Yeah, they definitely went a bit too cartoony in places. The Allied and Rising Sun designs were okay for the most part. I didn't like the Allied bombers, they looked more akin to a WW2 bomber than a sleek modern bomber.
The soviet designs were pretty ridiculous. The Apocalypse and Hammer tanks looked so cartoony in their design and their animation, they both looked like they were going to shake themselves apart when just sitting there idling. The sickle looked stupid too and the infantry launcher, literally straight out of a circus. The exaggerated shaking was just totally ridiculous though, it annoyed me the most. The Tesla Coil guard tower looked stubby too, with such a large brick base and just a few small actual coils. The Spectrum Tower also looked stubby and had a backwards design compared to the Prism Tower from RA2, which had 6 emitters on a rotational hub. The Spectrum tower had 4 emitters on a fixed hub, so how does it hit things 45 degrees between each emitter? - I find that amount of refraction from the small emitters and hub unlikely!
I think the allied artillery suffered from the same stupid shaking [Athena Cannon]. The Mirage Tank had the field projection panels on its sides flopping all over the place too as it moved - which didn't just look stupid, but I'd imaging projecting a believable false image with the emitters flopping around at random, until they stabilise after the tank stops moving, would be a difficult task, actually impacting the functionality of the tank and the panels themselves don't need to move when projecting a false image, so they should just be fixed rigidly in place like they were in RA2!
I know it's a little early to start comparing two games that have only just been announced and yes I know StarCraft 2 has been around for a little longer. I'll start with what I know, and then I will make an educated guess.
The Announcements
The StarCraft 2 announcement was surrounded by a whole lot of WOW! They started a countdown on the Blizzard website and went to Korea in front hundreds of die hard StarCraft fans and announced the game with a CGI video [that rocked] and showed off some game play.
The Red Alert 3 announcement was made on a Command and Conquer 3 vodcast by two very annoying people. No game play footage was shown, no full motion video or CGI.
The Launch Websites
The StarCraft 2 website is a masterpiece, it really is. The design is stunning. It's a well crafted mix of Flash animation, CSS and XHTML. The background at the bottom of the site is enough to say "Hey that's neat".
The Red Alert 3 website looks to be a table-based design with a terrible use of colours, fonts, massive bold links... It looks like something a trainee could whip up in a day or two with Photoshop and Microsoft FrontPage.
The History
Blizzard has a history of great games. StarCraft, WarCraft, and Diablo - They all rock! I even played World of WarCraft for a while and I hate RPGs...
EA Games makes average games that require ridiculous system specs and have terrible online and LAN playability. The Red Alert franchise has had it's ups and downs, Red Alert - The Aftermath being the up and Yuri's Revenge being the down.
My Prediction
We will play Red Alert 3 when we are sick of playing StarCraft 2. We will walk away gloating about our Carriers and Battle cruisers while we discuss what Red Alert 2 could have been.
Combined Screenshots
Red Alert 3
My Red Alert 3 Announcement Coverage
Red Alert 3 Homepage
StarCraft 2
My StarCraft 2 Annoucement Coverage
StarCraft 2 Homepage
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