Quick note: This game runs like ass on Windows 11, not only will you need to manually tweak the launch options to enable wide-screen resolutions, but it also crashes a lot if you Alt-tab. Multi-monitor setups are going to have a rough time of it, so I’d suggest saving often and disabling any extra screens if you want to play online.

Command & Conquer: Generals is the off-shoot of the venerable C&C series after Westwood was left for dead by EA and consequentially a scattered band of survivors were merged with another studio to make a new entry in the series. As such the gameplay is both familiar and yet new, with the same base-building mechanics but a larger focus on abilities. Of course Red Alert 2 had unit abilities, at least for some units but generally these weren’t a big deal. In Generals by contrast, almost every unit gets a couple of abilities or bespoke upgrades that can have a big impact on how they’re used. Whether it be GLA rebels gaining the ability to turn invisible by standing still, or US rangers having the ability to clear out occupied buildings with ease via the flash-bang ability. Then there are the purchasable drones for US armoured units, the ability for GLA units to acquire supplies from defeated enemies (or upgrades for certain units) and a whole bunch of other stuff. Alongside these unit abilities are a bunch of new call-in abilities, unlocked via the introduction of quasi-skill trees. The way it works is simple, each faction has a range of specific unlocks such as gaining access to certain units or commander powers. These can include calling in an artillery strike, spawning friendly units, defensive AoE healing powers or having new units of a certain type spawn in at veterancy rank 1. You won’t be unlock all of them, and they don’t carry over between games. The system is fairly intuitive, you get XP for defeating enemy units and after enough carnage has been caused you’ll level up. Once you’ve levelled, up you can choose from a variety of powers that are structured in a tier-list. This encourages you to purchase these unlocks as soon as they’re available, but you can just save them up for the “stronger” abilities. From my own personal experience, trying to get all of the free damage call-ins like bombing runs and so on is generally the best way to do it. Because you get infinitely respawning free damage, and while there is a cool-down it generally pays off. Especially for the later abilities like the fuel bomb and the EMP blast, which can either wreck an enemy base or army respectively. Outside of these changes, the game is pretty much classic C&C. You’ve got a handful of unit types, they all basically hard counter various other unit types and the tone is pretty silly. Arguably the tone in C&C Generals is a bit more po-faced, but honestly everyone is at best a stereotype in this game. One last thing to mention, is that resources are clustered in specific spots, and don’t respawn over time.

As mentioned, while there are tweaks and changes Command & Conquer: Generals is still fundamentally a classic C&C style RTS at it’s core. Sure the call-ins are a tad overpowered and resources run out scarily quickly, but everything else is par for the course. You’ve got 3 asymmetrical factions, some basic base building that never gets too intensive, a campaign for each faction that’s both fun and yet slightly short alongside a ton of skirmish maps. I guess you could argue that having base building units that can build anywhere, instead of MCVs that can deploy anywhere is a big change. Personally I don’t consider it particularly different, as all it does is make it easier to setup resource gathering stations around the map. As for the combat, while there are a lot more unit abilities going around each unit type is pretty familiar. You’ve got standard infantry that can get run over, anti-tank infantry that shred tanks, tanks which are a bit hopeless against infantry, air units that are great against everything that can’t shoot back and then some artillery units. There are a couple of unique cases like the fully upgraded Chinese overlord tank (OP against basically everything) and the GLA terrorists and bomb trucks which can disguise themselves but really there isn’t anything radically new here. Instead the charm of Command and Conquer: Generals is that everything is just done pretty well. The three factions: The United States of America, China and the Global Liberation Army (GLA) are all fun to play and do feel quite different. The USA has strong tanks and the best air-force but can be a resource-sink and requires decent micro, while a lot of Chinese units get bonuses by being mobbed together and thrown into the fray. Then you’ve got the GLA who are fairly unique and get a bunch of mechanics like stealth infantry and bombs, tunnel networks, claiming supplies from fallen foes and the like but who don’t get any air units and have relatively weak tanks.

Fortunately each faction is fairly simple to understand and use effectively, with the campaigns basically serving as a series of tutorials. There are one or two missions in each which give you the full arsenal and the chance to use it, but most missions are focused on a handful of available units and you’re just trying to make the best use of them. Each of these campaigns follows the same broad structure and while you do occasionally get to see missions from different perspectives, they’re too short to have much of an impact. For context clearing through all 3 campaigns took me around 7 hours, factoring in half a dozen crashes to the desktop (in a game with no autosaving). The campaigns are fun, but more experienced players are encouraged to try them on Hard or even Brutal as otherwise they are very short and not particularly challenging. Then once those campaigns have been cleared up, there isn’t much left to do but play through the skirmish mode. The map variety is decent and there are just over 20 maps to play, but as mentioned earlier the amount of resources on each map depletes surprisingly quickly and the AI can often be relied upon to squander the funding available to it. Each faction can construct building which let it gain more income over time, or in the case of the Chinese a unit that can gain income over time. Trust me when I say that you’ll either want to do this, or rush the enemy ASAP. You don’t have much time at the apex of the tech tree before resources become a distant memory.

Speaking of the AI, it’s not great in many situations and will reliably trickle through forces in multiple attack waves instead of trying to aim for a killing blow. It’s not the end of the world, but this is a game where the real challenge is in the multiplayer mode. Fortunately there has been an active modding community which has produced swathes of maps and conversions, although at that point you may as well just grab the expansion pack. The good news is that all stores still selling a digital copy of the game now bundle in Zero Hour, although you do also get basically every other C&C game included as well (even C&C4). As for other criticisms of the game, I do have a few. Again the campaigns are really short which is a shame as they only really let you get a feel for each faction towards of the tail-end of their missions. Furthermore I’ll also re-iterate that this game loves to crash to modern operating systems, a problem that the unofficial community version didn’t have. Thanks EA! In terms of problems I haven’t mentioned yet, there are a couple of smaller ones. Unit pathfinding straight up sucks and controlling large blobs of units can be a pain, which is a problem because playing as China explicitly encourages this. The early 3D graphics can be off-putting to some, but I’ve personally never had a big issue with them because that was the style at the time. Finally there are some weird aspects of the UI, that were fixed up in Zero Hour and later games in the series but weren’t quite resolved in the base game. Super weapons need to be activated from their building and don’t appear on the side bar and neither do other building call-ins. Of course the AI doesn’t have an issue with this, but for human players it can be a bit counter-intuitive to actually use the full breadth of abilities that are available to them.

Yet in spite of these niggles, I have no problem recommending Command & Conquer: Generals to pretty much anyone. It has a great soundtrack, good voice-acting, multiple factions that feel different, fun campaigns (even if they’re short), solid combat and plenty of skirmish maps. The expansion pack definitely brings everything to the next level, but the base game is still enjoyable. Even if the new hero units do feel a bit useless compared to the sheer base destroying insanity of Tanya (for example). As such I’ll end my short review by saying Command & Conquer: Generals is a fun game and if you haven’t played it, then you should consider grabbing it on Steam or Origin.

The post Command & Conquer: Generals appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note: My screenshots didn’t save for some reason, but that’s OK because this is a very short review.

Alright so I recently played through the BF3 campaign and found it to be pretty underwhelming and an FPS experience I couldn’t really recommend. As this blog is about me and my one-man-mission to rise up clear my games backlog, I also remembered I had Battlefield 4. So I decided to play through it while my memory of BF3 was still fresh. To my surprise, the Battlefield 4 campaign is actually decently entertaining and while it still can’t really compete with the better Call of Duty campaigns, it’s better than some of them! This might not sound like praise, but considering how much BF3 and especially Battlefield 4 have been trying to emulate the success of those CoD campaigns, it’s nice to see that DICE finally managed to make something that succeeds in this regard.

I’ll try to keep it concise, much like the campaign. Because Battlefield 4 has a grand total of 7 campaign missions – that’s it. In them we play as a silent protagonist muhreen who is fighting to save the world from a coup in China. The levels are fairly linear although you can sometimes find an empty vehicle or turret to use. The enemy variety is minimal, as you only fight enemy soldiers and the occasional enemy vehicle. There are a lot of bombastic quasi-cutscenes where things explode/collapse near/onto our protagonist. As for the gameplay it’s what you’d expect. You can carry two weapons (and two pieces of gear like mines or grenade launchers). Your health regenerates. The enemy is all over your ass 24/7 and there are a handful of opportunities to use vehicles and turrets. You always have a squadmate or squadmates with you, but generally they are absolutely useless unlike in BF3. I’m not sure why your squad is so useless now, but sadly they really are hopeless. It’s no wonder that you get chosen to be the new squad commander/overall badass. The enemy AI isn’t great, although they are freakishly good at using grenades. There are a couple of positive changes that Battlefield 4 has made to the single player formula though. So I’ll give them credit for the following.

First things first, there are now collectibles in each level and they are exceedingly well hidden. Nothing fancy, I think every CoD has done this since the Xbox 360 came out. Yet it’s something “new” that wasn’t in the previous game. More importantly, you now gain score just like in multiplayer for killing various enemies and the multiplayer score-streaks carry over. So multi-kills, headshots, “adrenaline kills” (ones that occur when you are near death) etc now give you bonus points. These points then unlock 3-tiers of medal for each mission. Each medal gains you access to new weapon unlocks, in the myriad gun-cases scattered around every single player level. This is another new idea and one I actually quite liked. Basically the way it works is that you can take any unlocked gun out of these gun cases. This lets you swap your load-out frequently, and lets you experiment with every gun in the game. They also reload your ammo, and as you can’t carry much at a time they are very useful. There are also equipment cases which do the same thing except for your gear. Unfortunately these always have an arbitrary restriction on what gear you can use. You can’t unlock the RPG by being swagtastic on the 3rd mission for example. You can also spot enemies with some cool binoculars, which lets you tell your squad to ENGAGE certain enemies. This is the big new gimmick, as it lets you tell your squad which enemies to focus on. In theory this would be pretty useful. In practice your squad sucks and they will barely even ENGAGE enemies you haven’t told them to. Seriously if I had a single great British pound for every time my squad failed to deal with the one enemy who flanked me – despite that enemy being right in front of them – I’d be able to buy every battlefield game.

Other than these new additions and tweaks, the campaign hasn’t changed too much. Fortunately the Quick-Time-Events are now totally gone (thank God). Plus as mentioned the visuals have been improved at least for the Xbone/PS4/PC versions of the game. The story is a bit weaker almost as if to compensate, with more of a focus on your squad’s characters. By which I mean, the character called Irish. Seriously he could be mistaken for the protagonist if he wasn’t absolutely useless at shooting people. Fortunately I don’t think anyone was too enraptured with the BF3 campaign narrative. Especially as this game basically shares nothing in common with the previous one. Well except for a single returning character who you only see for a total of one mission. In terms of smaller gameplay changes, your character does feel like they have more health so you can actually run-and-gun as the game expects you too, which is a welcome change. As for the soundtrack, it’s still fine if nothing particularly special. That’s about it honestly, as there isn’t much incentive to replay missions. While I could make snide comparisons between the prison level in Battlefield 4 and the gulag level in CoD: Black Ops I won’t bother.

In conclusion then, the Battlefield 4 campaign is better than the BF3 one. It’s nothing amazing, but there are some solid gunfights if you can look past the Michael Bay explosions. The narrative has some weirdly dark moments for a game that generally doesn’t take itself that seriously, but other than that it’s a standard 7th generation console shooter. You run around, you regenerate health, the AI is dumb, your squad is dumb and the action is constant. It’s not a bad experience by any means and the smaller tweaks add up to make a campaign that’s much better than the one in BF3.

The post Battlefield 4: Campaign appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

I can understand anyone who thinks it’s churlish of me to review the Battlefield 3 campaign experience solely on it’s own merits. After all, the main selling point of the game was the multiplayer mode which has been the main selling point of every Battlefield game since the series began. Indeed the series entries I played the most of while growing up are BF2 and BF2142, neither of which has a campaign mode (at least on PC). So why bother reviewing the Battlefield 3 campaign, considering the fact that it was at best an extra little bonus like the co-op missions? Well because that’s all that remains of the game for most players as of the year 2024. Sure you can technically still join a game on PC and I think Xbox 360, but the player-base is tiny at this point and if you bought it on PS3 then… that’s a shame! As a consequence, I think it’s only fair to review the campaign, which is probably the only way you’ll get to “enjoy” the game going forwards. Unfortunately for Battlefield 3, the campaign makes Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 look like a visionary single player experience, one that it’s desperately trying (and failing) to emulate. Let’s go through the checklist together, dear reader;

• Contemporary FPS game: Check
• Regenerating health: Check
• Two weapon limit: Check
• You swap between characters to see the full scale of the conflict: Check
• The game is extremely linear: Check
• The game’s engine spawns enemies in pairs to mask hardware limitations: Check
• The main bad guy is using middle eastern rebels as fodder to initiate WW3: Check
• After a certain point in the game you start shooting Russians: Check
• The campaign takes about 6 hours: Check

After playing through both campaigns, the main differences that Battlefield 3 offers are an increased emphasis on Quick Time Events, less max HP for the player and slightly better vehicle sections. Otherwise you could honestly be forgiven for thinking that this was just another Cawadoody game. To be fair, there is also some environmental destruction going on, but it’s basically a gimmick and never really helps (or hinders) you. Expect for one section where you need to run up onto an overpass while infinitely respawning enemies shoot at you and all the cover on the bridge gets ruined in like two shots. Which is hardly a point in the game’s favour, let’s be honest.

Now as the gameplay is so standard, I think it’s fair to briefly mention the narrative. The way it works is simple, you spend most of the game being interrogated and your flashbacks serve as each individual mission of the campaign. This is a bit of a hazy mechanism when it comes to the multiple other characters who you don’t know anything about, but let’s ignore that for now. Essentially you are a MUHREEN and after bumbling around the Middle East you chase the head of a terrorist group, then the even more evil guy who was using him as a puppet. To the game’s credit the final mission is actually cool (QTEs notwithstanding seriously why does this stupid game love them so much) even if a lot of questions aren’t really answered. As for the rest of the narrative, it’s nothing special but nothing terrible either – par for the course for games of this genre and generation. Most characters are cool soldiers who are stoic and do soldier things but you have a designated smart ass in your squad and an overly ambitious colonel? major? Who cares. There are also two moments in the game when a character gets sad because their friend dies, which must have been a mandatory part of getting a game published on the Xbox 360. Overall I’d give this game an OK/10 for plot, it could’ve been one of those lazy Sunday afternoon rental movies although I think it would’ve been a bit too cliche.

As for the other aspects of the game that support the not-great combat, you’ve got an acceptable OST that is totally forgettable outside of the two times when they drop the Battlefield theme. These moments were cool, I guess, but if you didn’t care much about the series (understandable considering the last big release was BF2142 which was PC exclusive) then this probably didn’t do anything for you. The graphics and visual style are… fine but nothing really special and there isn’t a huge amount of environmental. You’ve got desert, forest, a nice villa and brown-and-bloom urban warfare. I can confirm that I didn’t encounter any bugs, which is good and everything generally ran fine on my humble Xbone although Battlefield 3 does seem to have some weird issues with frame-drops during areas with abrupt changes in lighting. Otherwise everything is just OK.

But my main issue with the campaign really is the gameplay, outside of the generally enjoyable tank mission and OK/10 jet mission it’s not great. A lot of set pieces involving enemies spawning in waves while you’re stuck in a position, or getting told to flank the enemy while your squad frantically try and order a pizza or something. The shooting feels OK, although the flinching from damage makes most weapons kind of a hassle to aim considering just how freakishly accurate the enemies are. There’s a stealth section of sorts, where you only have a knife and it kind of sucks. Fortunately it doesn’t last very long at all so swings and roundabouts. There are a lot of different weapons you can use, but it doesn’t matter much and you never run out of ammo so that’s either good or bad depending on your perspective. Occasionally you need to use a special weapon against vehicles, but don’t worry because you always magically regain more shots in the event that you manage to miss. Really though the combat is OK it’s just not great. Your squad will occasionally just start shooting a wall in front of them instead of the enemy, although they do actually deal damage unlike myriad other lousy FPS games so they can clear things up. As for the enemy, they love to either zerg rush your position or camp like boy scouts. Either way they’re kind of annoying, as they are extremely accurate and keep respawning in hard to predict ways. Was that the last enemy, or is another one about to materialise with little warning? Is there still one camping somewhere, and if so will they nearly insta-kill me as soon as I see them? These are the questions you will ask yourself at least once every level. Speaking of insta-kills, not only are there multiple QTEs in Battlefield 3 that you must pass successfully first time, but also some sections where not being in exactly the right place will instantly kill you. As will RPG enemies shooting vehicles that are near you, which would be fine if they didn’t just get spawned out of nowhere on multiple levels. Generally this is a game that wants you to go fast, but punishes you for doing so. Except on a couple of occasions, where if you don’t go fast enough you fail and have to go to the last check point. It’s just an inconsistent game.

So are there any parts of the Battlefield 3 campaign I actually quite liked? Well aside from that tank section (or section-and-a-half I suppose), I did find the two Spetnaz missions kind of fun although the bit where you need to chase that guy was annoying. I’m trying not to spoil anything, but if you play the game you’ll know which part I’m referring to. As mentioned the story is fine, probably not as good as the one in Cawadoody:MW2 but not terrible or overly tedious thanks to some decent voice acting. I suppose I should mention that the CHEEVOS for the game are actually implemented pretty well and offer an incentive to replay the campaign levels while the multiplayer ones aren’t totally rubbish. Finally I thought the first and last missions were a nice way of tying up the narrative, while the rest of the game had a decent pace and got stronger in the latter half. With all that being said, trying to copy Cawadoody is a mugs game and as a consequence the campaign just feels a bit… hopeless. The AI acts weird, the highly linear levels feel like an artificial constraint, there’s minimal gameplay variation between most parts of the campaign and generally it’s all just a bit lackluster. Not terrible but not good, is how I’d sum up the Battlefield 3 single player experience.

Therefore the most important question remains, would I recommend the Battlefield 3 campaign? No. I wouldn’t really recommend it to anyone and would just skip it unless you have a decent amount of nostalgia for the game. It has a few areas where it’s successfully above the average and a couple where it’s honestly slightly below average. The game is basically the same as this review, a meandering mess that doesn’t really go anywhere or answer any pertinent questions you might have. It’s just some filler, that distracted you from better things.

The post Battlefield 3 (Campaign) appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Quick Note: Want more Peggle? Get Peggle Extreme from Steam for free.

At the time of writing I’m drunk on Christmas Joy and so haven’t been able to play anything that requires extended periods of isolation (due to the commitments of having family and friends) or particularly complex systems as I’ve either been bloated on food or just plain drunk. In spite of this handicap I’m still consistent in my desire to produce 1 review per week, come what may, and so I’ve taken a look at the Peggle series which I picked up during the Christmas Steam sale for a whole 124 great British pennies. Having basically forgotten about the games since they were relevant wayyy back in 2007ish I’d also forgotten just how fun it is. For the uninitiated, the Peggle games feature a (largely) stationery board is filled with a mix of Orange, Blue and Green “pegs” or dots which you shoot a limited number of balls at from the top of the screen. The main challenge is that you never have enough balls to easily hit the Orange pegs one by one, so successfully gaining extra balls and aiming shots so that you can hit a bunch with a single shot is the aim of the game. To add further complexity there are multiple Peggle “masters” that each give you a special ability when you hit one of the rare green pegs, alongside a purple peg that is randomly selected from the remaining blue pegs on each turn before you take each shot and which gives you a considerably higher amount of points for hitting it.

And generally you’ll want to hit it, while not explicitly aiming for it as gaining 25,000 points from a single shot is one of the sure-fire ways of getting an extra ball in your roster. Fortunately as you hit orange pegs you’ll fill up that bar on the right and thus increase your score multiplier for each peg hit. There are some other mechanics in play such as the fact that you can get multiple balls from one shot, albeit with the required score scaling upwards (so initially 25,000 then 75,000 and so on), the fact that stages might have moving hazards or teleportation “bubbles” that move the ball elsewhere and even stages where the pegs themselves move around. As mentioned above there are around 10 Peggle Masters across the games, each with their own ability and while you’re initially “stuck” with one of them for 5 levels, you’re able to select the one you want for the last 5 and then all of the myriad challenge maps. You’d think this would mean that the first 50 or so levels of each game are essentially a tutorial, but honestly some of the latter stages can be a challenge so it’s more of a gentle campaign curve than anything.

In terms of differences between the games, there aren’t many which is why I’ve bundled them all into a singular review. Peggle Deluxe is the base game with 9 masters, 55 “normal” stages and a further 75 challenge stages that are unlocked once you’ve cleared the normal ones. Peggle Nights is a stand-alone expansion, offering a further 55 stages with one extra master and then a batch of 75 more challenge stages. Finally Peggle Extreme is a freebie quasi-demo made in collaboration between PopCap and Valve, with 10 normal stages and then a further 5 challenge stages. Extreme features (for want of a better word) various Valve characters and sound effects, but is otherwise just an extra batch of content for free on Steam. Every game features a “Duel” mode where you can play against other players, albeit on your own stages taking a turn at a time to compete for the higher score. This duel mode is also used on occasion for the challenge maps where you duel an AI to try and beat their score. That’s about it for the series depth, as the challenge really is trying to figure out how to control the ball’s mechanics as you aim to shoot as many pegs as possible across each stage. There are tricks you can perform to increase your score such as sliding your ball across a large amount of blocks, pinging your ball from a non-blue peg to another non-blue peg across a large distance and so on but these don’t impact your ability to gain extra free balls.

Before wrapping everything up I’d just like to take a quick moment to praise the game’s soundtrack (which features Ode to Joy and a handful of original background tracks) alongside it’s charming and simple art-style. Everything is inoculated with a good sense of fun and the game is challenging enough you can’t blitz through it without thinking, but it’s also not so challenging that you’ll get particularly stuck or frustrated. Well, some of the challenge maps not-withstanding but the clue is in the name! The master abilities are also nicely implemented, ensuring that each player will have their own favourite (mine is Master Hu, an owl with the ability to tweak your shot to make it 200% more Zen and get a bunch of extra pegs) while the master’s themselves are sweet enough that this can still be a kid’s game. It’s altogether a great example of a Casual game, as while the budget was small the focus to detail is still there and it can run on basically any system without ever feeling short of content or effort.

So in conclusion then, the Peggle games are great fun and perfect for lazy holiday seasons or as a gift for more casual gamers. The sort of game that like Tetris or Mario Kart, can basically be enjoyed by anyone in spite of their circumstances. Considering the ludicrously cheap price, I’d urge everyone to give it a go even if they normally consider themselves to be too HARDCORE for such trifling little cutesy games. My only real complaint is the fact that Peggle 2 ended up a console exclusive game for… reasons and as a consequence is only available on Xbox 360 and Xbox One. While they can be emulated easily enough, in the meantime pickup the Peggle pack for practically nothing and have some fun 8)

The post Peggle Deluxe/Extreme/Nights appeared first on Big Boaby Gaming.

Red Alert 3: Uprising offers players four mini campaigns – one for each faction and then a campaign dedicated to the Japanese commando unit Yuriko. These campaigns contain three missions each with exception of the Soviets who have a quasi-tutorial mission that has to be completed before you can unlock the Allied and Japanese campaigns. This unlocking is implemented a bit awkwardly, as once you beat the Soviet “tutorial” mission the game dumps you back onto the Campaign Select screen – meaning you need to go back to the main menu and hit chapters if you want to continue it. That petty niggle aside, these mini-campaigns are of a very similar production value to the campaigns in RA3 and feature multiple returning actors from the prior game (those that canonically died and/or fled to SPACE not withstanding). The main issue with them is that they’re… well… mini-campaigns and at a mere three missions each you don’t really have time to engage with either the cast or new units that much. This unfortunately means that things feel a bit rushed, robbing the new units, commanders and exposition from having much of an impact.

But who gives a wooden nickel about the writing in a Red Alert game, we’re all here for the new campaigns! Of these campaigns the Soviet Campaign arguably has the most polish of the main factions and is very enjoyable to play through. The plot is simple and campy, with you as the COMMANDER trying to figure out what the FutureTech corporation is up to. Perhaps unsurprisingly for a massive military-industrial complex company, it turns out they’re involved in some shady dealings and you end up facing the same enemy commander every time who’s in too deep to get out now. The missions themselves are varied and interesting, with a healthy mix of low-units “stealth” gameplay and normal base-building and battling. The game does a pretty good job of forcing you to build up varied forces via the map design, ensuring that Apocalypse Tank and/or Battleship spamming won’t be sufficient to get the job done. The difficulty is relatively gentle, with most missions providing reinforcements during the stealth sections to prevent you from messing up too bad, while the larger battle sections always provide sufficient resources and clear routes of enemy attack. As for the new units, they’re a bit gimmicky but fun to use and I must confess that the return of the Desolator from RA2 made me quite happy. You’ve got the aforementioned desolator which now does AoE damage to all infantry (yes that includes yours), a “mortar bike” which is great against base defenses, a grinder tank that latches onto enemy vehicles/structures and regens health while doing so and finally an upgraded version of the Sickle walker which has both rockets and grenades in lieu of machine guns.

The Allied campaign is the opposite of the Soviet one, feeling a bit rough around the edges as you face off against more enemy commanders than there are missions. The cinematics also feel pretty basic and are fairly short, while the missions are frankly a bit tedious and each have their own irritating little gimmicks. Without wishing to spoil all the surprises, I’ll just say that in the first you have to deal with a modest income stream (only 1 ore mine) while dealing with 3 small enemy bases that rush you constantly until you can take them out (pro-tip: kill the naval yard ASAP). The second mission has a total of four tiny skirmishes that all need to be executed perfectly lest you fail the mission, alongside a very standard battle section which is fairly easy. Then the final mission commits my RTS campaign pet peeve, wherein it encourages you to rush through a mission so that your forces are facing an uphill struggle when a very, very obvious “but wait there’s MORE” moment happens. If you’ve ever played through the campaign for Supreme Commander you’ll know exactly what I mean, and will also know that this makes the balancing extremely wonky as either it’s a brutal fight for survival or just a total cakewalk with no real in-between. Fortunately the Allied campaign partially redeems itself by having fun new units, in the form of a disgustingly powerful new air unit, a quasi-OP artillery unit and a new Cryo-trooper who makes the Cryo-copter look like a toy. There is also a fourth new unit, but they’re not playable within the campaign which is a shame as it’s a big-ass robot tank with AoE energy weapons. Unfortunately this redemption is only partial as the best strategy in every mission is to spam the new air unit with some fighter escorts, which makes the map design in those missions inconsequential.

Wrapping up the main factions is the Japanese campaign which is also pretty cool and enjoyable to play through. Weirdly enough it feels like it was set before the Allied one within the time line, as you help one or two commanders who you take out while playing as the Allies – even though the allied campaign comes before it in the Campaign selection screen. While the missions aren’t particularly difficult, they can be challenging and still require you to move fast and choose your build order with care. Unfortunately the third mission also falls for the “but wait there’s more” trope, but it’s explained in the mission briefing so it’s not a poor twist but instead a deliberate choice. If you choose to capture the Soviet base you’ll still need to sell the buildings to move onto the next stage, allowing you to cheese it (and build the Vacuum imploder) without too much trouble. The other missions are fairly interesting, with the first requiring you to hijack a Soviet base to bail out your ally while the second mission has a large amount of unoccupied vehicles lying around the map for your engineers to hijack. Each feels quite different and much like with the Soviet campaign, there’s enough freedom and resources to give you breathing room to concoct your own strategy. The new units for the Japanese faction are also handled well, enabling you to field melee-focused mechs, a solid anti-air/anti-infantry infantry unit and a big-ass flying death fortress. I really can’t fault this campaign as it keeps things fairly fresh and does it’s best to prevent you from spamming a certain unit.

Finally there is the Yuriko campaign which is a big focus of Red Alert 3: Uprising in terms of marketing and branding. Unlike every other campaign in the series, the Yuriko campaign plays like a top-down action game where you can only control one unit (Yuriko). It plays somewhat like a Diablo game, with a fixed camera angle centered on Yuriko and a hotbar of four abilities located on the bottom of the screen which can be upgraded. To upgrade an ability you need to find intel items (represented as computer terminals) which are scattered around the three missions and are fairly easy to find. The only caveat is that these upgrades are reset on each mission, so there’s little reason to go around and hunt down each one. The abilities themselves are pretty powerful and include;

• Psychokinetic Burst which kills all hostile infantry and stuns all hostile vehicles within an area around Yuriko.
• Psychic Domination which causes up to 3/5/7 enemy infantry to defect to your team. They will diligently follow you around until they die or you dominate new units if these new units bring you above the existing limit.
• Psionic Shield which lasts for 5/7/9 seconds and reflects ranged damage taken back to the enemy who fired on you.
• Psionic Slam which enables you to lift an object (including enemy infantry and some vehicles) before throwing it towards a designated area within vision range. This causes large damage to hit enemies and will instantly kill whichever unit or object has been thrown. Upgrading this ability enables you to pick-up items in a larger range alongside larger vehicles.

Alongside these abilities there are some generic upgrades which increase your speed/damage/health and which are also shared by any infantry you’ve dominated. Ultimately this campaign is heavily based around maximising the damage output of your abilities and thus juggling the ability cooldowns. While the cooldowns are fairly short, Yuriko can only attack one enemy unit at a time without them and for the majority of the campaign you’ll only have a handful of infantry supporting her. As such Psionic Slam and the Burst ability are your main method of churning through hostile units. Fortunately there are multiple healing stations located throughout each of the maps, so it’s often prudent to engage in hit-and-run tactics if you are outgunned. There are also some Psychic blocking stations in the third mission, within which all of your abilities (except the humble right click attack) are blocked within an AoE radius. These are easy to deal with, but getting within range of one will automatically “liberate” any infantry held by your Psychic Domination ability and cause them to attack you like the impudent dogs they are.

Much like the Soviet campaign, the Yuriko campaign is one of the highlights and has been implemented well with the difficulty remaining consistent but never overwhelming. The ability cooldowns prevent you from being OP and the gradually escalating number and damage of enemies prevents you from being careless, as it can be easy to get overwhelmed. There are also some lore tidbits hidden within the intel stations which give some context to the overall setting and aside from the fact that two of the three missions take place in the same map, I can’t find any reason to fault this one.

To wrap up Red Alert 3: Uprising also has some other new single player content (aside from the new skirmish maps), in the form of the “new” Commander’s Challenge mode. In it you play as a FutureTech commander, but instead of controlling a new fourth faction you’re instead allowed to choose which faction you’d like to play at the start of each mission. The twist is that you initially have a very limited arsenal of units/buildings, with each mission unlocking one new unit for one of the three factions. The missions themselves are split between main missions and side missions, although both give you one unit for completion.

These missions are great fun and each involve some sort of gimmick; whether it be interrupting a duel between two commanders who will ignore your base until you attack, dealing with a skirmish on a map with perpetual satellite drops smashing into it or playing through a map with hundreds and hundreds of explosive barrels scattered around. The main challenge comes from the fact that each mission has a par time that needs to be beat for you to receive 100% completion, which doesn’t give you any additional units or bonuses but does provide a true challenge for anyone aiming for 100% completion. With that being said the missions aren’t necessarily easy, especially the first time you play them as you’ll be hamstrung by your limited access to units and defensive structures. As such you’ll be making a LOT of use out of T1 units and will need to orientate your strategy away from T3 tanks/aircraft and Superweapons. Every mission is unique, punchy and the par time ticking away keeps you on your toes.

Once you’ve cleared through all 13 of the main missions, you get an ending cutscene and are then thrown back to the mode’s mission select menu to carry on. There are an additional 37 side missions alongside the main ones, with more of these unlocking with the completion of a mission of either type (and another bonus ending cutscene for beating all of them as well). As such there is a ton of content here even if you don’t care enough about 100% to go back and try to beat those par times (doing so will unlock the final bonus message). One last thing worth mentioning is that as you beat the missions you build up a reserve of credits, based on your performance in each mission. During any mission you can hit the RED ALERT button when your threat meter (in the bottom left corner) is full, which gives you these credits and makes all of your units hit max veterancy instantly. The catch is that doing so makes your mission time 99 mins and 99 seconds, essentially preventing you from achieving the par time.

In conclusion, Red Alert 3: Uprising is a great expansion pack for a great game that retains the campy tone of the original while vastly expanding the amount of single player content available. While it is a shame that both the campaign co-op mode and multiplayer mode are missing, I consider these small omissions for those who are playing it these days. The mini-campaigns are mostly great (Allies notwithstanding) and the Yuriko one is very unique in how it plays without being any worse for it. The commander’s challenge mode is also a great new idea, that not only makes use of the RED ALERT button (that was originally intended to be a main feature of RA3) but also provides around 50 additional missions for you to playthrough. Considering how cheap Red Alert 3: Uprising is on modern storefronts ($9.99 through Origin, $19.99 through Steam and both have frequent -75% discounts), I’d have no problem recommending it to any RTS fan – even if they are a novice at the genre.

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