There's a lot going on, and there are a lot of ways to spend your scarce resources. You mine ore for money, and have to spend that money creating and supplying an army. Pretty much everything you make is vulnerable to attack, and your various units have seemingly numberless abilities. Some can cross water, others can take over certain types of enemy units, some can attack airborne enemies, others are vehicles that change function depending on who's driving them. You'll have to learn slightly different systems for each of the three sides.

Also, in this tutorial you get to see the in-game graphics, and they're not nearly as pretty as you might have expected given the photorealistic cutscene you just experienced. There's not a whole lot of detail to anything, the colors are dull, and the shadows of trees seem to flicker (perhaps that's supposed to look like wind).

After trying to remember so many tutorial instructions, you'll probably look to the campaign with some trepidation. There's a pleasant surprise in store, however; the game recommends taking on the three stories in the following order: Soviet Union, Allies, Rising Sun, and the onscreen commands provide quite a bit of guidance. During the first mission, for example, you'll pretty much be told how to win each step. You'll still be at a loss now and then, but it's encouraging that the developers didn't assume you'd be able to just dive in.

The three-tiered difficulty system (easy, medium, hard) will also be a blessing to those who haven't beaten countless RTS before on PC, with the easy mode letting you find your way around without getting beaten to a pulp. The game's co-op aspect (you can either play with a friend, or have the computer control the other general) adds a little complexity and sometimes causes minor glitch problems, but by and large it's not too much of an issue.

The title's bizarre sense of style really comes into play in the campaign mode as well. For some reason, there's a lot of heavy-metal music, which was probably included more to appeal to the game's target young-male audience than to capture the spirit of a sci-fi battle. In addition to taking liberties with World War II history, Red Alert 3 spruces up the technology of the day: you'll fight with, among other quirky weaponry, bears and mecha. (Regarding the latter, EA has no problem exploiting Japanese stereotypes for a few laughs in the face of political correctness.)

In the end, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 is a game that future console RTS titles should imitate in a lot of ways. Its radial system is perfect for squeezing a computer keyboard into a current-gen console controller, and even if it's a little too complicated for genre newcomers, it makes a protracted and sincere effort to keep them up to speed. The cutscenes are a bit too bad (even though it's intentional), and the game's style is far more over-the-top than it needs to be. But, it has its fun moments, and there's a sense of accomplishment in learning how to beat a mission.

By Robert VerBruggen
CCC Freelance Writer