Red Alert Online Announced (April 24, 2018)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
A teaser trailer was leaked/released this week that shows off a new chapter in the Commander & Conquer series, Red Alert Online. The game is designed for mobile devices, and amazingly, this it's actually not the first time this has happened. C&C3 was first released for mobile in 2008, and a version of Red Alert came out for iOS in 2009. A ton has changed in the past decade though, and iOS/Android games can now compete with modern consoles or PCs in many cases. With the right hardware, they can even be streamed to large screens. The developer of the new Red Alert is Tencent, which is the Chinese studio behind the highly acclaimed mobile version of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. The internet's reaction has been mixed so far, but it'll be very interesting to see how this turns out.


But holy cow, if ever there was a gaming franchise with nine lives, this is it! We've followed this series over the years for a number of reasons. For starters, most of the CIC Staff has been playing these games since the mid '90s, including playing the original Red Alert via dial up modem together in 1996. There are also some strong parallels to Wing Commander. C&C was highly regarded for its video cutscenes, and the developer was also bought by Electronic Arts. It kept going well after the RTS heyday and EA doubled down in 2007 with its Battlecast streaming C&C themed sports show. EA kept supporting live actor FMV as late as 2009 in Red Alert 3 and 2010 with Command & Conquer 4. Malcolm McDowell starred in RA3, and there was an official advertisement for that game that entirely focused on his performance in Wing Commander 4. In addition to these games, the series was most recently rebooted as a browser game in 2012. A couple of first person shooters and a sequel to C&C Generals were also in work over the past number of years, but were canceled. Still, it's remarkable how many times the series keeps coming back. I'm truly happy for C&C fans. The RTS genre and space sims both seem to be making a bit of a comeback these days, so seeing a classic EA franchise return like this helps give Wingnuts hope that Wing Commander could still make a resurgence someday.






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Original update published on April 24, 2018
 
I loved the first Red Alert game but for me RA2 (and onwards) was just ridiculous. It had a campy cartoonish tone & visual feel in contrast to the serious, somber theme of the first Red Alert game.
It felt (for me) like EA/Westwood tried to make RA2 a deliberate parody of itself and I remember just shaking my head at some of the cutscenes & characters.

Meh!
 
It felt (for me) like EA/Westwood tried to make RA2 a deliberate parody of itself and I remember just shaking my head at some of the cutscenes & characters.

Yeah, that was most certainly the deliberate intent. It's also what differentiated it and made it stand out from the rest of the C&C series and other games on the market. RA2 is one of my favorite C&C games because of that.
 
I enjoyed the pulp stuff in Red Alert 2, but it felt very forced in 3.

I think they ran the regular series into the ground the same way; the wide sci-fi stuff just wasn't a compelling setting.
 
I'm still quite fond of the franchise, I actually enjoyed C&C3 and never actually got around to playing 4 so don't know if the hatred it gets is deserved but ahhh... ummm...


Seriously though I wish I could get excited about iOS titles - it's not just the controls (although that's a huge factor) it's the sales models, and EA hasn't filled me with confidence on that front lately.
 
I'm still quite fond of the franchise, I actually enjoyed C&C3 and never actually got around to playing 4 so don't know if the hatred it gets is deserved but ahhh... ummm...

Seriously though I wish I could get excited about iOS titles - it's not just the controls (although that's a huge factor) it's the sales models, and EA hasn't filled me with confidence on that front lately.

Well ... the mobile market seems to have fallen completely in the free to play model ... and most of the games are dumb-ed down to make them casual. There are only a few games left for hardcore players.
 
Well ... the mobile market seems to have fallen completely in the free to play model ... and most of the games are dumb-ed down to make them casual. There are only a few games left for hardcore players.

I think non-free to play mobile games and games with equivalent features/production values to Console/PC games are still coming out. Civilization VI was just released in full-featured PC port form (and full-priced $60 MSRP, though "discounted" to $30) for for the iPad. I just picked up Warbits, an Advance Wars clone, a week or so ago and it was just a few dollars with no other fees or microtransations for that - I'd have happily paid $20-30 for it. The biggest freemium game lately is Fortnite, and that's on par with and also free to play on Consoles/PC.
 
I think non-free to play mobile games and games with equivalent features/production values to Console/PC games are still coming out. Civilization VI was just released in full-featured PC port form (and full-priced $60 MSRP, though "discounted" to $30) for for the iPad. I just picked up Warbits, an Advance Wars clone, a week or so ago and it was just a few dollars with no other fees or microtransations for that - I'd have happily paid $20-30 for it. The biggest freemium game lately is Fortnite, and that's on par with and also free to play on Consoles/PC.

Yes, there are still premium games, fortunately, but its quite difficult to make them profitable and way riskier (due to the higher amount of work needed for a true premium game compared with today's f2p games). On the bright side, the porting from pc to mobiles (or pc/mobile/consoles parallel development) is easier with the power of the latest devices and allow developers to reuse a lot of work resulting in development costs significantly lower.
 
Yeah, that was most certainly the deliberate intent. It's also what differentiated it and made it stand out from the rest of the C&C series and other games on the market. RA2 is one of my favorite C&C games because of that.

Absolutely. I think RA2 struck quite a nice balance with the FMV's (maybe leaning slightly to the campy side) but oh man, what a blast to play. I put more time into RA2 than any other C&C title, easily. Still the best multiplayer experience of the lot, with the possible exception of Generals, which is a fantastic game in its own right.

Damn, how I miss this franchise...
 
If you haven't seen it before, OpenRA is worth checking out.

http://www.openra.net/

Currently, the engine has mods for C&C, RA, and Dune 2000 with C&C2 in the works. It's a lot of fun.

Yep, very familiar with it. I've been playing it for some time. I own all the originals as well. Playing the old games isn't the issue; I have a deep-rooted desire for a new and thoroughly modern C&C. Whether we will ever get one is of course, debatable, since EA is the place where franchises go to die.
 
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