Command & Conquer has become one of those titans of gaming, a towering colossus that has an occasional tendency to stomp over its meager opponents. Sometimes this is a bad thing, but usually it's inspiringly awesome to watch the over-the-top solution that usually involves 3500% more firepower than is necessary. Now that EA has taken over the series, it's almost like a Frankenstein's monster, a merging of the genetic code of two hulking demigods resulting in an arrogant overpowered hybrid that rises up to challenge the gods themselves on Mount Olympus.

Personally, I was wary of EA's takeover of Westwood Studios, and even less trustworthy of them making a new Red Alert. Game: Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 is one of my most personally revered artifacts of the gaming culture, what I believe to be one of the two most perfect RTS games ever made (the other being Game: Age of Empires II: The Age of Kings). For me, it was a tall order to make a worthy sequel to something like RA2. And while RA3 doesn't surpass the perfection of its predecessor, it still towers high and crushes you with its Fist of Awesome +10.

The first thing you notice is the budget. RA3's cinematic employ far more elaborate visuals, special effects and even a few well known actors, such as Tim Curry and the George Takei(I'll let you find out their roles by yourself). Adding a bit of charm to the cinematics is the classic hammy acting and scripting for which C&C has always been known--it's nice to see some things never change. The opening cinematic especially features some over-the-top visuals that just make you want to march right into Moscow and level the Kremlin. Frank Klepacki's contribution, however limited, certainly doesn't hurt. While the rest of the game's plot is lacking, and the acting is B-grade at best, it's really more of what C&C always has been, and to be honest, I don't think anyone plays a game like this for the plot.

Red Alert 3 is all about rock-star blast-and-smash shoot-em-all-and-let-God-sort-it out action. Where most RTSs have at least significant base-building, the Red Alert franchise is more suited to rolling out with a column of tanks and B-52s leading the way. The essence of the game is conquest on the small scale, and as always it does it as only the king of RTSs can. Everything caters to this concept, with the game's interface designed to be fast and quick to use. Everything is condensed into the right quarter of the screen, with different aspects of construction--buildings, defenses, infantry, armor, air, and sea--in separate tabs. In the case of having more than one, such as having two barracks, there are two smaller tabs within it, allowing each barracks to be given individual production orders. Personally, I would prefer the AoE method of stacking production speed, but this does have its advantages.

The base-building aspect is what makes this game truly enjoyable. Each faction has a slightly different way they place buildings, to start. The old method of click first, wait to have it built, then place it down, is employed by the Allies. The Soviets get to place the building, but you have to watch and wait as it is constructed on-site, which can be a problem if your enemy decides to attack it. The Japanese have the most innovative method I've seen: you don't construct buildings per se. What happens when you order a building is it appears as a mobile structure that you direct to a spot where it will be deployed as the desired building. This allows for all sorts of interesting strategies that crop up as you play. It's really something.

On the other hand, unit mechanics are pretty much the same as they've been in the last ten years of C&C games. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, rather it's perfect for maintaining that on-the-fly romp-and-stomp feel. It's nothing too complicated; select some troops and click on their target, done. What makes this a fun adventure is the addition of powers. Throughout a game, you are constantly earning little points on an arbitrary scale down in the corner. These unlock abilities you can use during battle. Most of these are active-use, such as the Soviets' ability to drop a large space station on a given location (absolutely fun) or the Allies' reconnaissance planes. Others are passive, like an ability that allows Allied armor to roll over most light- and medium-armored targets with ease. They add an extra dimension of implausibly large scale to the already overwhelming battle.

As usual, the game's main strength lies in multiplayer. It's a fairly straightfoward process of choosing opponents, deciding which are computers and what their difficulties are, and nationalities and teams. All these options can be set to random, of course, and the main options such as starting resources and voice chat can be altered at will. However, the system itself is a bit awkward--it's run entirely through EA's network, and so requires an EA account to use, which seems a bit dumb to me. Setting up matches with friends is awkward, as is communication between friends, with all these different aspects on different screens that don't interact with each other well. Map previews in multiplayer are lacking, to say the least; they are about as high quality as the map previews from the original Red Alert in 900 BC. Why they didn't show more detailed previews is beyond me, and it chafes on me every time I have to pick a map to play on. What really gets me in multiplayer games, however, is the langauge filter. It filters everything--including the word God, for ***'s sake. And on top of this, there is no way to turn off the filter. It's ridiculous, to say the least.

However, the good definitely outweighs the bad on this scale. Most importantly, the game does a superb job of retaining the carefree, heavy-metal, hard-and-fast methodology of its predecessor, against all my misgivings. After all is smashed and done, it's a damn good romp through alternate history and alternate technology.