Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 brings an absurd alternate history of the Cold War between the Soviets, the Allies, and the Empire of the Rising Sun to a real-time strategy game featuring live-action cutscenes, over-the-top comic-book units, and a two-player co-op campaign that can be played as any of the three factions, each with its own story and its own take on military technology, from classic tanks to giant walking machines. The game became especially famous for its live-action cutscenes with real actors, whose bizarre plot about a fight for world domination gives it a lighthearted, campy quality that has helped the series stay popular among players to this day.

The PlayStation 3 version arrived only in 2009, a year after the PC and Xbox 360 releases, and is content-wise based on them - it brings the same campaign, the same factions, and the same live-action cutscenes with actors unchanged, including the ability to play through the whole campaign in two-player co-op. Controls were adapted for the DualShock 3 similarly to the Xbox version, using radial menus controlled with the analog sticks instead of a mouse; the PS3 version also didn't offer native keyboard and mouse support, which the PC version had for players who preferred more precise controls. The one-year gap from the other platforms meant PlayStation 3 players could watch PC and Xbox 360 owners enjoy the game well before they got to play it themselves. Compared to the PC release, this means purely gamepad-based control of the strategy game, which makes it more accessible to console players but also strips away the precision of unit selection and micromanagement that the RTS genre is accustomed to on PC. Despite these limitations, the PS3 version offers the complete campaign for all three factions as well as online multiplayer over the PlayStation Network with the same maps and game modes the PC and Xbox 360 versions had a year earlier, so PlayStation 3 players ultimately didn't end up with a lesser experience, just a delayed one.

Why play it: Anyone who prefers gamepad controls will appreciate that, despite the year-long delay, the PS3 version offers the same campaign and two-player co-op as the PC and Xbox 360 versions, just without keyboard and mouse support.