C&C Red Alert 3 why do people dislike it?

[Collins254]

No this isnt another "I HATE HATERS GRRRRRSKI" thread, i have seen a few threads asking about what sequels dont people like or shouldnt be made, and i have seen quite a few people say red alert 3, for the record i own every C&C game to date except tiberian twilight which i dont intend to get, but thats not the topic of this thread.

I though red alert 3 really captivating, brilliantly thought out, engaging, and the best of the red alert series, followed by yuri's revenge, tbh the games have just been getting better and better over the years.

Again im not looking for a flame war i want reasons people dislike the game, proper problems with the game not just "It ruins it for me" or because it was "too whacky" i just want to understand why one of my favourite games of all time is disliked by what seems a decent percentage of C&C fans?

 

[Wicky_42]

I didn't get it because it just looked too wacky I just wasn't interested in a title that featured giant mecha samurai and parachuting bears as serious components to an army - I was quite happy to wait it out for Starcraft 2. Presentation and style matter, and I preferred Red Alert when it still respected itself a little; Red Alert 2 was good in its time, Yuri's Revenge was when it started to ramp up the silly, but I still enjoyed it. RA3 just wasn't what I wanted to see, I wanted something more like CnC: Zero Hour.

 

[Byere]

Funny you mention it Wicky, but getting to control the massive 3-bodied robot samurai was frigging AWESOME!
Though it was kind of over-powered and made the level too easy. Thankfully it's not a buildable creation and you only get to use it in 2 or 3 levels.

Personally, I liked the game but the difficulty curve was nasty. It certainly wasn't as serious as the Tiberium storyline games, but it had its charms.

 

[ExileNZ]

As someone who's played just about all the C&Cs and only ever won Renegade, I was glad to see the giant stomping robot samurai level, as a fun means to break up the difficulty a bit without breaking up the action. And yeah, it's a special unit, it's not like you can build it in a factory.

It's a bit OTT, but I can't imagine not liking it for that - Red Alert was always sillier than its counterparts.

 

[Collins254]

Fair enough, i didnt find it that mad, ye ok the samurai was insane but on hard it was pretty hard to defend it and keep its health up.
Oddly i didnt like the starcraft series, just my prefernce, though i did like generals alot i loved the units in RA3 and i loved the gameplay, it felt fluid and intruiging, and at one point i was 41st in the world on Xbox(being humble )

Im not trying to change anyones mind btw i just want to know why you didnt like it, and im soo gunna go back to this tonigh, sod new vegas methinks.

 

[42]

I didn't like the third Red alert because i thought it went too far away from the tone set by the first two games. Then it just got ridiculous.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

The question you really need to ask yourself, did you have fun playing it.. and for me the answer is yes.
Would i also have enjoyed a more serious sequal to my favourite RTS series? well yes aswell but tbh i dont really mind.. i still have fun playing it and thats all that matters

 

[Soviet Steve]

Too silly for me. I bought it on massive offer and was sorely disappointed.

 

[Deviluk]

I thought it was a good, solid game and a brilliant swan song for the C&C series (I'm denying C&C4 existence here).

However I remember at the time lots of people were quite offended by the game being a bit...seedy. They were so eager to prove they couldn't be bought by boobs that they refused to play the game. Also, as stated already, it was too different to previous versions. Just people's tastes. Me and my friends had quite a few good LAN parties playing it though, and the wackiness is endearing at social events, like Timesplitters was.

 

[Collins254]

Though it may have been the silliest of the red alerts i still think Tim Curry was the best premier of the 3, and all of the acting was top notch, even from the walking boobs actresses, such as the lovely Gemma Atkinson, and lets be fair

Spoiler

The Hoff was in it, how can you hate a game featuring the Hoff... As President!!

 

[Fiend Dragon]

I didn't like it for 3 main reasons. 2 of them are purely gameplay reasons and the third is the presentation. These are on top of the other issues like the weird inconsistent graphics (probably due in part to the cartoony style), pathfinding and AI issues, and balance problems, but I would most likely have forgiven those if not for these other things.

1: Crippled refinery mechanic. Changing the C&C/RA unique method of ore collection into a glorified point capture? It removed an entire facet of keeping track of / harassing harvesters and fighting over ore fields. Seriously lame.

2: Overly gimmicked units. There isn't a single freaking unit in RA3 that's just a regular unit. I can't just have a tank, no, It has to be an amphibious tank, or a leech tank, or a jet airplane tank. Nearly every unit in the game had these abilities that didn't really mesh well with the original units and it made most of the units feel silly. Sometimes you just need basic infantry and tanks. You can have special units, but don't make every one like this.

3: Too zany / wacky / not serious enough. The other games in the series had a little bit of time for silliness, but take the first RA for example. The cutscenes, while still somewhat cheesy were played straight and the actions of the characters reasonable. Sure, there was an element of science fiction built in there, but I didn't see any giant robots or psychics or flying bears. Playing Red Alert 3 is a kind of dumb cuteness that I really don't want in that kind of fame.

In the end mainly what I am trying to say is that it was still a decent game, maybe a good one, but it really did not feel like a Red Alert game at all in play or in presentation, and that was an immense disappointment. Once an IP goes down a road like this it's very difficult to get it back, and there aren't many willing to try.

 

[cryogeist]

i dont like it because the fact that you have to pay for your units upkeep it just fucking annoying
oh and that fact that infantry are pointless.

 

[Hawk of Battle]

Where to begin? Well for a start the plot went to hell in the very first cutscene, by completely erasing everything you ever did in the series. Then there was the outright campiness of the whole thing, whereas previous games at least had some semblance of seriousness.

Then there's the crap control mechanism. Why do I now have to hold down a button to make a circular selection thing slowly expand outwards when I want to select a group of units, rather than just being able to click and drag like every other RTS ever?

Then there's all the multiple abilities for every unit, with no easy way to make only select units switch firing modes (you instead have to make the entire group change mode, which completely changes how every single unit works).

The superweapons were bland and useless.

The missions dragged on for ages (go here, destroy this, free those guys, now destroy those 4 other things, now infiltrate this, now destroy this). And if you failed at any point you had to restart the whole mission (I think, I seem to recall there wasn't an in mission save system, for some absurd reason). Plus at times the missions would throw crap at you that you just weren't prepared for and would immediately fail, which meant you had to start over, a lot.

Really, the whole game is terrible and utterly ruined the series. I blame EA. Westwood would never have allowed this shit. I think I'll stick with RA2.

 

[Gammayun]

Well i loved the over the top camp style Especially the giant robot samurai, it wasnt made to be a serious game it was made to be fun, and it succeeds in doing that.

Tough some may have issue with the story, can i point out that even for gaming rts genre has never been very good at stroytelling, despite this c&c red alert 3 story was not that bad it was actally good for an rts. Though it's not really much of a complement.

All that matters it you like it, though i know it is fustrating see people not play a game because its not taking it self seriously. people need to take the rod out there arse.

 

[Collins254]

I didn't like it for 3 main reasons. 2 of them are purely gameplay reasons and the third is the presentation. These are on top of the other issues like the weird inconsistent graphics (probably due in part to the cartoony style), pathfinding and AI issues, and balance problems, but I would most likely have forgiven those if not for these other things.

1: Crippled refinery mechanic. Changing the C&C/RA unique method of ore collection into a glorified point capture? It removed an entire facet of keeping track of / harassing harvesters and fighting over ore fields. Seriously lame.

2: Overly gimmicked units. There isn't a single freaking unit in RA3 that's just a regular unit. I can't just have a tank, no, It has to be an amphibious tank, or a leech tank, or a jet airplane tank. Nearly every unit in the game had these abilities that didn't really mesh well with the original units and it made most of the units feel silly. Sometimes you just need basic infantry and tanks. You can have special units, but don't make every one like this.

3: Too zany / wacky / not serious enough. The other games in the series had a little bit of time for silliness, but take the first RA for example. The cutscenes, while still somewhat cheesy were played straight and the actions of the characters reasonable. Sure, there was an element of science fiction built in there, but I didn't see any giant robots or psychics or flying bears. Playing Red Alert 3 is a kind of dumb cuteness that I really don't want in that kind of fame.

In the end mainly what I am trying to say is that it was still a decent game, maybe a good one, but it really did not feel like a Red Alert game at all in play or in presentation, and that was an immense disappointment. Once an IP goes down a road like this it's very difficult to get it back, and there aren't many willing to try.

While i could agree with you on points 1 and 3, i find 2 a bit unjust, yes most units has an ability but it was usually one attributed to thier role
Standard Infantry
Peacekeepers, the shotgun or riot shield idea worked really well and made sense as to what the peacekeppers were
Conscripts, well known for lobbing molotovs, was fun and made sense andkept the conscripts still basic
Imperial soldiers, ok the sword was a bit odd but i liked it, was nice to see a melee unit.
Tanks
Guardiann tank, were basic tanks, but also could "spot" for their allies, as some tanks do in war?
Hammer tank, ok the leech beam was a bit over the top, but compared say to mind control of UFO's? and was designed to give the soviets a little more flexibility
Ok i will admit that the rising sun vehicles were all terrible and the tank the worst unit in the game, but they were meant to have whacky morphing units, part of the technology which i really enjoyed.

Disagree with me if you want, but it didnt feel like every unit was meant to do everything, it was every unit was meant to be more tactically flexible but still follow a general role. It was designed i think to bring a higher level of strategy and micro managing to make up for the loss of harvester wars. I didnt find any units too special, except the ones that were meant to be, tanks are still tanks, they still fight tanks, you just have to think abit more about your options when doing so.

 

[Collins254]

i dont like it because the fact that you have to pay for your units upkeep it just fucking annoying
oh and that fact that infantry are pointless.

sorry are we playing the same game? how do you have to keep paying upkeep for units? once you bought them that was it not more payments? :/

and infantry arent pointless you just have to be more tactical with them, im not gunna give another massive paragraph but maybe if you give more of an explanation to it? i can say that i never ended a game without using spies/tesla troopers/angels and usually the commando and engineers even late game, thats like me saying tanks are useless coz i never use them, which is technically true, why would i build tanks when i can build planes?

 

[cryogeist]

i dont like it because the fact that you have to pay for your units upkeep it just fucking annoying
oh and that fact that infantry are pointless.

sorry are we playing the same game? how do you have to keep paying upkeep for units? once you bought them that was it not more payments? :/

and infantry arent pointless you just have to be more tactical with them, im not gunna give another massive paragraph but maybe if you give more of an explanation to it? i can say that i never ended a game without using spies/tesla troopers/angels and usually the commando and engineers even late game, thats like me saying tanks are useless coz i never use them, which is technically true, why would i build tanks when i can build planes?

yes you have to pay for your units upkeep..
and infantry are useless because tanks just run them over...and bigger tanks run THOSE tanks over
see what im getting at?

 

[Woeps]

Why do people dislike it? Well probably because it's not their cup of tea.
It is kind of wacky and over the top and to some people that?s just a massive turn down..

I personally found the game nice and played it a lot but I can understand that others just don't like it. and that?s no problem, There are a lot of games that I just don?t like.

 

[Findlebob]

Something is wrong in a game when a conscript takes up the same popcap as a battleship.