After not having the best of times with Tiberian Sun, my copy of Red Alert 2 spent a long time sitting on my shelf. In such a way that it was always in the corner of my eye; looming over me. It remained there for so long, in fact, that all the Command & Conquer games got released on Steam in the meantime. Would've been nice to know that was coming before I bought all the games on discs, but alas.
Red Alert 2 takes us back to the science fiction cold war setting of the original. Spurred on by his psychic advisor Yuri, Alexander Romanov of the Soviet Union launches an all-out invasion of the United States. During which the Soviets experience suspiciously little resistance. Most of the country is quickly overrun while what's left of the government is forced into exile.
You once again have a choice of either playing the Allied Forces or the Soviet invaders, each of which has a unique campaign. Compared to Tiberian Sun, I was pleased to see the tone of the game's story return to the sillier feel of the original. Mission briefings involve an eccentric cast of characters whose actors are visibly having fun hamming up their performances. The story itself is also very entertaining throughout both campaigns. The stakes for each battle are high and frequent twists keep the situation perilous until the very end.
As for gameplay, it's what you'd expect. Another push to further refine the formula of the original. Constructing your base, recruiting units, and leading those units battle; it all feels basically the same. Albeit with the roster of units shuffled around a bit. Both factions have your basic RTS arsenal of infantrymen and vehicles, but mixed in there are cool, high-tech units. The Soviets, for example, have these armored units with miniature Tesla coils that wreak havoc on vehicles. Whereas The Allies get grenadiers with jetpacks, who can quickly scout and make quick work of any ground troops that lack air cover.
An improvement over Tiberian Sun is that the maps have been brought back down to a manageable level. They're still sizable and allow for plenty of strategic freedom. It just doesn't take ten minutes to get from one end of the screen to the next. Nor are they loaded up with annoying bridges, blockades, or complex geography that's a pain to navigate.
The missions too have improved a lot. Tiberian Sun was obsessed with overlong attrition stages where you had no base or means to replenish your troops. Something which can be an interesting challenge on occasion, but was used way too frequently in that game. Red Alert 2 has way more diversity here. Many missions will involve building up a base and wiping out the enemy, but they throw in some novel tasks for you to achieve. You might have to take over certain buildings, or deal with teleporting enemies, or you need to defend a certain building at all costs. Some maps are dense urban environments full of ambushes while others are filled with water. Meaning you need to make naval landings and fight enemy ships for control.
Mixed in there you still got gimmick levels and those same battles of attrition I complained about before. But since these aren't nearly as prevalent anymore, they now get to shine as fun diversions from the regular gameplay.
I had a lot of fun playing through the Soviet campaign in particular. It was challenging and the missions were interesting, plus I was having a blast with the story. Even then, frustrations both new and old did rear their head over time. Which became much more pronounced when I then delved into the Allied campaign afterwards.
The Allied roster was already not as good a match for my playstyle. Their GIs can entrench themselves for added defense, but that makes managing them a lot of hassle for what is supposed to be the basic throwaway infantry. Their soviet counterparts are borderline useless and that's perfect. They're little more than cannonfodder. Entrenching your GIs does make them more durable, but it doesn't protect them from any of the more prominent dangers on the battlefield. You could have the densest line of defense imaginable and watch it get wiped out in seconds by a lone tank going vroom. I hate these units.
Their Rocketeers are fancy, but are useless in a game where anti-air defense is cheaper than vodka. Meanwhile their baseline vehicles are these weird single-person APCs that gain traits of the unit you put inside them? Again over-complicating the management of basic units. This puts even more pressure on their tanks, which in my experience seem to always lose a 1-on-1 engagement.
Many of the Allied missions involved big clashes where you and the AI take turns throwing your respective arsenals at each other's base. You just build up a massive force and storm the enemy. That sounds gratifying, but in doing so the level of control you have over units once again becomes problematic. You can move troops and you can attack a specific target, but it's very hard to strategically select what units attack what targets. The interface only allows you to make 2 groups that you can hotkey between, but that's it. And new units do not automatically join or refill those groups, adding much more busy work.
This made clashes chaotic as units rush to attack a singular target and then proceed to do whatever. I could sic them on something else or hope—usually in vain—that they'd do a decent job fighting the remaining enemies around them. During which losses would pile up quickly as infantry tries to gun down tanks while your own tanks are wasting time focus firing at specific soldiers. Your jets are refusing to fly and the enemies produce new troops almost as fast as you can take them down. It's chaos and everything moves so fast and is so inconvenient to command that there's not much I could do to change that. Short of recruiting a bigger pile of tanks and trying again.
A second frustration that returned was the density of the enemy bases. They are clustered and loaded up on every kind of defense possible, with multiple buildings churning out units non-stop. This makes assaulting them a meatgrinder experience. Everything you throw at it melts away and it's hard to feel like you're doing permanent damage. Enemies keep coming endlessly and even if you manage to wade through them, any buildings you destroy are restored almost immediately.
This is what made mission 6 particularly infuriating. A mission that has you take an incredibly well-fortified enemy army. I burned 30 minutes building up a massive force of my own, repelling non-stop assaults in the process. I then had my harriers take out the enemy's Tesla Tower, losing 2 jets in the process because I have literally no means of dealing with the enemy's anti-air defenses. I launch my assault and chaos unfolds right away. An endless stream of enemies keep me from making any headway whatsoever and my guys are dying fast. Somehow I manage to take out a few more buildings at the cost of most of my army. These are then, before my eyes, built back up before my soldiers have even finished dying. What more, the enemy now had such numbers amassed that they could launch an all-out attack of their own.
While it's a shame that those same frustrations I had in Tiberian Dawn continue to live on in Red Alert 2; admittedly I went through most of the game not experiencing them nearly as much. The whole of the Soviet campaign was a wonderful time for me. And while the Allied campaign fell short, most of that was due to my dislike for their roster. With only a few missions where those bug bears of mine came into play.
Still, it would have been nice to have seen the series take more steps to evolve itself. As it stands, it's a fine entry that further modernizes the franchise's solid concept, but makes little effort to evaluate its issues. Red Alert 2 is a solid RTS mostly geared to genre veterans and returning fans. Though the hilarity of its cutscenes and story make it tantalizing for newcomers as well, so long as they're prepared for a steep challenge.
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