Command & Conquer: Red Alert

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
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.