Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 just came out, and I was wondering if anyone knew if it is worth buying. I know that it is from the blacklisted EA, but it is still a C&C game, which used to be pretty good (although they're nothing compared to Sins). Does it have the intrusive DRM that EA is known for? Is it any good? Should I even consider buying it? If you can tell me anything useful, thank you in advance.
From what I've seen it looks pretty good, but I,m still somewhat jaded from the pile for shit that was C&C3.
I'm pretty sure it DOES have SecurROM, and probably activation limits as well. I probably won't buy it until it's been out for a few months, if I ever do buy it.
Sadly, C&C games are the only reason I'd ever consider breaking my EA boycott, and C&C3 make maintaining the boycott much easier.
That's pretty much the same position I'm in. I never actually bought C&C 3, but my friend got it and the expansion by less then legal means. He is very gald that he didn't actually obtain it through normal methods, if you know what I mean. I played it a little, and it is terrible. Most of the reveiws that I've seen for RA3 say its pretty good, but they don't mention the copy protection. As you said, C&C is the only reason that I would buy from EA, but if I'm going to, it had better be a really, really good game.
I am a HUGE red alert fan. however i bought C&C 3 (sigh... and the exapnsion) and was soooo horribly disapointed i cant bring myself to pony up the the cash for Red Alert 3 even though part of me REALLLY wants it. I think ill just wait a bit to see what the verdict is on it. if its not spactacular... ill probably wait for some other means of being able to play it. (LIKE A FRIEND GETTING IT! gosh what are you guys thinkin )
I was doing some more research, and I found IGN's reveiw of it. They gave it an 8.2. Although they didn't mention anything about the DRM. It didn't go into much detail, but here is the link to the reveiw, anyway:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/924/924694p1.html
Securom DRM is included. 5 activation limit was the story two weeks ago. It may change, it may not, but they seem to think that it more than generous. I know I don't.
That really sucks. I guess I won't be playing RA3 anytime soon. Of course, I don't want to support EA, so I might not have gotten it anyway. This is just the final nail in the coffin.
They just HAD to buy Westwood, grumble grumble.
Yeah, it's probably gonna be a great game. I loved all of the Command & Conquers, except "Generals."
Agreed. That's like telling a starving person three grains of rice is generous.
I really don't know what they are thinking with the 5 activation limit. All it does is annoy their paying customers.
I was in the beta but honestly I don't see myself buying it. It is a lot of the same thing which might not be a bad thing for some but having played all in the c&c series, I rather spend it on a game that tries something new. The gamespot review made me laugh though. He pointed out more flaws then good things yet still gave it an 8.
As to the DRM, from the horse's mouth:
So yeah, on-line activation when installing, 5 activation limit, SecuROM DRM payload. Pass.
I will get the game eventually for exactly two reasons.
1. The soundtrack.
2. The mods. (When they come out, of course.)
I was in the beta, and have owned every c&c game (except renegade, the FPS), and I will NOT buy this game thanks to Securom and more importantly the 5 activation limit. It is sad. Hope they learn that DRM punishes legitimate users; costs them customers.
An EA game? That means I won't buy it. Actually, it just means that there's a 90% chance I won't buy it, and a 70% chance that the game was rushed, buggy, and/or utter triol.
Invasive or arbitrarily restrictive DRM means I'll never buy it. I can see the thought process behind it all, but it boggles my mind when you punish your loyal customers while the pirates are playing a superior product.
If it's just so amazing that I can't live without playing it , I'll buy a copy and never open the box, and just DL a DRM-free version, which is something I won't feel bad or immoral about.
here here, ill drink to that
I was in the beta too. I BARELY played it. Just like C&C3 in my opinion. The units are way over-priced and are way too weak. I hate the whole mentality that is turning RTS games in to action games. I'd much more appreciate supcom style RTS games.
I won't buy it. I want to I really do but I won't.
It's surprising. They are putting on copy protection and they only thing it seems to do is forcing legitimate users to download a crack for it. Strange. Really strange.
I do have to give them a hands up on the no cd necessary to play. That's good. One good step. wish all games did that.
I am also not a big fan of the direction of the c&c franchise. Especially with RA3, there is just to much unit micromanagement. I don't want transforming robot crap army. 10 guys that change from air to ground but still suck, wow, who cares. I would have been happier with a true update to the original RA3 which was not this ridiculous or cartoony.
I see everyone jumping on the "5 activation" bandwagon. What, each one of you wants to install, and play this game ONLINE on 5+ computers..? Unless you do, for whatever weird reason, I don't see why anyone cares.
Played several skirmishes last night, and it's not bad, but wish they kept the squad thing from C&C3. I'm sick of "1 infantry at a time" type RTS games. :/
It's more the principle of the thing for many of us (btw, you're limited to 5 activations in single player or multiplayer). Imagine if this crops up on all games going forward. Imagine you upgrade your system regluarly, or tweak your BIOS when you're looking for a better/stable overclock. Now, let's assume you get an activation back if you uninstall the game first (not all games with this 'protection' do this). Would you look forward to wasting your time uninstalling every game you have and then reinstalling them again every time you performed the above operation(s) on your rig?
Or how about those of us with more than one rig, one or more of which may not be connected to the internet. So you have to connect every time you go through the above procedure.
Not to mention the glaring fact that this is supposed to curb piracy? But it DOESN'T.
Besides the stupid DRM stuff, I won't buy because of its design.
RA was fun, RA2 was almost too campy for my taste and RA3 looks absolutely ridicolous (and not in a good way). T&A for the win seems to be their slogan, no thanks.
And I didn't liked C&C3 fast paced micro gameplay anyway (and its sucky story neither).
I get your point. While I don't tweak my BIOS to overclock, why would you have to uninstall games when upgrading your PC? I've done hardware upgrades, and didn't have to touch anything IN the HD. Now, about uninstalling..if you don't clean your registry, won't your registration info remain on the comp, even after uninstalling?
I also understand people have more than 1 rig, as I have this desktop and a laptop, but 5 still seems a bit much.
For me it's just principle. Why should I put up with a company that punishes it's customers.
Sorry for OT but this thread has completely derailed.
Why do people care so passionately about 5 activation limit? Yeah ok so it's worse than unlimited but how many legitimate customers is this going to affect really? You can uninstall the game and reinstall the game later and you still have only used 1 activation. You can install this on a work PC and a home PC and still be able to change your PC 3 times before you need to contact EA.
I change my PC at most every 2 years so I get almost 10 years of play (if I install on every PC) before I need to contact EA to get new activations.
I keep reading customers being treated like criminals but how? Pretty sure EA wouldn't allow criminals to install their game on 5 different PCs and then give them more activations when the criminals ring them up. Customers are being 'punished', well how? The people being punished are those who buy 1 game and share with all their friends, which I'm sorry but is not legitimate use.
I'm partly being devil's advocate as I'm not the biggest fan of EA but any thread that mentions an EA game just gets filled with a pitch fork wielding mob and nobody makes any sense. This whole anti EA thing is turning in to some kind of online religion, 1 star reviews on all sites, bashing EA on every forum on the internet. And I'm absolutely certain that the vast majority of the Zealots who join this anti-EA crusade haven't even been adversely affected by Securom.
On the other side of the fence I hate the way Securom makes resale worthless now and I feel sorry for people that get hit by poor coding and have to ring EA when their PC starts going tits up.
Why is there a limit at all? Is there some reason the old 'cd-key required for online play' system doesn't work anymore? I generally buy RTS' to play with my friends online. If pirating a game prevents me from playing multiplayer, then there is no value for me to pirate it. There is Hamanchi with TCP/IP or LAN, but most people consider it garbage at this point due to the crazy lag it generates on modern games, and possibly security risks. It's not the 5-install thing that enrages people, it's the fact that EA thinks such a limit will accomplish anything other than inconvinience 1 in a 100 paying customers, while pirates don't have to worry about such things. It's also a known fact that many DRM programs can cause problems on your machine. When your shitty DRM is affecting my day to day activity on the computer for no good reason, then it's no surprise that people will start boycotting your products.
Name one good, well-supported RTS EA have made. Generals and the BFME games were buggy, very poorly balanced, and featured rush, rush, RUSH HARDER DAMN IT 'gameplay'. Can't speak for C&C 3, but everything I've heard about suggests it wasn't well received either. They all got little in the way patch support to try and fix any of their problems. This combined with the intrusive DRM is why I will not even consider RA3. I have been burned quite enough by them, thank you very much.
Because the activation is tied to the hardware hash. Change the hardware, and you change the hash. Therefore you must reactivate the game. A BIOS change is seen as a hardware change.
See my above post for an explanation of why the uninstalling/reinstalling is more than unsavory.
So because you're not affected it makes everyone else's complaints somehow not legitimate? What about people that do change their hardware on a regular basis? Or those that like to tinker with and tweak their systems? Are they somehow not legitimate customers?
I don't personally buy into the being treated like criminals argument. As to the people being punished being those that want to share with their friends, that's a bogus argument. The 5 activation limit actually allows you to share the game with your friends if you want. The old, simple disc check prevented you from doing that. Even if you couldn't lend it to your firends, all they need to do is DL the game from a pirate site and have it DRM free anyway. This DRM does nothing to stop piracy in any way,
Quite possibly they haven't. Most of those are probably offended in principle, and they have every right to be. I personally have been bitten by SecuROM. Twice. I don't pirate games. I don't even have any of the blacklisted software on my rig. But I was locked out of BioShock after adding another hard drive. That's a second drive for storage purposes, not a new one for the OS. I'm one of those peolpe that overclock their rig and upgrade a piece of hardware frequently. I buy all my games. Why do I need to deal with this crap as an honest and paying customer? The pirates don't.
The resale issue is just another in the long list.
But it's not just when it goes tits up. It can be for may other reasons as well. So you're stuck with either getting on the phone to tech support and paying by the minute, or you have to go through e-mail channels. If the former, you can easily rack up enough charges to actually have been better off just buying the game again (which EA would love, don't you think?). If the latter, you can wait days before you get it resolved. If you want to sit down and play your game on Friday, waiting until Monday or Tuesday before you can actually start the damned thing doesn't look all that appealing does it? Wouldn't you be pissed off that you'd paid 50 or more dollars for a game and you can't play it? And then, even if you do get another activation, god help you if something goes wrong on your rig again and you have to go through the process once more. Rinse and repeat.
Now, extrapolate that above scenario to every game you have installed on your rig. That's what you'll be facing if this type of DRM starts appearing on all games going forward (which is waht EA wants to do, and now other publishers are starting to jump on the bandwagon as well). Is that what you want to deal with? Do you begin to see why people are complaining? It's not the pirates complaining. They don't give a rat's ass.
Haha that's why I said I don't like EA, mostly they turn out tripe that sells in droves because the EA marketing machine is top notch. I also think they own Gamespot and other review sites, C&C 3 is a 9.something game?! lol fuckers.... I was idiot enough to buy Spore, live and learn though.
I do think that their attempts to protect their products are misguided though. If Piracy is several different monsters, the l33t warez torrent download kiddies are a Cyberdemon, the people who share games in class or whatever are an imp. They are causing a lot of customer dissatisfaction in justifying killing the cyberdemon but in reality all they are doing is shooting the imp.
Let's keep this discussion rational, I was giving my example as a probably average consumer.
I'm not going to get in to a massive internet argument (read: waste of my life) about why EA's DRM is bad, I was just inferring with my line of questioning that everyone acts like pitch fork wielding nut nuts at the mention of anything to do with EA when really is what they are doing the end of the world? Their intentions are not immoral, they are just badly implemented.
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