vehicle's driver and leaves it to be seized by Soviet infantry.