Command & Conquer: Red Alert

The Good
After plunging through the PSX version of the first Command & Conquer (which I'll from now on refer to as Tiberian Dawn), it took quite a few years before I laid my hands on the later games in the series. It was only after buying the First Decade compilation that I eventually took the opportunity to play through the rest of the C&C series, starting with Red Alert.

While Tiberian Dawn took place in a realistic modern day setting, Red Alert takes on the battlegrounds of alternative history. It starts off with Albert Einstein (yes, THE Albert Einstein) using a self-made time machine to transport himself back in time to eliminate Adolf Hitler before his rise to power as leader of Nazi Germany. And Einstein does so not by shooting or stabbing him, but by the mere power of a handshake! Yeah, somehow Hitler disappears from direct physical contact with a guy from the future. Makes no sense, but hey, this is Red Alert, the game series that would feature mind controlled squids and psychotic Japanese school girls in its sequels, so just throw all sense of logic and real life physics out of the window right now!

But things didn't exactly go the way Einstein thought they would, as now the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin himself has free reign to commence their own plans for world domination! In a desperate attempt to stop the Commies' march, the Western nations (including Germany) join forces and become the Allies and so a devastating conflict begins for control over Europe.

The gameplay of Red Alert is very similar to its predecessor's. Once again, it's a Real Time Strategy game (RTS) wherein base building, unit training, resource gathering, attack and defense all have to be taken care of simultaneously. There's little time to think things over, as your enemy may be sending an army of tanks your way while you're casually building a few more ore refineries or silos. It is very important to prepare yourself for any possible situation. Base and unit building remains the same, click on the icon representing the unit or structure you want to have built and watch as the icon slowly starts to light up. Once it's fully lit, your unit will appear on screen or your structure can be deployed next to another of your buildings. Just make sure to have enough power plants built as some structures require quite a lot of energy to operate. You don't want your defenses to stop functioning just when you need them the most!

Just as in Tiberian Dawn, you have two playable factions each with their own unique set of units, structures and storyline consisting of about 15 missions each. Both these storylines will eventually lead to your chosen faction standing tall over the dead and broken bodies of the other side. Once again, the game uses live-action cut scenes to tell its story and they are significantly better than Tiberian Dawn's mainly because they now have a true Hollywood movie feel to them. In the previous game, it was just one person briefing you about your next mission, but in Red Alert, there's a lot more going on than just plain mission briefings. Some memorable scenes include Tanya's escape from the Soviet prison camp during the Allied campaign and Gradenko's death at the hands of Nadia in the Soviet campaign by drinking her excellent, self-made (and poisoned) tea. In other words, the cutscenes are a lot more action packed, engaging and therefore more fun to watch.

But story isn't the only thing that Westwood improved to the C&C formula. The gameplay is also significantly faster in pace. Building structures, training units and gathering resources goes quicker, allowing you more time to spend on the fun stuff, that is blowing your foes to kingdom come! Not only is the game more exciting thanks to its faster gameplay, but there's also a ton of new stuff added to the game including naval and aerial combat. Both sides have also received better balancing and overall they feel completely different from one another.

When you play as the Allies, you have access to fast moving, rapid-firing lightweight tanks, naval cruisers and you can steal intelligence or money using spies and thieves respectively. The Allies therefore specialize in meticulous planning and unit efficiency. The Soviets, on the other hand, use big and powerful assault tanks, jet fighter planes and submarines. They emphasize brutality and land-based attacks combined with the best air force units in the game. The Soviets' heavy emphasis on tanks can be effectively countered using Allied bazooka troops and landmines while the Allied naval prowess can be kept at bay using Soviet submarines. And while the Soviets have fast and powerful aircraft, the Allies possess excellent anti-air defenses. In other words, there is a suitable countermeasure for every unit or situation in the game.

The alternative history setting is used to full extent here, as new, weird sci-fi technology becomes highly prevalent in this game. The Allies, for instance, have access to the Chronosphere, which basically allows their units to teleport across the entire game map. The Soviets can use the Iron Curtain force field, which makes units or structures completely invulnerable for a short period of time. The Soviets also have Tesla coils, probably the coolest base defense weapon ever created. These are electric poles which zap every enemy stupid enough to come close enough!

The game's soundtrack is once again made by Frank Klepacki and he easily outdoes his already great Tiberian Dawn musical score with this iteration. The soundtrack is once again a mix of heavy metal with electronic music and military styled orchestra. Some tracks are very upbeat while others are dark and sinister. This is also the first game to include the now famous Hell March theme, definitely one of the most iconic video game music tracks ever created! Sound effects are pretty good (although I prefer those from Tiberian Dawn). Particularly Tanya and the spy units are fun to listen to. Tanya, like her predecessor the Commando, likes to spit out one liners for every kill she makes or building she blows up. She loves to laugh out loud or shout "let's rock" or "ka-ching!" The spy has a awesome cliché British accent and wears a tuxedo like James Bond. For king and country indeed!

The Bad
The game's difficulty is pretty cheap. You have three difficulty levels but they only change the number of hit points your units have compared to your enemy's. It doesn't change the enemies strategy at all, so expect the AI to attack you as ferociously on easy as they will do on hard, they will only go down easier.

The game's super weapons (Chronosphere and Iron Curtain) are pretty much useless. They only allow you to use it on a single unit at the time and in the case of the Chronosphere, the teleported unit will eventually return to its original location.

Unfortunately, the Soviets do not have a unique hero unit. I really wished they had a fun counterpart for the Allies' Tanya. Even a recolored and renamed Tanya unit would have been enough for me. Just imagine playing a few Soviet missions controlling a Soviet girl named Natasha and have her blow up Allied tanks using a portable Tesla coil or something like that.

The Bottom Line
One of the finest RTS games ever made. Red Alert takes everything from its predecessor, improves on the stuff that wasn't that great and jacks the good stuff up on steroids! If you liked Tiberian Dawn, than I cannot help but oblige you to check this game out. And like Tiberian Dawn, the game has been made freeware and it can easily be optimized for modern systems and widescreen resolutions. So go download this game and experience how cool alternative history can be!

The Good
Recently I played Red Alert for the first time, almost 5 years after its release. I've always disliked Red Alert (and its sequels), without ever really playing it. It annoyed me that these games sold so well, while there were many games out there that were a lot more innovating. I kind of considered it the Britney Spears of video games. But guess what, after playing it for a couple of weeks I had to admit that it is actually not that bad it all.

The gameplay, although not offering much that we had not seen before, kept me coming back for more until I completed both campaigns. Somehow these RTS games are always addicting. I liked the variety of the missions, not every mission requires you to build a base and destroy the computer's base. The indoor missions were a novelty and I was surprised when the map, with which I started a mission, depended on the way you finished a previous mission. If you complete Allied mission 2 with a well fortified base, Allied mission 4 would be easier to complete. Moreover there are often two or more possible maps available for a mission. The maps and backgrounds generally look good (when you play the game in Windows with SVGA graphics, that is) and there is some interaction with the maps (blowing up bridges and barrels).

Red Alert has some nice units like the attack dog, the spy, the mine-layer and the engineer which allows you to capture an enemy building and produce your opponents units. With the wide range of units available, you can use a wide range of different strategies and often the "Tank Rush" tactic isn't your best option. The Soviets have a lot of very strong tanks and they can use the tank rush tactic, when you're playing with the Allies however, you'll have to pick your targets carefully (their units rely more on stealth and sneaky maneuvers). First use choppers to destroy the power plants or your tanks will be fried by the Soviet Tesla Coils. Generally, every attack strategy has a defensive counter strategy. Too bad the A.I. only uses a couple of them.

Some other things I liked about this game:

• The music and the soundtrack. The Russian accent might be a bit stupid but the explosions sound impressive.
• Both sides play really different.
• You can say what you want about the FMV sequences, I would not want to miss them. They keep the story going and I think the game would be less fun without them.
• The story line is a very unbelievable piece of nonsense, but I liked it. At least it isn't your usual "stop the alien invasion" or "in a post apocalyptic world two sides fight for the remaining resources" story. It was fun to receive a briefing from Stalin.
• You can easily add units to an existing group, and you can design a route around dangerous enemy units using way-points.
• The computer medic will automatically heal enemy soldiers.
• There's just one resource, which keeps you focused on the battle.
• It offers you a chance to play with the Soviet and crush the Allied forces.

The Bad
The single player campaign is not very challenging because of bad computer A.I. The A.I. doesn't seem to respond or react to your actions. It never adapts its strategy, it just sits there and waits for you to come. Usually a mission is only difficult because you start out with a couple of units while the computer has a well-fortified base. But as soon as you have managed to defend yourself the battle is virtually over. All you have to do is build a couple of aerial units and take out those unprotected harvesters and you've won the game (unfortunately you usually still have to destroy all enemy units and structures, which takes quite a while). The computer never repairs his units, keeps attacking from a few directions (so dropping mines in front of your base is a cheap remedy against those expensive Mammoth tanks), keeps sending small groups of units which are cannon fodder for your base defenses (you can easily fortify yourself), and enemy units will usually not respond when one of their comrades is attacked (too bad your units suffer from the same problem).

Some other things I disliked:

• The graphics are very small, so it is difficult to find a medic in a group of soldiers. Tank and ship animations are poor, these units can only move in eight directions (East, NE, North etc.).
• The "formation" option is useless, everything gets messed up when units bump into each other.
• Units easily lose selection, very annoying.
• When attacking, guide everything manually or you will probably lose the battle. If you attack with a group, units in the back of the group will not defend/assist the front row.
• Pathfinding problems, tanks get confused when negotiating a narrow pass or bridge. Units take their own route when they hit an object (usually another unit) and walk straight into enemy fire.
• You can't build anywhere you want, a new building has to be placed adjacent to an old one.
• Some units become obsolete as the game progresses. Why would anyone want to build a light tank when you can also build a medium tank?

The Bottom Line
Actually this game is better then I expected and I must admit I enjoyed playing it. I never played a multiplayer game, so I can't judge that part of the game.

The Good
It doesn't take much under the hood to run this game. The graphics aren't flashy but they get the job done and were pretty good at the time.

The multiplayer is where this game shines. Although there is really only one way to play (make tanks then attack), it is still somehow highly addictive and extremely fun, despite the fact that every game was the same. The action is fast from the start of a game, and missing one second can cost you the game. The controls are easy, and you won't waste any time trying to remember what to push to do a certain thing.

Games can be over in less the two minutes or can last a couple hours, depending on what map you choose to play on. The in game map maker helped keep this gaming going for as long as it has, because the most popular maps came out of that, not the maps that came with the game.

It was (see below) really easy to find a game and start playing right away, and when done with that game you could move right on to another without delay.

The multiplayer server is clean, simple, and easy to use. It rarely lags or crashes, and has no bugs.

The Bad
However, hardly anyone plays it anymore, so the whole reason for buying it, the multiplayer, has fizzled.

The single player missions were only average, but the nice pace kept me going till I finished them. Albeit a year after I bought it (why do single player when you can play multi?). The AI itself is horrible, but because of the way most missions are set up you don't notice. However, when you go to play a skirmish game, it is glaringly obvious. Beating the AI is like taking candy from a baby; incredibly easy.

Hardly any units were usable, and the dominant strategy by far was to pump tanks and run over your opponent with them. After a few years that gets boring, and not even new maps can save it.

Recently a rash of cheating has popped up, and RA is too old for Westwood to try to fix any of the cheats. The only way to know you're not being cheated on is to play a friend.

The Bottom Line
A fast and furious game. Very one dimensional but the multiplayer is a blast.

The Good
Command & Conquer: Red Alert made some huge steps forward considering it only came about a year after the original Command & Conquer for DOS. The biggest thrill are now absolutely fantastic pre-rendered cutscenes that feel like watching a movie, u-boats, fighter jets, tanks, turrets, it's all there, and there's plenty of them to watch. Acting is now much more fun as there are more than just a single person looking right at you and giving you some mission briefing. It's absolutely fantastic how cheesy yet perfect the acting is, it is bad, it is funny, but the fact is it wouldn't be so great if it was any better. It is interesting to see how each of them is trying to use you to achieve their own goals, while plotting to overthrow each other (Soviet campaign movies are just plain priceless, they all kill each other in those FMVs sooner or later, until you end up with Kane, the only bad guy worth following ;)

The story is set in the past as Einstein found a way to travel through time and removed Hitler out of the way. With World War II never happening, Stalin somehow came to an idea to seize control over the globe. The game fits nicely so you can later claim that original C&C is its actual sequel. They totally ruined everything with appearance of RA2 afterwards which split the franchise into Red Alert and Command & Conquer and put a solid barrier between their timelines with very little connection whatsoever.

Missions are now stretching only across the Europe, and you are given a choice to play as Allied or Soviet commander, which will eventually lead you to rather satisfying though peculiar endings. Can't figure out why some people didn't like them, they're quite okay if I do say so myself. Again, Frank did masterful work with the music as it fitted the red storm idea up to the teeth, and is nothing short of perfection. Unlike many other games of a sort, C&C was well greeted for varying arsenal on both sides, not just giving you same unit with different looks. Red Alert makes the battle strategies even more diverse as the balance of power is more than cool. Playing as soviet commander you'll notice you absolutely have supremacy concerning tank vehicles which can crush even the top allied ones although less in numbers. On the other hand, allied tanks compensate their weakness with the speed. On the water, however, allies take all the pride as their navy is quite ferocious and their cruiser ships can devastate bases from screens afar. Opposing compensation lies with the subs, stealth and only able to destroy naval targets and shipyards. The air supremacy is on the side of Soviet forces, and now you can have airfields to host as many fighters as you can build, not just call the backup in a form of reinforcements from out of the screen.

Many new structures serve the purpose but are not always the same, although they could've made different looking factories, though. Turrets are different as allies tried to make those that can withstand soviet tanks, while soviet forces focused more on repelling light tanks and infantry crowds. And of course, there are secret technologies aiding both sides which usually become available on later levels, or right from the start if you feel like playing a skirmish or multiplayer game. Also, the biggest thrill is that Windows version has higher resolution thus showing more of the battlefield, fancy icons, and still running just swell, in other word, great.

The Bad
The whole idea of putting three difficulty levels in the game is quite ridicule if they only serve to lower your shield and firepower and increase that of the enemy. Real-time strategy is all about the strategy and the only element that should define difficulty should be computer's AI and how well is responses to your threat and tactics, cheating just isn't fun.

Sometimes computer can block itself with its own units. That is both good an bad, but it's a bug so it's bad. The good thing game-wise is that you can rest from the constant attacks, but once you determine to go un-block computer's units, you better come in huge numbers because the longer it stays blocked, the more units it will produce that will just wait in the base you'll have to conquer.

The Bottom Line
A fine RTS, no, probably the best RTS ever made, what later they ruined with Red Alert 2 is up to the association with now known EA Pacific, and bad usage of cinematics and wasted talent of some great actors included. Original Red Alert has none of that, acting is both great and fun, missions are interesting and progressive, soundtrack is catchy, and cinematics are breathtaking. In spite of being the predecessor of cheesy looking RA2, the original Red Alert still saved some sort of seriousness in its own self so it doesn't look like a parody but a well blend mixture of fun, entertainment, and presentation.

The Good
Red Alert (RA) is an undeniably stylish game, just like its predecessor. I kinda like the alternate history approach the designers took in crafting the storyline. It’s still a little too B-movie sci-fi for my taste, but a step in the right direction, nonetheless. After all, you do get to kill Commies. “Better dead than Red!”

The graphics are significantly improved from C&C, at least in the Windows 95 version of RA. The units are still pretty small, and the overall look of the game isn’t as impressive as that of Warcraft 1 & 2, but it was an improvement. The enemy AI is not brilliant by any means, but it’s persistent, and it can throw you for a loop once in a while. Frankly, I’ve seen much worse. Westwood also included a solo skirmish mode this time around, which definitely adds to RA’s replay value. Why didn’t they think of that before?

I liked the slick packaging and the shiny, thorough instruction manual. They both fooled me into thinking RA was going to be a fun game to play.


The Bad
Let’s face it: Red Alert is still a C&C game, which means it’s a big, cheesy, buggy mess. Surely all of the critics who said RA was even better than Warcraft II were joking.

RA is at least as unbalanced as the original C&C, perhaps even more so. While I appreciate the thought behind making the two sides distinct, the game is spoiled by the fact that the Soviets clearly have the better units. The Allies are inferior in ground and air forces, and while they have the superior naval forces, that won’t do you much good unless you are playing on a water-based map. Whichever side you choose, the unit variety is strictly for appearance’s sake. For example, I can’t see why a Soviet player would produce anything but the heaviest tanks. And thus the infamous RTS “tank rush” phenomenon was born, I suppose.

Units continue to be woefully unresponsive to orders. Or else they just respond so stupidly as to be beyond belief. If there is an unnecessarily long and circuitous route for your units to take to get from Point A to Point B, you can rest assured that they will find it! It’s also still a challenge just to select your units and get the selection to stick for very long. Maps and missions continue to be too puzzle-like for an alleged “strategy” game. It’s the same hair-pullingly maddening design as before, just slightly upgraded, tweaked and repackaged as a brand new game. Why didn’t the professional reviewers mention any of this stuff when RA came out?

The Bottom Line
If you liked C&C, you’ll probably like Red Alert even more. If you’re like me, though, you won’t care for either one.

The Good
The sound - the tunes are nice, but so are the unit sound effects (particularly Tanya ("Ka-ching!!")).

The campaign - I was introduced to this game by way of "RA:Aftermath", which my brother and his friends liked to play in skirmish mode. One of those maps kept me going for several hours non-stop. But after enough of them, it became boring because they were basically all the same - once I figured out how to beat the computer, there was no challenge left (and the games became much shorter). When I acquired the original "RA" as part of the "Worldwide Warfare" pack, I decided to play the Allied campaign first. While there were only 14 missions, some were indoors, some had new units previously unavailable, and all in all there was enough variation and purpose to keep me going.

The cut scenes - the briefings (typically live actors) and opening/closing scenes (typically computer animation) for each mission are very well done. Much better graphics than the actual in-game stuff, actually (and which you never see at all in the skirmish games). There is also much more of it compared to other RTS games such as "Warcraft II", giving a better immersive feeling than that game.

The end game - the final Allied mission wasn't the pushover that I've encountered in other endgames. Just getting started was a challenge. And the AI was pretty aggressive about attacking my base (which I didn't really appreciate at the time!).

The Bad
The graphics - specifically the in-game (mission) graphics. Structures and landscapes are actually not bad, but most mobile units are clunky-looking. Human units in particular are small and hard to select out of a group.

The useless units - sandbags, walls, light tanks: what can they do that's worth spending money on? Chronosphere: the final mission introduces this expensive structure, but what is it good for? Sure, I can move a single unit far behind enemy lines, but not one powerful enough to do any real damage before it's destroyed (Tanya, who can blow up buildings, can't be moved this way).

The single resource - dull

The "kill everything" requirement - most outdoor missions are over long before this, basically when the AI can no longer fight back (it can no longer produce new units because you've destroyed all of some resource it needs (I like to destroy the construction yard myself, cutting off its technology tree at the root)). I use air power to reach that point, then "tank rush" just to get it over with. But it's boring (particularly if that last unit is a submerged Soviet submarine).

The air-power imbalance - it's probably not quite right to say I don't like this, because I exploited it often to win the game. Actually, I've used it to win "RA:Aftermath" skirmishes playing the Soviet side. It's probably best to say that the AI doesn't defend well against air power, mainly by not massing its available defenses well enough to beat an "air rush" attack, even though it is possible to do so for either side.

The Bottom Line
Well worth playing, but the single-player modes have a limited lifetime appeal due to increasing familiarity with the AI and its weaknesses. Perhaps the multiplayer modes are the long-term life of this game.

The Good
I didn't really ever get into the single-player missions nearly as much as the multi-player options and more specifically the skirmish mode. The AI won't usually be able to put up much of a fight, but you can still draw lots of satisfaction in wiping out their bases, or just watching them get fried one by one as they walk up to your base's tesla coils. The game also has a great soundtrack that really works well with the battles.

The Bad
The cutscenes can often be rather cheesy, and logging on to play an online game isn't as easy as in this game's successors.

The Bottom Line
A classic strategy game that will never get old.

The Good
Command & Conquer is the most well known RTS franchise alongside Starcraft. The two franchises have similar gameplay, as both were heavily influenced by Westwood's Dune II. Red Alert came out two years before Starcraft did, and the main difference is that while Starcraft has a heavy emphasis on rushing, Red Alert is more focused on control over territory and resources. Both games however deliver very fast paced gameplay and intense fights. So I'm really not sure why many people here dislike this game, it is one of the most important RTS games to date, and is still a lot of fun to play today.

Starting off in 1946, at the Trinity site in New Mexico, the opening to Red Alert shows Albert Einstein as he is preparing to travel backwards through space and time. After his experimental "Chronosphere" device is activated, he finds himself in Landsberg, Germany, in the year 1924, where he meets a young Adolf Hitler just after the latter's release from Landsberg Prison. Following a brief conversation between the two, Einstein shakes Hitler's hand, and this somehow eliminates Hitler's existence from time and returns Einstein to his point of origin.

With the threat of Nazi Germany having been successfully removed from history, the Soviet Union began to grow increasingly powerful under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Had Adolf Hitler risen to power, Nazi Germany would have emerged as a force standing in the way of Stalin's own ambitions of conquest. Instead, left unweakened, the USSR proceeds by seizing lands from China and then begins invading Eastern Europe, in order to achieve Joseph Stalin's vision of a Soviet Union stretching across the entire Eurasian landmass. In response, the nations of Europe form into the Alliance, and start a grim and desperate guerrilla war against the invading Soviet army. Over the course of the game's story, the Allies and Soviets fight out a devastating conflict for control over the European mainland, in what has become an alternate World War II.

Most of the story is told through well executed cutscenes for both sides, which explain the story and the characters after each mission you play.

The gameplay of the game is very simple, yet takes a lot of time to master. The basic premise of a normal match is that you have a starting unit called "MCV", which stands for Mobile Construction Vehicle. You can deploy this unit at the desired location and it turns into the Construction Yard, which is the heart of a base: it allows for construction of other structures that in turn unlock other parts of the tech tree and allow for construction of more advanced structures and units. There's a wide variety of construction and unit types: the buildings you'll have to construct more often are called Power Plants: they serve to maintain a good power level of your base. Having a good power level is very important because having low power has many negative effects: Units and Buildings take a longer time to build and some structures (such as the radar and defenses) will not work at all. This gives an important point for the game as you may want to take out the enemy's power plants before taking out the defenses themselves, as this will power them down and allow for an easier invasion. Another vital structure is the Refinery: once you construct one, it automatically comes with a Harvester that collects ore and gems (which are more valuable) in the battlefield. They then return to the base with the resources, and they do all of this automatically. You can construct more refineries and harvesters and this makes collecting resources faster, however these structures are also a key target as their destruction will cripple a player's economy, so it is important to keep an eye on them.

Then there's various unit production structures like barracks, war factories, airfields and naval yards, that can produce a variety of ground, naval or air units. A good thing about this game is that it follows a kind of rock-paper-scissor-type of gameplay: Each type of unit is strong and weak to a different type of unit or structure: for example tank cannons and rockets are not really effective against infantry, but machineguns and artilleries can take out infantry very quickly. At the same time, machineguns are generally ineffective against buildings and tanks but are effective against light vehicles and infantry, and missile infantry is strong against tanks but not so much against actual infantry, and so on. This creates various situations that weren't present in Warcraft II, in which you always need to have the right unit at the right time in order to win a battle, as usually there are ways to counter most attacks if a player is well prepared.

The enemy can be attacked in various ways: By air, sea or land, you can steal the enemy's money using thieves, infiltrate enemy structures using spies and even capture enemy buildings and use them as your own thanks to the engineers, which are very versatile but vulnerable units.

The campaign has various missions and you can play as either the allies or the soviets. What's good is that the campaign offer various types of missions, like missions in which you get to command only a bunch of units and need to sabotage a base, and other types of missions in which you usually are at a disadvantage compared to your enemy and must find a way to turn the tide of the battle at your advantage. Each mission is different enough than the previous to make the campaigns for both sides very fun to play.

And I'll tell you straight up... I really don't want to sound offensive, but whoever thinks there's no strategy or thinking involved in this game either has not played the game at all, or is a complete idiot. There's a lot of management and strategy going on in this game: you have to use the right units at the right time, come up with good battle plants, explore the area and find out the enemy's weak spot: I've played enough of this game online to tell you that there's as much strategy here as one could possibly ask for. Sure, it is not as realistic or nitpicky as many of the more complex RTS games, but you know what? Those complex "RTS" games aren't RTS at all. They are slow and they are boring, there is no action whatsoever, they aren't real RTS games, they are management games, while Red Alert is essentially the thinking man's action game. So if you don't like action games, you most likely won't like this game.

The graphics are pretty decent, if a bit low-res but for 1996 standards they do the job well. The sounds and music are also very effective, and the soundtrack is VERY good.

One feature new to this game is Skirmish, which allows you to play against the AI in various maps. This is a very good feature that was not present in Tiberian Dawn, and essentially allows you to play a balanced, "normal" match as opposed to just the campaign maps. Since the game also has online play, it can offer hours and hours of fun if you play with friends or even competitively.

The Bad
It is true that this game is kind of like a graphical swap of Tiberian Dawn, as it uses many of the terrain tiles and even some of the units look the same. However, it is different enough to feel like a completely different game.

This game has just two major flaws:

Sometimes, the units may not behave the way you expect them to do. If for example you're ordering a large group of tanks to cross a bridge due to the fact the bridge is occupied by the tanks that first arrive, the other ones often decide to pick alternative routes to the location, and these routes are often unexplored and may either be very distant from your target or may have hidden enemy units or turrets that may destroy your tanks. Also, on few occasions units won't attack if you press the attack button too many times on a single unit, but this is easily fixed by doing it just once or twice. Fortunately, these situations do not happen too often.

The other problem is the lack of a queue system, but back in the day, no RTS games had it as far as I know. (in fact, Warcraft 2 didn't have it either). It isn't very bad but it would have been a welcome addition. Fortunately, later RTS games had it.

The balance of the game could have used some more work: for example the allied Artillery is almost completely worthless. What's good, however, is that it is very easy to edit the game's configurations with just notepad, and with the 3.03 patch you can play online games with your friends with edited units, so you can easily fix by yourself the few balance flaws of the game.

The Bottom Line
This is perhaps the most important and influential RTS game ever alongside Dune II. Most of its flaws are purely technical and are due to the fact this is one of the earliest RTS games, and thus these things are to be expected. If you're willing to forgive them, this is one of the most fun games you'll ever play, and is still lightyears ahead of most RTS games released after it.

Those who gave bad reviews on this game need to keep one thing in mind: when this game was released, the only real alternative to it was Warcraft II. And let me tell you one thing, as much as I love Warcraft II, this game is A LOT more varied than Warcraft II, which is basically a rushing simulator. This game offers so much more, and even if it has some balance issues, it's nothing that can't be overlooked if you're just looking for fun. Therefore I suggest readers ignore the nitpicky reviews and only focus on the fun factor of a videogame.

Westwood has almost created a whole genre with this game and its predecessor, Tiberian Dawn. Calling this game bad is an insult to the entire RTS genre. Red Alert did it first, and did it better than most games that came after it. Deal with it.

The Good
It's easy to play, and plus it has a skirmish mode!, that means hours of action and more replayability!.

The Bad
Some of the difficulty in the levels can close to impossible. And it seems a bit dated nowadays

The Bottom Line
One of the best RTS games you can get!

The Good
Now, I a writing this review after not playing the game for a while, I prefer Total Annihilation, so my review may seem strange, but I remember enjoying the simplicity of the game, and the variety of missions in campaign mode, the two sides had different units unlike Total Annihilation(TA) where the units on each side were copies of each other, but thats about it....

The Bad
... I really disliked the inevitable tank rush that would finish any game especially if using the soviets, also the exhaustable resources made the game, on low ore maps with lots of players a game of who can spend their money the most effectively, which is fine, but when one runs out of ore and sees their base getting battered it is VERY annoying, yes it adds another element to the game, but I feel a bad one. The AI on the both TA and red alert are bad, but at least on TA they know when they can't win on a attack and turn around to allow reinforcements to catch up, on both games if the AI is left alone then the bases grow to ridiculous sizes and on red alert become very hard to beat without the tank rush (Yes I did try using a mixture of units, the infantry got slaughtered and the planes killed two things before getting shot down). On TA a variety of units are required to overcome the defences of a established base.

The maps that come with the game aren't the greatest either but there is a map editor.

!!!!!!YOU CAN'T SAVE SKIRMISHES EITHER>HOW ANNOYING!!!!!!

The Bottom Line
Its good fun for a while, but I found that the game would be the same each time you played the skirmishes, which couldn't be saved so the amount of wasted time was extreme, on TA you can save skirmishes and the amount of units avaliable on addons and the internet is huge, you can even make your own units and AI. I don't think that Red Alert has stood the test of time like TA has, I advise people to buy TA I prefer it to Generals in terms of gameplay and variety.

The Good
This is one of the first RTS games to get very popular online. TEN and MPlayer (and a few others) were the place to play it online. Why is that big deal? Well, the older online RTS games were actually very good sandbox games! The player had many different options in the game that led to very interesting games. Modern RTS games emulate this, but are in fact very scripted.

CnC:RA also had one of the very first working gaming ladders where players could compete to gain rank. This is common place now, but this was a huge thing back then. In addition, there was a not a "professional gaming staff" running the ladder, it was all amateurs who were honestly trying to have an open ended tournament (unlike many ladders today).

The Bad
The single player game was an awful rail game. If you didn't build exactly the right units and move them onto exactly the right map location, the developers would force you to lose the game.

The cutscenes were "high tech" for the day, and since many other genres were really pushing them, RTS games picked them up as well. It didn't matter if they were extremely short and boring, you simply had to have them, because everyone else did!

And the multiplayer had one major drawback; tank rushes! Because of how the maps were setup, and the units were balanced, if you didn't build 100% tanks from the very beginning you were going to lose horribly in about 5 minutes. Very few of the maps were setup so you could turtle (and thus tech up), so every game was a low tech tank rush. This was a knee-jerk reaction to players complaining about other players building up walls of defenses in CnC1.

The Bottom Line
A smoother version of CnC that was still terrible in single player, but quite good for it's day in multiplayer. But it had one major black eye; it's map design and balancing led to most games degrading into tank rushes.

The Good
It is actually one of the few games around that are made of factions that exist(or have exsisted in the case of the soviet's). It also allows a fair bit of creativity that is well blended in with historical facts, with is cool.

The Bad
Those damn Russian subs cant fire on land targets and the guns on naval cruisers of the Allies are wonkey!! over than that.......i cant think of any other flaws.

The Bottom Line
A decent C&C game, well worth the money and a lovely addition to the C&C family.

The Good
It is somewhat enjoyable, I am a huge Real Time Strategy fan, that's probably what keeps me going, but then I have the great Windows version, so I hardly play it at all, sometimes I do, just for a quick laugh! :-)

The Bad
The graphics are very bad, there are too little options, cutscenes are slow and tough to hear, the animation isn't smooth, and even though many of these things were there in Dune and Dune 2, those games were somehow more enjoyable...

The Bottom Line
Downright Ugly (The DOS version). I certainly advise not buying this, buy the windows version instead!

The Good
i liked this game for many reasons,a good storyline,great graphics but the idea of building your own army is iresistible.there is not many games as enjoyable as this.best of all,when you declare war on your one of your friends and hook up tv's and playstations,is as much fun to me as covering yourself with glue and peeling it off when it dries.(to me thats brilliant,ha ha)

The Bad
the one thing that bugs me is the game tends to slow down after a certain amount of time which is annoying if your trying to commit genocide!

The Bottom Line
if you think your a worthy opponent to bush or saddam hussein here's your chance to prove your metal! point is its an excellent game.

The Good
Again, Westwood's classic RTS formula of harvest resources, build units, upgrade units, attack (repeat ad nauseum). I guess I kind of enjoyed the original Dune 2 and Warcraft 1 and 2. I guess I should try and like this game too.

The Bad
But why? The formula continued in Command and Conquer and Warcraft 2. And then in this game and Starcraft. And after this game, you saw it again and again in countless RTS games, the most unimaginative of the lot being the C&C games. Oh give it a rest already.

The Bottom Line
Boring!

The Good
The music and sound effects are OK, and so are the controls, but nothing more.

The Bad
I truly hate Command & Conquer. From the overhyped Tiberian Dawn this game should have been the downfall of Westwood. As an antithesis to the wonderful Dune II, C&C brought forth lacking gameplay, horribly dumb AI, completely pointless storyline and even the graphics failed to impress me.

This game is as bad as the first (albeit with a slightly improved engine, graphics-wise) and presents no real change from Tiberian Dawn, only with a new storyline (which is completely uncapitalized on) and slightly modified graphics. The units are equally dumb and the controls are equally bad (all three C&Cs have the annoying tendency to simply lose selection, which almost always happens during an intense battle causing you to have to reselect your units and losing valuable time).

In short, a very, very bad game.

The Bottom Line
A really bad game which should've brought Westwood's downfall but somehow actually gave the company a solid financial basis.