Command and Conquer - Red Alert - Review of a classic
The Legend
Command and Conquer Red Alert, the original, and for me still the undisputed. When I first got my hands on this game for the Playstation back in the 90's, I couldn't stop playing it. It comes with 2 discs, 1 for the allied and one for the soviet. Each disc has a collection of absolutely fantastic missions on it. Scenarios that you could play for endless hours, no matter how beautiful it was outside.
The Gameplay
The game play is so simple, and works perfectly with the PS controller. For me, it was the first strategy game I had owned on a console, and only Civilization II could match it at the time for me. The graphics, although not flashy, were perfect. The ability to build your base, customize your defense strategy, and then set about wiping out your enemy, made the game endless. The drag and command style game play made it easy to command countless units, while you anticipated their clash with the enemy.
The characters, voices, music, and structures were created with pure genius. And the tesla coils......who could forget those (If I send 150 soldiers through 4 tesla coils, how many will make it out the other side alive?). There was everything we could need, from the mysteries of the chronosphere and the simplicity of the attack dog, to the outrageously powerful mammoth tank and stealthy Tanya. the original command and conquer red alert had it all. Those were some happy days.
The Sequels
There have been many sequels, but for me, none can match the simplicity and perfect fusion of battle that we witnessed in the original game. I feel that as soon as I began to play Red Alert 2 or 3, I felt the huge array of weapons and gadgets, automatically became too much. In some way they seemed like more awesome games, but within a week, the game play was not the same. All the strategy had been sucked away by the ability of some overly nerdy nerd online, wipe out my entire army in 6 seconds. To make it worse, eventually it came to then being able to wipe me out before I even got to build my barracks.
It was no longer the game that it used to be. For me, it was overdone, and had changed the mixture of realistic warfare any fantasy we had seen in the first game, into exploding dolphins and evil blimps. No realism remained, and we had also lost the simple playability that we loved so much.
Playing Red Alert now.
Although they have made a free version that can be downloaded, its not the same. Not only does it not work on Windows 7, but when you run it in comparability mood and do what you need to do, this version has so many glitches its just not the same game. The biggest glitch of all for me, is that there is meant to be a way to play it online. Well it doesn't work.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if someone could recreate this game online, where we could all play alongside each other. Use the same framework and basic gameplay of the original, with the same characters, buildings and units, and simply make it so multiplayer, that we could, alas, spend at least one last hour, blasting the heck out of the yellows war factory, so that we could put an engineer in there when it went into the red, and thus we would be able to steal their machine building capabilities. This in turn could allow us to wipe out the yellows.
Some computer game creating genius, if you are listening, let me know when its up and running ;) I am sure people would flock by the million.
UPDATE **** RED ALERT ON THE PS3
I recently purchased a PS3 and when I was looking through the playstation store, guess what was available. None other than the original Command and conquer red alert for Download. Check it out!!!
