While it presents itself fairly well and is fairly fun, RA3 is ultimately a shallow addition to the C&C series
While the story line is a little melodramatic, it at least makes sense... in all its absurdity. The cut scenes do in fact look good, and the cheesy acting may give you a laugh or two, and it does help the story to progress along.
Personally, I liked the soundtrack that they brought to the game. While nothing incredibly innovative, it did fit the game's style very well, and added to the fast paced gameplay.
The multiplayer client is very good. Unlike Tiberium Wars, the new client hooks up much faster, runs faster, and even looks much better, and is well integrated into the game. The new schema makes it far easier to pop into a multiplayer game and find yourself an opponent or co-commander.
The co-commander idea itself was, in my opinion, a brilliant notion. While it does need a lot of work, as having a commander by your side didn't really "bring" anything amazing into the campaign, there's something satisfying in the experience of playing a strategy game campaign alongside your friend, and it will be exciting to see where this is taken in the future. Strategy-wise... the game leaves a lot to be desired. Dumping the well-crafted resources schema of Red Alert 2.... the game leaves you saying "huh?" a lot of the time, especially if you were a fan of the predecessor. Furthermore, the factions hardly feel balanced at all. On certain maps, some factions will clearly dominate due to their specialties, thus this game needs a lot of tweaking before it can be called a proper online competitive experience.
On top of this, the tremendously hyped "secondary-abilities" of each and every unit failed to deliver. While it did contribute well to the amount of micro-management needed to rise victorious online, the fact that EVERY unit had a special ability was slightly annoying, and was more so of a frustration than a genuine innovation.
The game also has pretty ridiculous PC requirements. For a strategy game, it takes a chunk out of your computer, so you'll need a pretty decent rig to play this game on its highest, due to the excessive attention to water effects and explosions. In addition, many of you out there will find the colorful design scheme out of your taste, although personally it didn't bother me too much. Ultimately, while C&C Red Alert 3 is a pretty fun game and will probably worth your while to check out if you're a strategy junkie, there are just so many far superior titles out there (Kane's Wrath being a perfect example multiplayer wise for a title of the same "franchise"), that Red Alert 3 will hardly suck you in for very long.