Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2

The Command and Conquer series is one of the biggest and simultaneously smallest strategy game series on the PC. For a period spanning from the mid 90s to the early 00s, you could not talk to a strategy gamer unless you knew about the greatness of Command and Conquer. So, around the close-to-death of the series, Westwood Studios quickly pumped out Red Alert 2, the sequel to the hugely popular Command and Conquer: Red Alert, a modification of the massively popular Command and Conquer. Think of Counter Strike Source is to Counter Strike is to Half Life. Confusing, but that's the essential layout.

Red Alert 2 takes us in the far (near?) future where for some odd reason, Russia is still in it's cold-war power, and some mysterious guy named Yuri pops out of freaking nowhere and decides to start a new war. Yuri has psychic powers and can cause hell, but he'll still have a hard time causing devastation when the other countries have such firepower. Or something.



Anyway, the game plays basically like an oldschool strategy game. Everything is controlled by the mouse with shortcuts on the keyboard, and the game runs real time, but features long times to "Build" buildings and whatnot. The game is all 2d and basically features small sprites running around in a psuedo-isometric landscape, so it's very familiar to PC gamers of the old days. Essentially, think of a rudiamentary version of Age of Empires, and you've got Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2.

The game this time around is very "Techy" and tries to feature new types of weapons and "Futuristic" buildings, but I found them to be a tad bit stale and boring. When your typical fighter (The "Black Hawk", I believe) can only carry one bomb, you're kinda left wondering why. Ore miners can chrono transport back to base in seconds, but god forbid that your planes carry more than one bomb. It makes no sense.

Another issue I have is the general game itself. Being Red Alert 2, which came out around 2000, one would somewhat reasonably expect that the game would run on an engine superior to it's Windows 95 counterpart. No dice. Unfortunately, not only does the game force you in the same shitty small resolution, but the graphics detail options are very restrictive. The engine still installs and generally boots up slowly, and worst of all, it FORCES you to watch the opening sequence, which is about 10 minutes of horrible acting and dribble. When you finally get to the game, you feel like quitting.

Red Alert 2 is also somewhat basic and doesn't have much to expand upon. Once you get the hand of all the different buildings, weaponry, and techniques (Which takes about 30 minutes tops), you find that you'll probably yearn for more. Once you get your Barracks, Airfield, and possibly your Seaport or whatever techy name it's called, that's basically all you get. It then quickly turns into a shit-lobbing match, running tanks, planes, and ships at each other's (Small) bases until you destroy all their power supplies and nuke the hell out of them.



That still doesn't make the game boring. By all means, if you're looking for a strategy game that has unique features, look no further. Essentially all of your bases are movable to some degree, and it also totes a unique system not seen in other games: the "Power" system. Half your game will be spent mining ore to fund power systems, because without power, you can't do anything. Low power means no radio, no spy sattelites, no anything, so far as war is concerned. This means that you find yourself putting a lot of time into building inpenetrable systems to protect your valuable power plants, and not a lot of time in your army. That's okay, because at least the "Easy" mode enemies will do the same.

Speaking of that, the game is extremely hard unless you know what you're doing, ESPECIALLY online. Unlike comparable online games like Counter Strike or even Age of Empires II, the game forces you to quickly assemble and constantly run around in a state of half-death. This makes the game frantic and fast paced, which some strategy gamers (Especially Civ fans) will find frustrating. But again, the learning curve is easy but steep, and you will quickly gain the knowledge you need.

One of my biggest complaints about this game is that it still forces you to watch the videos. I could hit every single button on my keyboard, mouse, or even computer and it wouldn't skip. You have to watch horrible acting by b-movie actors talking about something you really, honestly don't care about. Sure, the story is innovative, but I just want to point-and-shoot, not put up with three hours of horrible acting. Let me repeat. NO SKIP BUTTON. NOT AT ALL. EVER. ANYWHERE.

I'm a huge fan of the Command and Conquer: Red Alert game and expansion packs, so I hate to say it, but I was dissapointed by Red Alert, and I only really spent a few hours on it after purchase. Even with the Yuri's revenge expansion pack, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2 does not present the kind of interesting gameplay or additions that I would expect from the sequel from a really great strategy title. My advice is to stay away from this title, no matter how popular it seems to be- it just doesn't have anything new or good. And once you're done with a 10 minute cutscene before you can even click "Start Game", you'll be tossing the CDs in the trash.

3 star(s) out of 5

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