Red Alert's Obituary

Command and Conquer: Red Alert, age eleven months, passed away on October 31, 1997. Born late November of 1996, Red Alert affected many lives (around 1.5 million) and remains a standard in Real Time Strategy history. Fond memories are held by thousands of people struggling to deal with tank rushes and cheap strategies. The younger brother of Command and Conquer, son of Dune 2, cousin of Warcraft 2, Red Alert was cherished around the world.

Red Alert, considered by nonbeleivers as a flake in the RTS genre, opened up new doorways in RTS. Red Alert died slowly and painfully starting in July, and by September it had looked hopeless for Red Alert's survival. Red Alert is survived by its descendants: Dark Reign, Total Ahhnihalation, Starcraft, and Age of Empires. Red Alert, upon the announcment of its death, was sent t o St.Cataclysm's Church for a memoric funeral. In lieu to flowers, contributions may be made to Cataclysm's Hospital to research a cure for dying RTS games. No one will forget Red Alert and the impact it had on RTS gaming, and the thousands of hours wasted playing it multiplayer. :)

Last Look at Red Alert

What was wrong with Red Alert?

Well, not all of the units were effective gameplaywise (such as the radar jammer). Also, cheap strategies were used (tank rush, building into people's bases, etc.) Red Alert did not play very well multiplayer wise due to the slowness. Red Alert also had too many movies, which did add a lot to the atmosphere of the game, but did absolutly nothing gameplaywise. In fact, Red Alert was a souped up engine of Command and Conquer. This was its main fault, and quickly added to the boredness factor... Also, Westwood never listened to the gamers. The Counterstrike add-on was horrendous, and it was better to toss money into the sea then buy it. At the end of my Red Alert days, I was starting to murder my Ore Trucks since I was sick of them acting as if they were on crack.

What was right with Red Alert?

Great single player missions. Each one had their own movie (and for a video game movie it wasn't acted badly at all). The soundtrack to Red Alert was sensational, especially the awesome Hell March song. Planes added alot more depth to gameplay with Red Alert then in C&C. Maps were a good size. The game came with two cds so your friend could play with you without buying the game. (Nice marketing technique, Westwood. Almost as good as Warcraft 2's spawning). Sound effects were nice, crisp, and kept the atmosphere of the game going well throughout it. Many novel ideas were presented to RTS such as spies, mining, cruisers' guns :) , cronoshift, and so on.

How could Red Alert been better?

Westwood should of made the engine from scratch instead of using the C&C one. Also, more time should of been spent with the gameplay instead of the movies.

How could Red Alert of been worse?

Although it's map editor was a pain in the butt to use, it at least had one. If it didn't, can you imagine playing those Westwood maps for now to forever? Also, if Westwood used the same exact game engine as C&C without changing it, then it'd get old really quick. Although Westwood Chat wasn't the best place to play, it was at least there and was used by thousands.

Conclusion:

Great game. Its worth the money, tons of fun. However, its unbalanced, units are as stupid as a turkey, and redundancy shows up alot with units. If you could stomach those 'bugs' then Red Alert was an awesome Real Time Strategy game to be remembered. Although the game wasn't a clone of any others (well, maybe C&C :) it did in fact inspire clones of its own.