Unfettered Blather

I’ve had some kind of virus for the past week now and this is essentially my first day back in front of a computer screen since last Friday (believe me, I am not enjoying the experience - whatever they added to this year’s batch of the flu is a real bitch)

I decided to catch-up on some gaming while I was at home and took up my controller to finish Red Alert 3. I also picked up Command & Conquer 3, Tiberium Wars along the way.

I could be rightfully called a C&C fanboy. The original title was one of the first PC titles I ever played back at the ripe old age of 14 and I have been hooked ever since. C&C has always been one of my default gaming titles. Some people play things like Peggle or some such nonsense, I would fire up a quick skirmish campaign and try my hand at some goal like beating the entire level with grenadiers. I feel at this juncture I have a pretty good handle on the franchise in terms of what I personally find enjoyable about them. I have a list of feature and criteria I hope to see and frankly, expect to experience.

Red Alert 3 is a game I’ve become fascinated with because of balance, I’ve been growing frustrated with the title but it wasn’t until I started playing the older Tiberium Wars that I realized just how glaring some of these problems truly are.

Balance is something all games seek to strive for and I can appreciate this, especially in a multiplayer title. The term “tank rush” is C&C staple and it is not uncommon for most gamers in the franchise to detail how opposing players will invest in one unit only and use them “en masse” to defeat the other player. Red Alert 3’s tutorial proudly states (although in a veild way) that you will need (nay - forced) to build a multifaceted army to win a battle as no one unit excels. I appreciate the attempt to expand gameplay and to keep the online aspect from degenerating in to a grindfest, but since when has using online content to motivate the single player game ever been a good idea?

I was instantly skeptical of this, was it mere tweaking or did the game toss balance out the window. It turns out to be the latter.

Red Alert 3’s main issue is that no unit excels at both attack or defense together or they fail to be able to defend themselves against specific attacks. Anti-air vehicles with heavy machine guns cannot fire against infantry is a prime example. At this stage I would like to point out that for the first time since their franchise inception that the Apocalypse /Mammoth tank family cannot defend itself against air attacks. This skews the game horribly. Even in older titles, rank and file infantry had a shot at defending a base on their own, even if they simply slowed the enemy advance a few moments. There are simply too many ways to shut down or ignore this basic defense concept in RA3. Aren’t these units supposed to represent units in an army? Like a modern incarnation of the older strategy games? If so then why shouldn’t each unit be capable of some limited defense?

The game is also riddled with entertaining but cheesy weapon system like freeze rays, shrink rays and a baffling array of super weapons that can lay waste to a vast expanse of the battlefield. While these are fun and interesting to add to the mix, balancing them out is akin to balancing out real weapons versus fantasy weapons in a FPS. Just how powerful do you make a plasma rifle exactly?

This attempt at balance forces the player to adopt a “just in case” approach. There are very few general purpose units that can be used as a bulwark against even a small mixed attack by several units. The game limits you to a specific number of command points in the 360 version, essentially a unit cap . If you build beyond this you need to dispose of certain units to free up slots to create new ones. Again, I assume this is also a processing issue and RA3 uses a much more demanding engine than previous titles but you get the feeling they felt this was a good idea to stem the tank rush concept. However, untis apparently don’t seem graded very well by value when. Why does a single infantry unit occupy as much space as say, a massive tank? I have had situations where I was loaded down with lower end units only to fail because I was unable to replace them with higher tier constructs.

All of these problems are generally minor but the truth is if you press the game they aren’t too far away. It is easy to get in a building frenzy to protect and assault an enemy (especially in a multiplayer game where there are FOUR opponents) only to hit a cap and then face off with units you are totally unsuited for because of the creators obsession with creating “balance”.

Still one could claim that you need to pay more attention to reconnaissance, but why should I have to do that? RA3 already saddles you with a lot of multitasking.

Everything is cause and effect and that something a lot of people and developers fail to fully grasp. When you weaken a unit or remove a feature, did you weaken that unit or did you just make the units on the opposing team more powerful by default? RA3 seems to have the smell of a title that was designed by people so familiar with the concept that they are starting to go blind to the accessibility of the regular fan. RA3 seems obsessed with forcing players to create a perfect balance of units each time and to slavishly follow information gathering techniques to build that force. This is little better than creating unit lists in a spreadsheet, an old RPG concept where people bicker and debate the exact hit points of an individual creature in Magic the Gathering or Dungeons & Dragons.

Certain units have so many special abilities that they are clearly meant to counteract specific untis on the battlefield. This gives the game a “tit for tat” feel and swings the balance of power so far in their favor that they cease to be balanced at all.

RA3’s biggest failing is that there is no practical way to do this. The game seems to have reduced the survivability of structures and the hitting power of base defenses. Repairing a unit is agonizingly slow and despite my efforts to be impartial, there is simply no reason for this other than perhaps a glaring oversight or rank stupidity. Couple with this maps that are downright huge when compared to older titles and the pace becomes far more frantic. I want to play the title, not be darting around the map struggling to handle multiple scenarios in real time each demanding a certain level of micromanagement. The game is terrible at allowing the player a certain balance on time. One could claim this is more realistic, but we are talking about a game where J.K. Simmons is President of the United States.

RA3 seems to love abusing you, an exercise in crises management, damage control. I spend time building offensive units, defending my base and then in story mode, defending or escorting some mcguffin from point A to B.

I blame a lot of this one the fact the designers loved to saddle you with an AI partner most of the time. They take the “heat” off of you or they cause your downfall to be epic and at times, unavoidable. I’ve had my AI win the day and fail miserably, nice to see variation but thats taking control out of my hands. In some levels they are merely a placeholder, a backdrop while you complete the mission, someone there to offer an assist, but sadly things didn’t stay this way for long.

All of these issues mean you essentially have to bet spend time chipping away at the enemy, bleeding them white slowly or betting everything on one attack. The margin for error in RA3 is massive, recovering from an assault or an offensive is pretty painful and often the AI strikes with a balance of units you are totally unequipped for leaving you with little recourse but to watch your entire plan and time go down the drain. News to EA, loosing hours of time investment in a level is not fun.

I suppose all of these bullshit balance problems balance out a bit if you have a partner but I thought we had gotten past that multiplayer-centric obsession by now. The game’s fundamental core has changed. I don’t believe it is possible to create a positive user experience when the goal is to limit how the player can choose to interact with the game and other players while punishing them for taking risks. I have not won a single skirmish game without an AI partner in the game, not one. This is a problem because nothing I try seems to work, no balance seems to be struck. I’m no novice here, I’ve been playing these titles literally for 14 years and if I can’t squeak out a victory, something is pretty broken.

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