Today is launch day for Red Alert 3, and I do not have an advance copy.

In fact, I didn't even know the game existed until this past Sunday, when my brother called me while I was at the airport. (Why was I at the airport? I was getting €310 at a nice-ish rate for some spending money on the honeymoon next year: I have to expect to have passed the exam.)

The good news is that my computer can run the game.

The bad news is that my brother can not.

The worse news is that, in the process of searching for a new graphics card for my brother, I discovered that I missed my opportunity to get a second ASUS EN8800GTS for SLI. Can anyone tell me if SLI will work if the specs on the cards are identical, but not from the same manufacturer?

Anyway, the strange title comes from the progenitor of the entire Command & Conquer line:

Back in high school, I had the privilege to play a game put out by Westwood Studios called "Dune II". It was the neatest thing, in that it wasn't Wolfenstein 3D, Tetris, or Scorched Earth (an old tank shell-lobbing game, long live the Funky Bomb!). It was my first taste of RTS, and I was quite hooked.

I'm still not very good at RTS, but I take the same attitude as I do the Pyro in TF2: I'm not playing because I'm good at it, I'm playing because I'm enjoying myself.

In any case, from Dune 2 came Command & Conquer [Tiberian Dawn], and from C&C came C&C:Red Alert. From C&C:Red Alert came C&C:RA 2, then C&C2, C&C3, and now C&C:RA3. And for the first time in...5 iterations, there is a third party without an expansion. Ordos, meet Rising Sun.

I can tell I'm going to be torn between Allied & Rising Sun. Where my brother goes from Soviet, I'll just have to find out when he gets a new card.

-KIE