Yesterday, the demo for the much-hyped via the medium of uniform-clad-hotties Red Alert 3 came out. Why didn’t we blog about it then? Because it was clearly far more important to tell you about two year old racing games and web puzzle games, obv. Priorities. The demo is – erk – nearly 2 gigs in size and includes the full 7 minute intro, three tutorials and a mission from both soviet and US campaigns. Get it from here. Or, go beneath the cut to see the final results of EA marketing’s nervous breakdown.
Firstly, Michael Hasselhoff tells us about how he learned to be a tactical cleverman.
Secondly, a trailer about choosing your co-op partner. Which doesn’t feature David Hasslehoff, but manages to bemuse all the same.
The Red Alert 3 marketing campaign has really been a cry-for-help in the form of celebrity endorsement trailers.
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“I have an APC that shoots it’s occupants out of a cannon.”
And in the game…?
I’d say whoever is behind the marketting push for RA3 should get a promotion, but then I fear we might never again see its like as that person gets promoted into a role which is entirely different in its scope and purpose.
So, instead, I’ll say above mentioned person deserves a raise.
Frankly, there aren’t enough deliberately-and-comically-over-the-top advertising campaigns for computer games, certainly nothing anywhere near this level. (And I don’t mean stuff like ‘person x will make you his bitch’ either, I mean stuff thats got actual comic value, unintentional irony aside, of course).
It’s not so much comical as simply bewildering and actually playing the demo, why EA thought it was a good idea to throw so much money at this is anyone’s guess. I dare you to suffer through the opening cinematic and then the tutorial and even have the will left to attempt one of the proper missions. Also suffers the same “everything made of glass and tissue paper” as the previous game so instead of using, y’know, tactics, it’s the same old build the biggest tank and throw as many of them as you can at the enemy. Then build some more. This game just doesn’t belong in a world that’s seen Company of Heroes. And oh god the music…
They killed C&C quite a few years ago.
No chance in hell i’ll buy this..
So I assume that these days more time and effort go into C&C cutscenes and ad campaigns than the game itself?
@RichPowers But.. but.. it’s fun…
SuperNashwan: Came here to pretty much say the same thing. The game is utterly based around reflex and fiddly bits, there’s no capacity for planning and every fight depends on firing off goofy abilities at just the right time.
I suspect most matches will last between 3 and 15 minutes and involve approximately 20,000 mouse-clicks, so if that’s your thing, awesome.
Red Alert 3 hardly classifies as a strategy game due to its strong focus on micromanagement, it is more like a top-down action game with loose resource management.
I think some people might like it anyway, and C&C3 should’ve served as stern warning that this is the direction of the series, so I can’t really hold it against them too much in this case. It is very much a game where the ‘fat’ has been trimmed out, and much of the muscle as well, to deliver an extremely streamlined pyrotechnics display. And really overdone glow effects on everything.
There’s a lot of cleavage too.
Nicely presented, movies were quite impressively produced I though, tounge firmly in cheek and all that. Looks pretty.
Plays shit. AI? Hah what ai, good grief. I had to play CoH to cleanse myself.
And why do all the units move sooo slooow.
Playing through the demo missions was mind numbingly dull.