Command and Conquer Red Alert 3 Commander's Challenge Review

Written by: Jamie Butcher Posted: 30th September 2009

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Commander's take up the challenge.

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Commander’s Challenge Details:

Goto Command & Conquer Red Alert 3: Commander’s Challenge Game Page

	Strategy
	PlayStation 3/Xbox 360
	EA Games
	EA Games

12+

Out Now

Command & Conquer - Commanders Challenge is the first full downloaded game I have played on the PS3 and the first and most striking thing about this game is its presentation. The graphics are of a standard you'd expect from a £39.99 game rather than a £7.99 download which is very impressive. The use of real actors is a nice touch with cameos from Gretchen out of Prison Break and even the legendary WWE star Ric Flair!

The game offers only one main type of play which is the challenge mode. There is an in depth tutorial which I strongly recommend for any new users of the franchise. I was a little disappointed with the lack of online play. I thought this game would have really jumped up a notch if you were able to pit your army against friends.

Unfortunately, I’m not an experienced Commander & Conqueror and this game feels more of an expansion than a standalone game to me. New players may have trouble mastering the controls for this game – it’s a combination of bringing up menus and navigating through them while holding the R2 button. If your finger slips then it’s back to the start which can prove quite frustrating in a real time environment.

When playing you have the option of taking charge of the British, the Japanese or the Russians and the nice touch is that each army has different technology which does help to differ the game depending on who you play as. This certainly adds to the longevity of the game and real hardcore fans may well want to complete the missions with each army.

As mentioned earlier, gameplay is quite difficult for any rookies and the lack of a difficulty setting doesn’t give you a chance to get the hang of it either! I took the first level on and by the time I’d built my first soldier I had 4 or 5 dogs attacking my base! Admittedly, I haven’t always been great at real time strategy games and prefer turn based type games but if you are a combat lover then this game is definitely for you.

Challenges or campaigns, which are set all over the world, get steadily more difficult as the game goes on with the player needing to construct more buildings and more men quicker than the last. Essentially, as with any strategy type game you can always win via the easiest way – build a huge army as quickly as possible and march over to your enemies’ base and blow the crap out of them! A nice little feature was that you can place your power cells or certain buildings in the water to add a certain amount of protection from ground troops although this does leave them open to water based weapons!

Now on to the negative parts – I played the game several times and every now and again the sound completely failed which is not the kind of professionalism you expect even when you’ve paid £7.99 for a game. I would hope that the developers will be releasing a patch to combat this problem as it can be quite annoying.

Overall, it’s fair to say that this game is definitely not for players new to this franchise and that anyone wanting to get into this genre would be better served buying an older version and working their way up to this. The presentation of the game is excellent and the graphics are superb, however my personal view was that I got bored with the game very quickly.