Glamour model Gemma Atkinson, of Hollyoaks and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here! fame, plays an English rose Allied commander with an accent that switches mid-sentence between Keira Knightley and North-Western chav. In one clip, Tim Curry, who plays an ambitious Russian general in the Soviet army, stares at his female assistant’s arse as she walks away from his table, then turns to the camera with an eyebrow raised and an adolescent smirk on his face. Which fits perfectly with the camp, over the top, tits and bum obsessed Red Alert world.

Rather disappointingly, these clips steal the show somewhat from the gameplay, and that’s despite the fact that they are utterly, utterly crap. Traditional RTS action is broken up by live action clips where actors talk to the camera as if talking to you, the player, a commander in one of the three race’s armies. Sure, the graphical overhaul impresses, with perhaps the best-looking water ever seen in an RTS, the campaign, built from the ground up to be played co-operatively, is loads of fun with a friend, and the implementation of a third race, the Empire of the Rising Sun, perhaps the most stereotypical Western representation of the Japanese ever seen in a video game, is a cool move, but, essentially, Red Alert 3 is Red Alert 2 with bells, whistles, and extra cleavage.Įven if you’re not a fan of the Red Alert franchise you’ll probably be aware of its core philosophies. Essentially the RTS has remained the same for nearly 20 years, developers not daring to deviate from the tried and trusted RTS fundamentals pioneered by the likes of the original Command & Conquer developer Westwood Studios back in the early to mid 90s.Īnd so, what we have here, despite the length of time EA Los Angeles has had to think about it, is a game that’s more of the same. Eight years on from its predecessor, Red Alert 3, if nothing else, shows just how difficult it is to innovate in the real-time-strategy genre.

Empire of the rising sun red alert 3