By Alec Meer on May 17th, 2008 at 2:41 pm.
Your attention, Comrades. Beneath the cut is the first trailer for Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3, which has popped up on the face of the internet like some sort of damned-pinko-commie-scum pimple outbreak just this afternoon (in Her Majesty’s Royal Imperial Commonwealth All That Is Right Time anyway – presumably it’s some godforsaken hour in the morning for ye Yanquis). It brings with it a release date of sorts – October, apparently.
What will immediately have fans squealing is the return of the original RA’s Hell March RA2′s Hell March theme, as composed by Frank Klepacki – who I believe now hangs his hat on Petroglyph’s, er, hatstand rather than EA’s, so presumably this is just a straight re-using. Never quite understood the fuss about RA’s music myself, but it’s perhaps reassuring that the game’s looking to its heritage so.
Other than that? Yep, looks like Red Alert alright. Remarkably pretty water and ‘splodes. What looks like a hint of the rumoured Gundamy new Japanese race. And no sign, far as I can tell, of the parachuting armoured bears we’ve been tantalised with the prospect of. Perhaps I’m not looking closely enough – decide for yourself below.
Thanks to Evo for the tip-off, beating me to my daily Gametrailers trawl by mere minutes.
17/05/2008 at 14:46 Optimaximal says:
17/05/2008 at 14:47 muscrat says:
Hell March theme = auto win
17/05/2008 at 14:47 Matt says:
I will kindly point out that the music is in fact Hell March 2 (From RA2). Still great, still Klepacki, but I’m a nitpicker.
Would also seem that the unit noises they’re using are directly from RA2, too.
17/05/2008 at 14:56 arqueturus says:
Looks not bad at all.
Bears are in there about halfway though, they’re not parachuting though.
17/05/2008 at 14:56 whitewolf says:
there seems to be many many recycled ra2 sounds there. while awesome one would have thought theyd at least record some new sound bites for the troops.
altho screaming infantry death=awesome
17/05/2008 at 14:57 Optimaximal says:
Since a major thing is made of the C&C unit barks & musical score across the whole series, its not surprising they’re keeping it under wraps.
RE: Red Alert 2 music – I always preferred Grinder to Hell March 2.
RE: Armoured Bears – you see them being fired from the Flak Traks.
17/05/2008 at 14:58 spd from Russia says:
Frankly saying I couldt play c&c3 after CoH – it felt so stonage-old gameplay wise. And 10x less fun.
17/05/2008 at 15:02 MPK says:
Attack bears, shark faced blimps and implosion bombs.
How can it fail?
17/05/2008 at 15:04 Rob says:
The odds of my not enjoying this game are, I feel, slim. Never was very good at RTSs to my enduring shame, so the RA series suits me to a ‘t’.
17/05/2008 at 15:05 Frosty840 says:
Yeah.
Nothing else really does it for me after DoW/CoH.
CoH has that extra layer of actual tactical depth that’s missing from… pretty much every combat sim not reviewed by Tim Stone.
I really wish I could play the Games Of Tim Stone, but alas I am too weak to graphical loveliness. :(
17/05/2008 at 15:06 Cian says:
Quite like the look of those mechanical spiders, remind me of the Ultralisks from Starcraft.
I’ll be waiting until reviews before I get excited, but Red Alert holds a special place in my heart so I’m happy to watch the glorious forces of Socialism triumph over their -rather more boring- foes.
17/05/2008 at 15:06 Sigkill says:
Red October! Ha!
Perhaps the sounds are just placeholders for now. I find it hard to imagine that they’ll just reuse the sounds from RA2, especially from a developer with as high a budget as EA.
Hell March is still the best piece of music ever conceived by humanity, btw.
17/05/2008 at 15:07 Arathain says:
Red Alert’s music was great, but there’s no touching the original C&C.
17/05/2008 at 15:08 Theory says:
I was never much bothered by the RA2 remix, but the original Hellmarch is a core part of the soundtrack of my youth. And great on Audiosurf. Three plus five, make six!
17/05/2008 at 15:22 Pidesco says:
This remix of Hell March really sucks. The original however, is still ace.
17/05/2008 at 15:32 rupert says:
looks amazing – cant wait , hope i get in the beta :D
17/05/2008 at 15:58 Chris Evans says:
Mwahaha! Mere minutes :D
17/05/2008 at 16:33 Matu says:
The water’s beautiful, sure, but water doesn’t look that way. Unless the commies built an Ocean Distilling Factory.
17/05/2008 at 16:36 SwiftRanger says:
Good to see they’re sticking to the bright colours of RA2, too bad it’s still the C&C Generals engine, updated with fancy new effects but still no decent overview at all.
17/05/2008 at 16:39 Steam Report says:
The entire genre has moved on, it’s about time C&C did.
17/05/2008 at 16:43 jamuel scones says:
A shockingly missed opportunity to use backwards “R”s
17/05/2008 at 16:53 Paul says:
Combat Zeppelins!
17/05/2008 at 16:54 phuzz says:
Armoured Bears at the 60 second mark comrade!
Really looking forward to this one, I remember having huge amounts of fun playing RA2 co-op with my then flatmate for hours, much to the disgust of his girlfriend.
So yes it’s dated, yes it’s not original, but as long as it’s as fun as RA2 then I’m sold :)
17/05/2008 at 16:55 Riotpoll says:
The sea looks silly, as if someone dumped a load of copper sulphate into their bathtub.
‘Splosions are good though, and the super-weapon (I presume it is) at the end looks funky.
17/05/2008 at 17:21 Pavel says:
YAY for IDIOTIC sage engine and its 30fps cap. That is the reason why me, hardcore C&C gamer, never enjoyed Generals, and just barely finished C&C 3 – the slugginess of everything just pissed me off. And now I don’t even wanna bother with KW or RA3…
If it ran in at least 60, but no, they have to cap it on 30.Grrrrrrrrrr.
17/05/2008 at 17:25 rb_lestr says:
Wow,
does this not look shit to anyone else?
I was expecting much more.
17/05/2008 at 17:28 Jochen Scheisse says:
They had already said that they will essentially do a Mod of CC3. And that’s exactly what it looks like. So no, meets my expectations.
17/05/2008 at 17:33 RichPowers says:
They should do something about the ocean so it doesn’t look like a giant oil spill — makes it hard to tell the units apart.
17/05/2008 at 17:42 Snofeld says:
Hehe…I have a RA3 beta key and a new PC…life is good.
17/05/2008 at 18:03 wcaypahwat says:
There’s never enough death by massive electric shock. Yay for mr tesla.
17/05/2008 at 18:10 Bema says:
Totally agree rb_
Was expecting alot more from this.
I was jealous until I remembered it’ll end up being freely available…just like Supreme Commander’s ‘Closed’ Beta was.
17/05/2008 at 20:11 CannedLizard says:
They better hope the release date doesn’t slip. Otherwise how are they going to advertise it? “By the Georgian Calender, the Russian Revolution actually happed in November…2008″
17/05/2008 at 20:22 Jigglybean says:
very stale if you ask me.
17/05/2008 at 20:24 Rob says:
@Pavel
What, really? I thought there was something different about Generals but I never realised it was that; interesting.
17/05/2008 at 20:47 lethu says:
The first Red Alert stays the mother of all C&C. I really miss Westwood Studios days. This game looks like playing with toys, wth are those colors!! Good game EA on keeping on ruining this franchise….
17/05/2008 at 20:52 sigma83 says:
I gotta agree, besides being prettier, the C&C series hasn’t really improved on the C&Cness in a while. Perhaps it is just me being jaded.
Also, remember that the PC game market is dying
17/05/2008 at 20:52 Gap Gen says:
Yes, maybe it was the fact that it was one of the first RTSs I played, but the original Red Alert remains my favourite. It was silly, but wasn’t an all-out pantomime like RA2, which made all the difference. Plus Romanov is infinitely inferior to Stalin, however you choose to look at it.
Interesting that it looks quite similar to Starcraft 2, too.
17/05/2008 at 22:32 mooey poo says:
I love the way that although this is set in an alternative version of the past, middle of the road heavy metal still exists.
17/05/2008 at 23:24 Blindpsychic says:
I kind of wish they’d go for a more heavily stylized, sort of TF2 inspired look to things, especially in areas like defining units purpose, building design, and the feel of the environment. Except for those blimps, everything seems really small and cluttered. It seems like the unit scales are basically the same as they were in RA2, its just that having an actual lighting system makes a lot more visual noise on each of the units. Small bumps on each of the surfaces and textures are being defined when there’s really no purpose to them, except to look neat when you zoom in.
18/05/2008 at 00:41 Bema says:
God I hope not. I don’t even really like the current look it has. Taking it further towards the cartoony/arty/TF2 look will be the worst thing they could do. Im already only half sure I want to buy the game, and that’s only because I enjoyed past C&C titles. If they try and get arty, then they’ve lost my business for good.
18/05/2008 at 00:50 Blindpsychic says:
You misunderstand, by more TF2 influenced, I mean reducing visual noise, not necessarily making it more cartoonish. C&C3 had the same sort of problem, the scales of the units, the colors and the silouhettes weren’t working together enough to really make a clear visual read on things.
18/05/2008 at 07:18 Sucram says:
The water reminds me of the Blue Lagoon in Malta, so I don’t have an issue with it.
Actually I’m ok with the style in general, I think it’s more distinct than SC/SC2 for example, where every Terran building is a rectangle.
18/05/2008 at 07:45 Lukasz says:
I haven’t played RTS game since original RA so I am kinda hyped with this one.
also it is my first time hearing hell march 2. First one is better.
18/05/2008 at 09:10 Taxman says:
I thought it looked great, really looking forward to it now. The style of C&C RA was always cartoon-ish so I think they did a very good job translating that into 3D.
It’s only a very small thing but for some reason I really liked the unit selection highlight you can see selected units have a red/blue outline at brief points in the video, just thought it was a nice touch.
18/05/2008 at 09:59 Kadayi says:
I’m sure it will be good in the tradition of RA, but the colours seemed insanely overblown. Attack bears though = awesome.
18/05/2008 at 13:21 propanol says:
Reusing RA2 assets = not cool.
18/05/2008 at 17:12 Kadayi says:
It’s a sequel. It would be a little odd if they wholesale dropped everything made before
18/05/2008 at 17:28 Taxman says:
Yeah especially as the audio assets were great to begin with, no point in re-inventing the wheel propanol.
(They did remix the Hell March just a little)
18/05/2008 at 17:34 Blackhat says:
The colours seem a little.. bright, wouldn’t you say?
18/05/2008 at 18:43 Lukasz says:
@Blackhat
Aren’t you tired of brown and grey in every single game these days?
19/05/2008 at 01:43 RichPowers says:
You can have other colors besides browns and greys without resorting to retina-burning brightness :) RA2 is pretty colorful, but not to the point of visual overload.
19/05/2008 at 10:02 Bema says:
Delayed response @Blindpsychic
Fair enough mate – misunderstood the meaning of your post. :)
19/05/2008 at 10:11 Lu-Tze says:
Red Alert is just simply a great guitar dueling song. The whole Red Alert score was fantastic.
Looks like the Red’s are heavily into artillery now, there was some crazy long range attacking going on there.
19/05/2008 at 10:38 phil says:
@Gap Gen – If anything all out pantomime (Yuri Revenge’s moon mission in particular) was RAII’s USP.
If anything turning it up a notch (villain’s with eye patches and steel teeth, the option to use the amoured bears as mounts for commandos and super-sized Wild Wild West style robo spiders leapfrogging across the map) would be welcome.
19/05/2008 at 14:36 Lu-Tze says:
@ Myself : I meant Hell march of course. Even with editing I cock it up.
21/05/2008 at 05:34 Mario says:
I want to believe… I really do…
I think RA3 will suck. Hope I’m wrong.
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