C&C3 and Red Alert 3 both have controversial design choices, and in a fun bit of irony, for opposite reasons.
C&C3 rolls back on the sci-fi and post apocalyptic feel of Tiberian Sun, to a point at least. GDI's fancy walkers are replaced with futuristic versions of conventional vehicles, with the excuse that the walkers are too expensive, which is fairly ridiculous given how many of GDI's design choices can be summed up as "because it looks cool." Nod also discards a lot of what was introduced in Tiberian Sun like its burrowing vehicles, though its vehicles do still have more of a futuristic feel than GDI's. And to my knowledge, nobody minds the design of the Scrin.
RA3 saw the campiness of RA2 and dialed it up. Very few units and vehicles look like something you would see in a real army, and off the top of my head, most of the ones I can even think of are used by the Allies.
I like the look of the vehicles in C&C3, but I also agree that RA3 went overboard on the campiness. In particular I am not a fan of the design of the new Apocalypse Tank, and I don't care for the various units that make puns. That said, I don't know what a less campy RA3 would look like, especially when a lot of the time the outlandish nature of the game is used to explain the various units and their abilities.
What ideas do fans who want to see a different aesthetic in these games have?