Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Westwood Studios

             Reviewed by James Judge on a P120

War games, huh? They're the domain of bespectacled freaks with
thick, black glasses (plus piece of plaster decoratively attached
either over the bridge of the nose or, a la Jack Duckworth, on one
of the hinges), poor body odour, protruding front teeth and a
stutter. Without all of the above, as well as polyester jumpers,
brown corduroys, beige loafers (coupled with white socks) and a
natty line in anoraks and/or cardigans (oh yeah, and you've got to
be either in your early teens or a rocket scientist to boot) you
just can't quite get into the atmosphere of war games, with their
hexagonal chequered maps, turn-based movement and reams of
statistics about trajectory and velocity. Unless you are one of
these 'people' then you won't be whiling away endless hours in
front of your computer screen trying to defeat the computer AI in
the pursuit of riches, fame, glory, power and (most importantly)
world domination. Why can't you do this? You're just not
genetically designed for it. You'll melt away, turn into a
mindless golem just clicking hopelessly at the myriad of buttons,
trying to get your troops to move east towards the enemy, instead
of making valiant attempts to attack a passing river. Not only
that, you won't enjoy yourself - the game will be boring and
impenetrable, needing aeons to crack and a thorough reading of the
3000 page tome that came in the box. Naaaah, war games just aren't
for you. Just keep to your RPGs and text adventures - what normal
people play. These war games sound dangerous to me. Go on,
gertcha!

No, actually, don't. Please. Don't leave. I don't want to be left
all alone in this review, talking to only me, myself and I (yup,
all four of us (?!?)). There is, in fact, hope for all of us
budding Saddam Husseins out there. The shining star that beckons
us is from the mighty Westwood stables and it is one of the best
games ever to have graced a CD. Ever. Built upon two other hugely
successful games (Dune 2 and the original Command & Conquer) this
is a game that can't fail. And doesn't.


Red Alert is a prequel to C&C. The basis for the game is that you
start off controlling a small selection of units and start to
build a power base for yourself, creating buildings which will
create more units for you as well as giving you special abilities
later on in the game. You must then continue to build this base,
carefully managing power and money (obtained by mining ore
scattered around the countryside) and all the while building an
army with which to attack your opponent and also defend your base
from the opponent's assaults. That's the simplest the game gets -
you versus an opponent on a map, striving for total supremacy of
the game world. At its simplest Red Alert is a good game. The more
complex it gets, the game suddenly shoots off, transcending all
other games of this type.

The game takes place in our world, sometime in the future where
the Soviets have become dominant in the struggle for world power.
Yet again it looks as if the balance of power on the Earth will be
resolved in Europe with a vastly powerful Soviet force rushing in
to defeat the smaller force of the Allies.  You can play either
the Soviets or the Allies and, in fact, each side has their own CD
in the game box, so you can lose one CD and still be able to play
with the CD you have left (not that you'd want to - losing one
half of œ30 is a bit daft).

On either side you start the game as a small time commander who
must undertake a few simple tasks to start with - rescue Einstein,
for the Allies for an example - without the need to build and
manage a base and a large armed force. As you progress you get a
choice of missions and your role in those missions starts to
blossom with you starting to build your own bases and managing
full-blown campaigns as mentioned above. However, each mission is
not the same. Sometimes you'll start the later missions with only
one or two units and, with these, must complete a set of tasks in
a novel scenario.  For example, after a few Soviet missions you
must recapture a nuclear power station that the Allies have
infiltrated. Instead of copping out and just presenting you with a
"build a base and army and attack an enemy base with your units"
mission, Westwood have decided to change the thrust of the game
for a few of these specialised missions.

For the nuclear base mission you must guide a small unit of
infantry through the actual corridors of the base and extricate an
engineering core who then must be escorted through the base to the
reactors to stop a meltdown. The level is still a challenge to
play, even though you have removed all of the major parts of the
game - such as the base building and resource management. In fact
these mission make a nice break from the larger scope missions and
show a high level of initiative on behalf of the Westwood
designers.

Between each mission is a set of cutscenes that set the background
for your fight against the enemy and, for a nice change, they are
really well done with good acting and they actually add something
to the plot, making you watch them instead of just jabbing the
Escape key.

During the missions everything happens in real-time. This means
that everything happens at once - there are no turns and no boring
waiting, you're always doing something and it takes both
co-ordination and a quick, strategic mind to win a mission, not
just one or the other. Everything can be controlled by the mouse
using the small (but friendly) build list and a series of left
clicks. If you want to move a unit click on the unit and click
where you want it to go. If the cursor is over an enemy then it
will change to a target and a left click will make the same unit
attack - it's as simple as that, no different keys for attack,
move rest and wait. If you want to make a bigger unit comprised of
a number of different units that just gather them all together and
drag and 'elastic band' round them.  You've got a big unit that
can be controlled just as a small one would. Cool.

The interface is, in fact, so easy to use you don't really need a
manual. The only things that you may want to use the keyboard for
are formations and groupings, but they aren't necessary and only
are really useful in large multiplayer games.

And that is the basic game. Progress through the different
missions on either the Ally or Soviet side until you win. The only
criticism here is that the mission structure is pretty linear,
even though there is some semblance of choice. A more organic,
free-flowing game would have been far better for the single
player.

At the moment RA stands head and shoulders above most games,
however, it is the multi-player aspect that really catapults this
game into the stratosphere. You can play RA with up to seven other
players (they can either be human or computer controlled). Here
the basic idea is to build a base and wipe all opposition off the
face of the map. It sounds simple and banal but when you are faced
with opposition who are similarly skilled to yourself then you'll
find that the time flies by as you are drawn into a complex world
of strikes, counterstrikes, subterfuge and name calling. Thanks to
the large selection of units and buildings made available to you
(everything from riflemen through to little tanks, Mammoth tanks,
jeeps, helicopters, planes, subs, destroyers, V2 rocket launchers
and nuclear missiles, not forgetting paratroopers, parabombs and
mine layers, or thieves, spies and Tanyas or....) the array of
tactics available to you is limitless and with human opposition
you can be severely tested, which is a good thing.

I've played it over a LAN with two other players of similar
ability to myself and I just love it. Normally a session lasts for
a four hours and in that time we'll have had about three to five
good-length games. Rarely does a game go by when one of us doesn't
try out a new tactic or two and so the games are always surprising
and enjoyable. And the satisfaction that you can get from
destroying an opponent's carefully crafted base is one that is
hard to put in words. Suffice to say that the grin spreads from
ear to ear.

This truly is a marvellous game. It isn't anything innovative -
Dune 2 has been around for ages - but finally everything has come
together in something that looks and sounds beautiful and plays
like a dream. The single-player mission structure is good with a
great plot and excellent missions. The multi-player games, thanks
to their free-form nature, are simply splendid.  No two games will
be the same and even if you don't have access to multi-player
facilities the computer AI will put up a stiff opposition.


If you have a computer that can handle this game and you want
something that will tax you strategically in a real-time
environment then I recommend this without a doubt. If you are
looking for a new multi-player game to kill your friends with then
this is, without a doubt, the best multi-player game in existence
(apart from Quake - they more or less tie in my books) and you'd
be a fool to miss out. You get two CDs so if it's just a mate and
you who are playing then you don't need to purchase another game
as you can both use one CD each (saying that, three of us have
played off one CD before - it just takes a bit of careful timing
and a fast CD-ROM).

Anyway, techy stuff....

In DOS you'll need a 486 DX2 running MS-DOS 5 or higher with 8megs
of RAM. You'll also need a double speed CD-ROM and a VGA graphics
card that can support a resolution of 320*200 at 256 colours. In
the sound department a Sound Blaster or better is required and
you'll need 40megs of HDD space to run the game.

In Windows 95 you'll need at least a P75 (though a P120 is
strongly recommended) with at least 8megs of RAM (again, 16megs of
RAM is strongly recommended). You'll also need a double speed
CD-ROM with a 1meg local bus Microsoft DirectDraw video card (as
the game uses DirectX) capable of supporting a resolution of
640*400 or 640*480 in 256 colours.  Soundwise anything supported
by Win '95 will do. Oh yeah, and you'll still need to have a spare
40megs of space free to run the game.

In the multi-player stakes you can play with up to seven other
people over a LAN in either DOS or Win '95, one other person
through a null-modem (either DOS or Win '95), one other person
using a 14,400 baud modem (DOS or Win '95) or one other person
over Winsock 1.1 compliant Winsock Stack, which requires an
Internet connection of 28,800 or above or a direct connection
(ISDN, T1 or E1) which is for Win '95 only.

'Nuff said - go buy it. Go on, gertcha - and I meant it this time.

                              - o -