Tremendous fun! (Command and Conquer - Red Alert 2 (PC))

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	Command and Conquer - Red Alert 2 (PC)
Date:	10/08/09 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great gameplay, well balanced units, colourful appealing graphics, low system specs, great music

Disadvantages: None

Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 is a very loud and colourful strategy game with a strong emphasis on fast, fun gameplay. As in its predecessor the game revolves around a war between the Allies and the Soviets, with each side having its own unique range of units and structures. The familiar C&C formula remains, requiring you to harvest and refine ore in order to build units, barracks, factories, radar facilities, base defences and so on, but the maps are a lot more varied this time round, including jungles, frozen wastelands, and best of all cityscapes, which provide tactical opportunities as you can now garrison your troops in all manner of buildings, including skyscrapers, houses and service stations, at which point they will fire out of the windows at any enemy units within range.

The units are rather silly but great fun to use, and the balance between the two sides is excellent, making for some really interesting and exciting battles. The allies have GI troops, who can entrench themselves with machineguns and sandbags, light tanks, jet fighter/bombers, rocketeers, prism-tanks that fire deadly beams of light, teleport-capable chrono-harvesters, carrier ships and IFV trucks, which change capability depending on the infantry unit placed inside. For example, if a GI is placed inside they have a machinegun turret, whereas if an engineer is inside they have a mechanical arm that can be used to repair other damaged vehicles. The Soviets rely on cheap but numerous conscript troops, huge mammoth tanks, long range V3 rockets, Rocket-firing dreadnoughts, submarines, tesla troops and tesla tanks, machine-gun equipped harvesters, huge bomber airships and spider-drones, that can tear troops to pieces and leap on top of vehicles, slowly dismantling them from the inside.

There are some great special weapons available to each side too, with the allies having a chronosphere that can teleport a group of units anywhere on the map, and a weather machine that brings down devastating lightning storms, whilst the soviets have nukes and the iron curtain, which can make a group of units invulnerable for a short period of time.

The game is fun in single player mode, with varied missions, entertaining voice-acting and the usual cheesy, over the top FMV cutscenes and rendered cgi battles, but is infinitely more fun in multiplayer mode played over the internet, via Westwood's excellent battlenet server. The visuals are basic but incredibly charming, and their simplicity means that the game runs well over even ropey internet connections, and the varied and fast-paced nature of the game means that it is ideal for a quick blast or long drawn out games alike, with the wide variety of tactics available meaning that the gameplay never gets old. The pounding and bombastic industrial/metal soundtrack is great too, adding even more excitement and fun to the game.

Straightforward, unpretentious and immensely playable, Red Alert 2 is tremendous fun and has near limitless longevity. Easily one of the best real time strategy games ever made!

Summary: Simple, addictive and endlessy entertaining