By far the best RTS game I've seen, with beautiful, detailed graphics, a gripping plot, and great gameplay.
The single player campaign is incredibly well done too, placing you in the point of command of the faceless Captain Parker, a distant relative of Gordon Freeman, judging from his mutism that is somehow ignored, and general camera avoidant nature. The plot involves the Soviets invading the Pacific Northwest, taking Seattle, Tacoma, the Puget Sound and a good chunk of Washington in the process. You end up having to fight them back, with a few flashbacks to the war in Europe involved. The character development is top notch, with meaningful and sympathetic characters, although there is a bit of blatant 'USA is the good guys, Soviets are faceless, evil, bad, horrible communist reds who pirate music and eat their babies.' mentality. Even so, the focus is on the soldiers, and despite it being a bit overpatriotic, the story and characters are all well written.
Gameplaywise, it blew my mind. I have never been in war. I have no plans to go, nor do I think a game can give me an idea of what it's like. But this game makes me really appreciate the value of units, and trying to utilize and save every unit you can. Unlike Starcraft where you can make a bajillion Zerg or Red Alert, where you can send over an entire damn fleet of Kirovs, this makes you learn how to conserve units as well as you can. The gameplay on the singleplayer mode is varied, having various levels with different focuses, ranging from aerial only missions to missions that allow you only paratroopers and tanks, and a slew of other odd things. Frankly, I feel that while that makes it interesting, I also feel that in some ways it detracts from the players ability to create a truly creative and versatile force. (I would so make an entire platoon of repair tanks, and a sniper.) Even so, the limits fit into the plot more or less, and the game isn't too controlling.
Visually, it's incredible. The graphics are some of the best I've seen out of a RTS game, ever. The views of decimated battlefields, peppered with craters from artillery hits and tank corpses is haunting and beautiful at the same time, and the level of detail is supurb, to the point where you can scale down to the level of the troops and notice the scuff on their shoes or the nice detail on the rifles, although the action is so quick that you rarely get the chances to appreciate the levels of detail. The physics seem pretty solid, save for the incident where a encampment somehow got stuck in a wall and was invulnerable to tank attacks, and occasionally seeing streetlamps or tank heads bouncing around long after they've been destroyed.
One of the remarkable aspects of the game was the camera. It allowed you to go anywhere within the map limits, down to the level of the troops, or hovering above the action. A minor complaint is that it wouldn't go higher, but even so, I rarely had any issue ever seeing the level of action I wanted to see. What is even cooler is the dialog soldiers have while idle, which is peppered with hilarious little snippets, although on single player, such idle moments were few and far between.
The voice acting is very well done, and the music is supurb, although very little of it is memorable.
Overall, this game is a beautiful war game. It is incredibly well done, with gameplay that is fast, entertaining, and immersive, with a level of detail that is truly astonishing. I generally don't like RTS games, being a fan of survival horror and shooters myself, but I have to admit that this is one of the best RTS games I have ever played, and I have a feeling I'll be revisiting it soon. If you haven't played it, it's really worth a shot.