By Gophn

INTRODUCTION

Uprising is an expansion to Red Alert 3, which is part of the long living RTS (real-time strategy) game series of the “Command and Conquer” world…. specifically expanding on the Red Alert series.

The interesting thing about this game was that it was announced to be a single-player expansion, which was strange for a C&C title.

Since I have been a Red Alert fan since the beginning, even getting a chance to beta test a few of them (the last one being the expansion to Red Alert 2, called Yuri’s Revenge), I had to make a review for this game.

Uprising picks up the story from the Red Alert 3 main campaigns, geared towards the Allies storyline… without David Hasselhoff (in one of the RA3 endings), thank goodness.  This expansion, which is pretty massive in size, gave many great optimizations in difficulty and add-ons for the single-player experience.  With 4 mini-campaigns, which has about 10 missions for each campaign, any Red Alert fan would enjoy it since there are added content (units, vehicles, etc.).  But the most amazing thing about this game is the fourth campaign, which is worth the price of the expansion by itself in my opinion.  I will elaborate about the details in a bit.

GAMEPLAY

Like Red Alert 3 and the previous games, this game has simple RTS controls.  The mouse is the main tool for this game, but you can be extremely efficient if you learn to use the keyboard hotkeys for actions and waypoints.  Like the first 3D C&C games (starting with Generals), rotating the battlefield can be useful… but I rarely use this feature when playing since I am pretty used to doing it at the default perspective.

The first thought that came to my mind when I started playing Uprising is that they [the developers] upped the difficulty from the main RA3 gameplay.  I actually liked getting murdered by the AI (artificial intelligence) enemies on Medium difficulty because it forces a player to step it up to either make the proper defenses as fast as they can or efficiently create a counter offense before the initial horde attacks you… very enjoyable.  The pace of each mission is sometimes mixed since you do not know if a mission is as simple as it was stated [during the briefing] or will have a twist or event to expand the battlefield and story.  I had to replay some missions because I thought I was about to finish a mission and was surprised when I had extra objectives when the battlefield was increased and was extremely ill prepared… which led me to a slow and grueling defeat when I had to divert my forces on other parts of the map to my base and objective locations.  I recommend saving your game before finishing the last objective on the list, which may not be the last if the mission gets extended.

Don’t you love hearing the tesla shocks in the morning?

The new units are both amazing and extremely powerful if you know how to use them properly.  I think it might have made the game a bit unbalanced since the most powerful new units are on the Allies and Empire of the Rising Sun factions.  For the Allies, I think the most notable new units are: the Harbinger Gunship (a crazy powerful large plane that rains good distance artillery and gunfire on ground targets, like in the Transformers movie when the same type of plane helped out the crew that survived the initial attack on the US airbase when they were running from the underground-dwelling Decepticon) and the Pacifier FAV (which is a good flashback to Red Alert 2’s Grand Cannon since it is a ground/water unit that can deploy into a cannon that shoots powerful artillery at amazing long distances).  For the Empire of the Rising Sun, the two new units that stand out are the Archer Maiden units (powerful anti-surface/air infantry, which I feel should have been a part of the original RA3) and the most powerful of the new units added to the Uprising expansion… the Giga Fortress (a seriously overpowered unit here; sea/air unit that can literally reign destruction to ground and air targets).  For the USSR (Soviets), they did not really get new powerful units like the other two factions, but they did get some useful ones like Desolator (which is brought back from RA2 for good anti-infantry/vehicle abilities) and the Reaper (anti-surface/air ground walker that looks simple but packs a punch).  The Reaper is strong, but is definitely no match against the distance artillery/bombardment vehicles like the Allies’ Harbinger or the Empire’s Giga Fortress.

Harbinger planes “bringing the rain.”

The most interesting and innovative thing about Uprising is the “Yuriko Campaign.”  It is the first time that I can think of that an RTS turned itself into a dungeon crawler (like Diablo) that can even become a stand-alone game if EA decided that they want to make a spin-off.  In this campaign, you are immersed into a dungeon crawler style gameplay where you have no control over the camera/perspective and you are restricted to simple point-click commands with four hotkeys for the powers.  You are in control of one single unit (Yuriko Omega) the entire time.  She may look like a young Japanese girl, but she has some serious psionic/psychic powers that [in the right hands] can eliminate armies… which are actually the tools to the success of your missions.  Initially, it feels difficult to just use one unit to break out of containment and take on a huge number of enemies… but as you get used to the powers and the best ways to use them, it just becomes fun…. lots of fun.

Why fight when you can mind control others to do your dirty work.

STORY / PLOT

Uprising takes place after the RA3 endings… like previously said, it seems that the Allies have become the main world power again.  During the campaigns, you will find that the story does not really progress as significantly as RA3, but is still interesting for RA3 fans that want to know what happened after the game ended.  The main add-on to the storyline is that a new power has revealed itself… a small independent military contractor company called “FutureTech.” I think that is the main progression of the story since you have to discover this supposed contractor’s major plans for world domination… cheesy, I know, but interesting since they are developing some wicked superweapons.  A lot of the cut scenes of Uprising are interesting to watch since they have many known celebrities as characters in the game… somewhat cheesy… but if you are a Red Alert fan, you would understand that it has always been that way since the first Red Alert.

Run Michael Scofield, run…. wait, wrong series.

I think the most significant storyline that gets built up and has depth is within the “Yuriko Campaign” since it gets you an idea of who this mysteriously powerful girl is and what kind of goals would such a person have to achieve to escape and try to find a normal life.  I do not want to give any spoilers, but she does have a sister that psychically helps her from the beginning of the campaign… whom is probably Yuriko’s only hope for freedom.

So there are at least two of these scary Japanese girls running amuck?!?

GRAPHICS

The graphics of this game are pretty colorful and bright.  The texture and shadow details helps make things look very appealing to look at, especially if you zoom in to check out each individual unit and the number of polygons used to model each unit.  Nothing too spectacular about Uprising over RA3 or even the other C&C 3D games (like Tiberium Wars), but the special effects and explosions are always nice to watch.

The Giga Fortress is a scary thing to behold.

SOUND

I have always loved the soundtrack of the Red Alert series, and Uprising keeps the tradition consistent.  I do not feel the need to be listening to mp3’s when playing a RA game since the soundtracks make you feel like you are still in the right atmosphere and at the same time makes time fly by.  The sound effects are quite solid and crisp… even if there are many explosions and action happening at the same time.

Odd… I thought Linderman died, oops wrong series again.

REPLAYABILITY

The difficulty of this game brought the bar up for Red Alert 3 fans, so they would definitely try to beat the game on Hard if they can.  I especially like the Comander Challenges since it brings you another dynamic into RTS scenarios… and upping the ante to see how well you can survive in a RTS.  The lack of multiplayer in this game is a bit depressing since I would have enjoyed using some of these new units in a human vs. human skirmish.  I was a bit sad about the missing co-op (cooperative) mode when playing the campaigns like in Red Alert 3 as well.  Other than that, everything else seems the same… just single-player style.

Commander’s Challenge for those that are salivating for RTS challenges.

PERFORMANCE

Surprisingly, my three year old notebook (Clevo D900K) with a Nvidia 7800 Go GTX can actually play this game perfectly at native 1920×1200 resolution at mostly high settings.  This game is capped at 30 frames per sec… for some reason, but you can use that cap to try to see if you can max out the settings to see if the game play will drop below 30 FPS or not.  System requirements are pretty good since it will support even 4-5 year old gaming systems.  Something that I found a bit odd for Uprising and RA3 is that they do not fully utilize any multi-core CPUs… meaning that they are single-threaded.  I think if EA gave support to multi-core CPUs, they can increase performance for effects and physics. So glad that the game can still be enjoyed on older hardware.

Scary to think what would happen if this girl actually exists.

CONCLUSION

I greatly enjoyed this expansion.  It gave me a big déjà vu feeling while playing since a lot of it brought me back to the original RA to RA2 and even RA2: Yuri’s Revenge.  Units like the Cryo-Legionnaires did get me annoyed since I liked the “Chrono”-Legionnaires so much better in Yuri’s Revenge.  But this expansion can hold its own especially if they [EA] packages up the Yuriko story and campaign into a new game or even faction.  I would recommend Uprising to anyone that played Red Alert 3 or even a person new to the C&C: Red Alert series because it does show off why this series has survived the test of time.

Definitely worth it to buy this game… if only to just see how fun the Yuriko Campaign is.

Positives

• New units add new dynamic to the game
• Good graphics and sound (and soundtrack)
• Good performance for older systems
• More cut scenes with cameos
• Challenging to the Red Alert fan
• Dungeon crawler in an RTS (Yuriko Campaign)

Negatives

• Could be too challenging for a newbie
• Lack of co-op and multiplayer modes

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