More thoughts on Red Alert 3
I've played quite a few more matches of the Red Alert 3 beta since my last post on the subject, and am slowly but surely forming an overall understanding of the game. I'm also getting a bit better at it too, winning a handful of games while playing as the Allies, who are not as underpowered as I first thought.
Above all, what impresses me about this game is that EA seem to finally be intent on moving the Command & Conquer franchise away from the old "mass a load of units and steamroll your opponent with superior numbers" mentality that has, to an extent, characterised the past games. Watching some of the replays and shoutcasts over at Red3.org, it has become pretty clear to me that, in this game, there is an increased focus on hard (as opposed to soft) counters. In other words, each unit in the game has a direct counter that can completely obliterate it, which can then, in turn, be obliterated by another unit, and so on and so forth. This is in stark contrast to many of the older games in the series, where this rock-paper-scissors dynamic was a lot less pronounced. The result, I think, is that the game is more rewarding to play, particularly if you take the time to learn the various counters, because you're forced to actually think about which units you're building, and adapt your strategy depending on what your opponent is doing. There's something very satisfying about spotting an enemy player making for your base with a gaggle of heavy-duty Airships (huge flying balloons which can decimate your base by carpet-bombing them), and then quickly training a handful of anti-air Apollo Fighters to take them out before they even reach you (Airships can't attack other air units).
What I have been noticing, however, is a tendency towards games developing into a stalemate in which the two theatres of land and sea end up being controlled by different sides, with neither able to make a sizeable dent in the other. This is, in part, due to the fact that, if one player rules the seas, it's virtually impossible for the other to venture into them without being hammered. Land units can't really do anything against sea units, unless the sea units venture too close to the shore, while the Soviets' impressive naval-based anti-air capabilities tend to make it difficult to bomb them from the skies (not impossible, but difficult). Add to this the fact that resources in Red Alert 3 are finite, and you can often end up in situations where neither side is able to build new forces, meaning that it's essentially a case of one side waiting for the other to get fed up and go on a suicide mission, or quit in frustration. Of course, this is an problem inherent in virtually any RTS, but one that I suspect could be smoothed out with a bit more balancing in terms of the land/sea/air spread between the various factions.
Then again, I'm still learning the ropes, so it could be that something obvious is eluding me. Given that every unit in the game has a secondary function, the applicability of which is often somewhat vague, requiring to be used in tandem with the abilities of one or more other units, there's rather a lot to get your head around. What I am fairly sure of, though, is that Red Alert 3 is shaping up to be a great RTS, and one that I'm definitely looking forward to picking up when it's released.
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