Command & Conquer: Red Alert

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
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
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.