Red Alert 2
Westwood Games
EA Games
PC
What would you do if you could go back in time? Invest in stocks before they took off? Get a better date to prom? Come on, those are small time changes, think big. How about killing Hitler?
The Red Alert series tells the story of a world where Adolf Hitler was killed before he became the monster history remembers him as. Albert Einstein builds a time machine and does the deed himself. However, having killed one monster another has moved in to take his place.
Without the Nazis to keep him in check, Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union invades Europe with the goal of expanding communism throughout the continent. The player takes the role of a general for either the Soviets or the Allied nations. The story campaign can be played from either side, and the player’s involvement is key to winning the war.
Red Alert 2 begins some time later. It assumes an Allied victory, but the war is not totally won. A puppet regime is put into the Kremlin by the Allies, and it is believed that the new Premier can easily be controlled. That assumption is proven false. The Soviets secretly build up their armed forces, and launch a devastating invasion of the United States and Europe. Battle is joined and the player once again takes on the role of a general.
The game has relatively solid story, surprisingly. When one thinks of strategy games a compelling narrative doesn’t generally come to mind. Usually, whatever story the game has is just an excuse to get from one battle to the next. The narrative of Red Alert 2 gripped my young mind, and wanting to find out what happened next, kept me playing just as much as the battles themselves. These story sections are told during live action cut scenes. Though they could be relatively goofy at times, the live action segments of the game actually had some serious moments and were acted well more often than not. They even got some relatively known actors to play the major roles including Ray Wise as President Michael Dugan, and Udo Kier as the villainous Yuri.
However, a good story can only do so much. If the gameplay itself wasn’t satisfying then this wouldn’t be much of a gateway game, would it?
Red Alert 2 was a finely balanced game, at least from my perspective as a young lad. The different sides each had their own play styles, with the Soviets tending toward heavy units and the Allies tending toward lighter more maneuverable units. These differing fighting styles and the different maps the game offered made it extremely fun to play. The flowing, shifting tide of battle would never end up the same way twice, which added greatly to its replayability.
The pace of gameplay was fast and frenetic. A base had to be built, resources had to be collected, and units had to be deployed. This all had to be done very quickly. Unit movement speed was fast as well, being able to traverse the map in a relatively short period of time. It was a game that was meant to be played aggressively, and the matches didn’t usually last long.
Red Alert 2 came out in the year 2000. Today, 14 years later, I still have the game installed on my computer. I don’t play it much any more, but I do still boot it up occasionally for the nostalgia trip it inevitably brings.