Product description

Command & Conquer Red Alert 2 (PC Game)

.com

Sequel to one of the bestselling PC strategy games of all time, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 concerns the full-scale invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union. With all-out war taking place in American cities and seven nations to play as, you'll have to choose which side of the conflict to enter: invader or defender. At your disposal is an assortment of land, sea, and air units, each armed to the teeth, as well as a number of covert units prepared to sneak past enemy lines, steal information, and sabotage their operations. Each victory your units acquire makes them stronger and brings you closer to winning the war.

The epic story lines of the two single-player campaigns are told with high-quality motion video. The game features an Internet multiplayer option, too, so you can test your tactical skills against real-time opponents.

Review

Going against the trend of recent real-time strategy games, Red Alert 2 is reverting back to the days when visceral action and fast-paced excitement were commonplace in the genre. "When we started designing [Red Alert 2], we took a long, hard look at the real-time strategy form and agreed that, more often than not, the genre usually involves a slow war of attrition - sometimes you've pretty much lost the game in the first ten minutes, and the next two hours is spent playing it out," explains the game's producer, Harvard Bonin. "Well, we wanted to pick up the pace and make the game a real roller coaster ride in which the tides can turn at any moment - without sacrificing deep, strategic gameplay. We wanted to make it a real blast right out of the box."

To do so, Westwood turned to the Tiberian Sun engine to create Red Alert 2. The designers knew that the technology for Command & Conquer 2 was already dated and wasn't necessarily aimed toward the fast gameplay they were attempting to capture in Red Alert 2. According to Westwood, the solution was to detune the Tiberian Sun engine in order to make it "lighter" and better able to handle the fast gameplay mechanics the designers wanted. As a result, the Red Alert 2 engine - a stripped-down version of Tiberian Sun's - mixes sprite and voxel units, no longer has layered or deformable terrain, and enables much larger maps. While this might sound like a step backward, in reality, creating a simpler engine without any bells and whistles makes it much easier for the Westwood developers to focus on perfecting the gameplay for Red Alert 2. The graphics haven't been sacrificed - in fact, they've been significantly improved over Tiberian Sun's.

As you can probably guess, Red Alert 2 takes place a few years after the events in the original Red Alert. The Allies, victorious in their battles against Joseph Stalin and his Soviet army, have rebuilt the decimated economy and infrastructure of Europe and have installed their own puppet dictator in place of Stalin: General Romanov. To the Allied intelligence, Romanov is nothing more than a consummate politician and the harmless leader of the World Socialist Alliance, a low-profile political group with minimal arms technology. No one could ever perceive him to be a threat.

But Romanov has his own agenda. Outraged at Stalin's failure, Romanov is haunted by memories of his homeland burning and Allied troops marching through his country's streets. He's thirsty for vengeance, and unbeknownst to his Allied puppeteers, Romanov has been mobilizing the World Socialist Alliance into a giant military machine for years and is now only biding his time, waiting for the opportunity to strike. When a civil war breaks out in Mexico, Romanov makes his move.

To the Allies, Romanov's move to quell the outbreak in Mexico (also a WSA state) and restore order to Russia's sister country is expected. Soon after Romanov's troops move in to Mexico, however, reports of early-warning defense systems shutting down throughout the United States begin to surface. Other reports tell of Romanov's troops moving north from Mexico into California, Arizona, and Texas, where they've established mysterious beacons at their encroaching outposts. The population in these outlying areas begins to complain of headaches and nausea, and some witnesses claim that some of their neighbors have picked up arms against their fellow countrymen and joined forces with the invading Soviet forces.

The US government is shocked at Romanov's recent moves and has no logical explanation for this sudden turn of events. Left with no other choice, the President of the United States declares war on the World Socialist Alliance and gives the order to launch a nuclear strike against Russia. However, when the Pentagon moves to strike, nothing happens. The US's entire arsenal of nuclear ICBMs remain dormant, useless, in their silos. Intelligence sources confirm the fears: Romanov has developed a frightening technology that affects man and machine alike; specifically, he has created psychically enhanced troops that can attack with a simple thought.

The United States and the Allied forces are crippled, and Soviet troops are now thoroughly entrenched on American soil. Playing on the side of the Allies, you'll have to fight an uphill battle against well-armed Soviet forces that are threatening to crush your homeland. As the Soviets, you'll use your newly researched psychic technology to hunt down pockets of resistance and make the US pay for its destruction of Mother Russia.
--Copyright ©2000 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. -- GameSpot

Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

Description

Common Questions