What Would Batman Do?

I thought I could stay strong, I thought I would be able to take it all in small doses, but there’s no use denying it anymore — I’m completely and utterly addicted to Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 .  Maybe it’s the entire ridiculousness of the setting or the sub par acting or the simple fact that every chick in the game is half-naked and clutching an overheated gatling gun; I don’t know.  I do know that I’m in love.

No, not with Natasha.  I’m in love with a game that revels in its own immaturity, that eventually inserts its own little voice in your head, goading you, taunting, “Come on, just one more battle.  You can bomb the shit out of those capitalist pigs for just one more battle.”  This is the unhealthiest relationship I’ve had in years, and that’s saying a lot .  But, oh my Batman, do I love this game.

The story starts out with the leaders of the Soviet Union going back in time to kill Albert Einstein so that he could never create the weapons that would ultimately lead to their downfall.  But wait, it gets better.  This massive change to the universal timeline does keep their archenemies — the Allies — at bay, but this also allows Japan to become a massive world superpower with unparalleled technology (since they never had the atomic bombs dropped on them).

The campaign mode is driven by this drivel, yet it somehow works thanks to the acting of George Takei, Jenny McCarthy, Kelly Hu, Tim Curry, and J.K. Simmons.  The music is fantastic too.  I bought the Premier Edition , which comes included with the entire soundtrack of the game, and it’s the only thing I’ve been listening to for the past week (in between the Jonas Brothers).

And of course, the gameplay itself is fun.  It embraces the zaniness of the story by letting you build and train armored grizzly bears, killer dolphins, and giant samurai robots, then makes you fight your enemies in a format eerily similar to chess.  See, there’s land, air, and sea units and they can only attack certain other types of units.  To make things more complicated, many units can transform themselves or change a weapon, allowing them to attack different units.

I’m probably making it all sound a lot more confusing than it really is.  This might be a completely normal video game style for real-time strategy games; my only other experience with an RTS was Dawn of War , which also consumed (and still does) the entirety of my free time.

I can’t write anymore.  I need to play one more battle and bomb the shit out of those capitalist pigs.  Four and a half batarangs out of five.

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