Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 (PC, 2000)
Graphics-7.5 Sound-8 Control-7.5 Challenge-7 Story-6
Level Design-7.5 Frustration-7* Fun-7.5 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-7.5
*Normal
+
Some interesting new mechanics (can garrison various neutral buildings, can create lightning storms with the weather control device (allies) - more effective the larger the target is, can repair civilian buildings with engineers for power ups (not sure if new?), engineers can capture new neutral tech buildings (oil derricks for extra income, hospitals for regenerating infantry health, outposts for an armed service depot which also lets you build near it, civilian power plants - tougher than regular ones and immune to spies+floating discs (yuri's revenge exp), machine shop for repairing any vehicle (more effective the more of them you have), airports for enabling paratrooper assaults (6-9 soldiers per drop), ), temporary radiation AoE effects from Nuclear Strike/Demolition Truck/Desolator Radiation Eruption, improved chronosphere device - teleports 3x3 tile area of units and can be used against enemies as well (can teleport tanks into water), spy satellite - full map reveal, now it’s also possible to access stolen tech units (like the Chrono Ivan for the Soviets) by infiltrating certain enemy buildings)
Some interesting new units (tesla troopers - can't be run over and can power up tesla towers (using 3 of them can make a tower not require electricity from power plants), rocketeers (tiberian sun) - can fly over buildings, IFV - single unit transport that changes weaponry depending on the unit put in it, chrono miner (allied harvester) - teleports back to the refinery, can control rescued cows, prism tower - stronger the more of them you have near each other, prism tank - its beam ricochets in multiple directions hitting nearby enemies and the range of this splash damage is affected by how far away from its selected target the tank is (it also shoots through walls), mirage tank - can cloak when not moving or attacking by taking on the shape of any organic object, Seal marine - can swim and plant bombs on enemy ships, dolphins and giant squids, chrono legionnaire - teleports to the enemy and freezes it in place while destroying it slowly by "erasing it from the time stream" (can be used against buildings as well so it's quite strong), terror drone - jumps into an enemy vehicle and takes it out in a few seconds (can then go on to the next one; a service depot can remove it but you have to be quick), crazy ivan - places bombs on other units and buildings which detonate and do splash damage after a few seconds or when they're destroyed (they'll also explode themselves when killed; engineers can remove these bombs), flak track - anti-air vehicle+infantry transport)
Optional tutorial (pretty good but doesn't go into some fundamental things it should've like waypoints)
Hidden items (boxes with various power ups (armor, health restore, rank increase, money, unit speed) and allied units in most missions
Units gain exp and level up (Tiberian Sun; rewards more skillful play and caring about your troops)
Some interface/control improvements (attack move/attack area finally added (as in attack whatever the unit faces as it comes in range when it's moving around; shift+ctrl+lmb) - however some units move closer to the enemy before firing when using this than they would if standing still or using regular attack commands and they still won't attack enemy buildings that they come across, waypoints can be used for continuous patrolling and can also be used for coordinated attacks (use the lowbar to enter waypoint mode rather than holding z and the units will start moving once it's exited), can cycle between units by level/rank and by health (need to set these hotkeys yourself in the options menu), can cycle through the last 8 events to center the camera on with spacebar, longer unit building queues (5 in Tiberian Sun), escort unit command (ctrl+alt+lmb on a unit with another unit selected), editable hotkeys in the options menu (including shift+ or ctrl+ combos, shift+ combinations sometimes don't work though), selecting a tab after having completed a building auto-selects the complete building),
Cutscenes during missions (transmissions from story relevant chars in the top right of the GUI; sadly these didn't work in the cracked version I found for this review, simplified rally point and waypoint controls)
Introduces co-operative missions (three for the Allies and two for the Soviets, can be played through LAN or online)
Difficulty options (easy-hard; AI cheats on hard: passive cash flow (it seems to have some on Normal as well), can see entire map even through Gap Generators, gets free duplicate units when having multiple War Factories (which makes the units both cheaper and faster to build just like a Cloning Vat for infantry))
There's at least one alternate solution to most objectives (C&C1)
Get to fight in both the US+Europe and Asia this time
Pretty good unit voice acting
Choose where to set up your headquarters at the start of most base-based missions
Pretty good variety and destructible scenery (see Tiberian Sun; one timed mission where you need to take out nuclear missile launchers to avoid massive losses)
The factions are more different from one another than in RA1
Air units can be used to explore while in the air here
Controllable rescued civilians
Decent CGI cutscenes between some missions (again what happens in them isn't necessarily what happened during gameplay though)
+/-
Save anywhere (many nameable slots)
Much more cheesy story and overall vibe (everyone's a caricature, live actors against CGI backgrounds again, Tanya is more of a sex object at times and Sofia moreso)
The game automatically proceeds with the allied campaign after finishing the tutorial
Can't keep playing on a map after finishing the main objective
Linear structure - no situations where you can pick between more than one missions?
Upgraded units don't carry over to the next mission (while it would require some rebalancing it would’ve been cool to try and make a small force survive the campaign - see Cannon Fodder for example)
IFVs and tanks die very quickly to soldier fire from a garrisoned building and units in general die super quickly to units that are strong against them - can get tedious if trying to rely on control groups and using more micro-heavy tactics (seals and legionnaires for example) since you then have to keep re-organizing them
Anti-air turrets are very strong (it's as easy to take out a construction yard with 8-12 planes) and anti-air units in general have very powerful attacks (boosted in hard mode maybe?) - other buildings are relatively weak overall which means tides can turn rather quickly if you mess up
Can select all military units you have by pressing P twice (same with unit type but here you have to first select a unit so it's not as efficient)
Can't spot submarines with planes or rocketeers (can attack them once spotted with a destroyer though)
Some tutorial messages are text only such as how to use spies
AI reaction range for your units is very lacking without using guard mode - they'll ignore a fight happening right next to them (adding a stand ground command and having them react a bit sooner by default would be one solution)
Ranking system is mainly based on time so you can get a great rank while playing rather sloppily
Cheer command (useless but fun)
Can't land your rocketeer units (could've been a purely defensive move where they weren't allowed to attack while on the ground)
Easier to take over buildings with engineers here (no need to damage them first) - means you have to really pay attention to gaps in your defenses
Repairing a building isn't resumed if you ran out of funds (canceling the repair) and then made more money
Explored territory stays fully visible (unlike in Warcraft or Starcraft) - fog can be added in skirmish mode though
Can’t rotate the view (see SimCity 2000; does have the plus side of letting players hide stuff behind buildings or terrain)
Walls can be built a bit faster (up to five tiles at a time but they have to connect to an existing wall – should've functioned more like in Age of Empires or SimCity 2000 so the player can multitask better)
Spies can now act as thieves as well (replacing them; can steal from refineries)
Cows you control won't get attacked by the enemy
No more ore silos
Less high ground than in Tiberian Sun
Can't make prism tanks in a group combine their beams into a super beam
Building production is dependent on headquarters - can still create troops from within production buildings without it
Concrete walls are still rather weak
Regenerating harvesters (up to 100% health here though it takes a while)
Harvester is still selected when box selecting multiple units if it's inside the selection box (Tiberian Sun; can be annoying but you can use P or control groups to avoid it)
Only rocketeer units can attack air to air until the Yuri's Revenge expansion where two of the Soviet units have this ability
The enemy AI doesn’t constantly rebuild like in the first C&C game - only on some missions and in skirmish mode if set to a high enough level
Killing civilians or wasting your troops generally doesn't matter here (in TS it affects score, which can affect resources on the next mission when playing as GDI; here there's no such continuity)
Can't manually change the target of a SAM site/anti-air turret (makes engineer strikes easier)
Can't change difficulty in-between missions during a campaign (default was Hard in the cracked version I downloaded in 2020 however the allied campaign seems to have started at Normal anyway - going from the tutorial into the campaign)
Infantry have a tendency to start crawling when fired upon (double click usually gets them up?) however they don't seem to move any slower here
Tech building effects like the spy satellite are removed if you sell or lose them
Can't use pillboxes or even prism towers to extend your base's area of buildable terrain here - can be annoying but might've been done to avoid rushes? (makes it hard to establish defenses around captured oil derricks and other remote buildings)
Can't repair planes via a service depot - they slowly regenerate instead
If you've selected a mixed group with chrono legionnaires in it then the legionnaires will teleport ahead of the others when giving the whole group an attack order
-
Various control/interface issues (can't queue up buildings (only units) however the separate tab for defensive ones helps a bit, still missing hotkeys for building and training - can only select between the four added category tabs (buildings/defensive buildings/vehicles/infantry), scrolling is a bit slow even on fastest - can press the arrow keys while scrolling to speed it up but still, can't use waypoints for aircraft, can't combine deploying and moving transports or soldiers using waypoints, can't use E to select everyone on screen here - only P to select all attacking units, can't load transports while they're moving and they don't stop if you try, unit pathfinding isn't noticeably better than in Tiberian Sun besides units not getting stuck on walls here, can't exit the pause/options menu with Esc or Enter and can't load a save with Enter, can't exit the game with Alt+F4, tooltips are a bit slow to pop up and don't exist for the lowbar icons (unit commands), can't see units lost or resources used/collected on the ranking screen/debriefing, can't remap hotkeys? - waypoint mode is mapped to Z for example, still can't review seen videos during a mission - objectives tend to be repeated in text form while playing though, can't remove a rally point?, no cutscene subtitles, no game speed options in SP (have to add -speedcontrol to the game's desktop shortcut - see below), a unit can't belong to more than one control group (if you assign it to a new one then the old one is lost) - a reset button would've been preferable, can't check which difficulty level you're at during a campaign, planes without ammo will still lift and then land if you order them to attack, some units will keep moving for a bit after pressing S to make them stop, planes tend to spread out making them less efficient at dealing with anti-air units)
Sometimes lacking animation (killed paratroopers for example) and some doodads look pasted in like mid 90s pre-rendered games or a quick photoshop job
Can't send a destroyer's plane out against ground targets - only subs
Some trial & error (no hotkey or explanation of the mission objectives sub menu (top right), sudden enemy or allied reinforcements, placing longer walls isn't explained, various hotkeys aren't explained in-game besides the options menu, some units aren't fully explained in-game, certain angles seem to give better range to certain units)
Sometimes uneven difficulty (there's a bit of a difficulty spike at Mission 6/Operation Liberty for the allies and then a dip in the next mission (can finish it very quickly if you rush once you know where the enemy base is) and the next few missions after that one are easy as well, in the final allied mission you can win with 6+ chrono legionnaire as it's fairly easy not to alert the bulk of the enemy forces if you first reveal the map and then teleport in at the right spot)
Some tedious bits (can’t immediately press escape to replay (or reload a save) after failing a mission
Can’t skip in-game cutscenes
Searching for that last unit or building on a large map when you’ve clearly won the battle already - not needed in certain missions though, )
Some annoying parts in some of the music
No power command here (turn off or on activity on individual buildings to temporarily save power - Tiberian Sun)
Sometimes idiotic AI (your own units don’t react to artillery fire (even in guard mode), enemy AI rarely focuses fire, sometimes doesn't make use of buildings it could garrison, sometimes sends long range units right into your units, easy to use a decoy on it to draw attention from Engineer-carrying APCs or special infantry, sometimes doesn't use all available troops in their base when attacked, can lure some of its units to where you want them by attacking and retreating)
If you lose or sell the spy satellite building then even what you've explored before building it is re-covered by shroud
Bugs:
-Sometimes if you press D to deploy soldiers behind sandbags right as they're about to attack an enemy, the action is canceled
-Alt+Tabbing to desktop and back doesn't work properly
Notes:
-Add SP speed controls: https://forums.cncnet.org/topic/1875-is-there-any-way-to-get-speed-control-on-ra2s-campaign-campc-collection-2003/?tab=comments#comment-16881
-Type "hires" on the menu screen to enable HD res (the GUI becomes too small at the highest setting though)
Level Design-7.5 Frustration-7* Fun-7.5 Originality-6.5
Overall Score-7.5
*Normal
+
Some interesting new mechanics (can garrison various neutral buildings, can create lightning storms with the weather control device (allies) - more effective the larger the target is, can repair civilian buildings with engineers for power ups (not sure if new?), engineers can capture new neutral tech buildings (oil derricks for extra income, hospitals for regenerating infantry health, outposts for an armed service depot which also lets you build near it, civilian power plants - tougher than regular ones and immune to spies+floating discs (yuri's revenge exp), machine shop for repairing any vehicle (more effective the more of them you have), airports for enabling paratrooper assaults (6-9 soldiers per drop), ), temporary radiation AoE effects from Nuclear Strike/Demolition Truck/Desolator Radiation Eruption, improved chronosphere device - teleports 3x3 tile area of units and can be used against enemies as well (can teleport tanks into water), spy satellite - full map reveal, now it’s also possible to access stolen tech units (like the Chrono Ivan for the Soviets) by infiltrating certain enemy buildings)
Some interesting new units (tesla troopers - can't be run over and can power up tesla towers (using 3 of them can make a tower not require electricity from power plants), rocketeers (tiberian sun) - can fly over buildings, IFV - single unit transport that changes weaponry depending on the unit put in it, chrono miner (allied harvester) - teleports back to the refinery, can control rescued cows, prism tower - stronger the more of them you have near each other, prism tank - its beam ricochets in multiple directions hitting nearby enemies and the range of this splash damage is affected by how far away from its selected target the tank is (it also shoots through walls), mirage tank - can cloak when not moving or attacking by taking on the shape of any organic object, Seal marine - can swim and plant bombs on enemy ships, dolphins and giant squids, chrono legionnaire - teleports to the enemy and freezes it in place while destroying it slowly by "erasing it from the time stream" (can be used against buildings as well so it's quite strong), terror drone - jumps into an enemy vehicle and takes it out in a few seconds (can then go on to the next one; a service depot can remove it but you have to be quick), crazy ivan - places bombs on other units and buildings which detonate and do splash damage after a few seconds or when they're destroyed (they'll also explode themselves when killed; engineers can remove these bombs), flak track - anti-air vehicle+infantry transport)
Optional tutorial (pretty good but doesn't go into some fundamental things it should've like waypoints)
Hidden items (boxes with various power ups (armor, health restore, rank increase, money, unit speed) and allied units in most missions
Units gain exp and level up (Tiberian Sun; rewards more skillful play and caring about your troops)
Some interface/control improvements (attack move/attack area finally added (as in attack whatever the unit faces as it comes in range when it's moving around; shift+ctrl+lmb) - however some units move closer to the enemy before firing when using this than they would if standing still or using regular attack commands and they still won't attack enemy buildings that they come across, waypoints can be used for continuous patrolling and can also be used for coordinated attacks (use the lowbar to enter waypoint mode rather than holding z and the units will start moving once it's exited), can cycle between units by level/rank and by health (need to set these hotkeys yourself in the options menu), can cycle through the last 8 events to center the camera on with spacebar, longer unit building queues (5 in Tiberian Sun), escort unit command (ctrl+alt+lmb on a unit with another unit selected), editable hotkeys in the options menu (including shift+ or ctrl+ combos, shift+ combinations sometimes don't work though), selecting a tab after having completed a building auto-selects the complete building),
Cutscenes during missions (transmissions from story relevant chars in the top right of the GUI; sadly these didn't work in the cracked version I found for this review, simplified rally point and waypoint controls)
Introduces co-operative missions (three for the Allies and two for the Soviets, can be played through LAN or online)
Difficulty options (easy-hard; AI cheats on hard: passive cash flow (it seems to have some on Normal as well), can see entire map even through Gap Generators, gets free duplicate units when having multiple War Factories (which makes the units both cheaper and faster to build just like a Cloning Vat for infantry))
There's at least one alternate solution to most objectives (C&C1)
Get to fight in both the US+Europe and Asia this time
Pretty good unit voice acting
Choose where to set up your headquarters at the start of most base-based missions
Pretty good variety and destructible scenery (see Tiberian Sun; one timed mission where you need to take out nuclear missile launchers to avoid massive losses)
The factions are more different from one another than in RA1
Air units can be used to explore while in the air here
Controllable rescued civilians
Decent CGI cutscenes between some missions (again what happens in them isn't necessarily what happened during gameplay though)
+/-
Save anywhere (many nameable slots)
Much more cheesy story and overall vibe (everyone's a caricature, live actors against CGI backgrounds again, Tanya is more of a sex object at times and Sofia moreso)
The game automatically proceeds with the allied campaign after finishing the tutorial
Can't keep playing on a map after finishing the main objective
Linear structure - no situations where you can pick between more than one missions?
Upgraded units don't carry over to the next mission (while it would require some rebalancing it would’ve been cool to try and make a small force survive the campaign - see Cannon Fodder for example)
IFVs and tanks die very quickly to soldier fire from a garrisoned building and units in general die super quickly to units that are strong against them - can get tedious if trying to rely on control groups and using more micro-heavy tactics (seals and legionnaires for example) since you then have to keep re-organizing them
Anti-air turrets are very strong (it's as easy to take out a construction yard with 8-12 planes) and anti-air units in general have very powerful attacks (boosted in hard mode maybe?) - other buildings are relatively weak overall which means tides can turn rather quickly if you mess up
Can select all military units you have by pressing P twice (same with unit type but here you have to first select a unit so it's not as efficient)
Can't spot submarines with planes or rocketeers (can attack them once spotted with a destroyer though)
Some tutorial messages are text only such as how to use spies
AI reaction range for your units is very lacking without using guard mode - they'll ignore a fight happening right next to them (adding a stand ground command and having them react a bit sooner by default would be one solution)
Ranking system is mainly based on time so you can get a great rank while playing rather sloppily
Cheer command (useless but fun)
Can't land your rocketeer units (could've been a purely defensive move where they weren't allowed to attack while on the ground)
Easier to take over buildings with engineers here (no need to damage them first) - means you have to really pay attention to gaps in your defenses
Repairing a building isn't resumed if you ran out of funds (canceling the repair) and then made more money
Explored territory stays fully visible (unlike in Warcraft or Starcraft) - fog can be added in skirmish mode though
Can’t rotate the view (see SimCity 2000; does have the plus side of letting players hide stuff behind buildings or terrain)
Walls can be built a bit faster (up to five tiles at a time but they have to connect to an existing wall – should've functioned more like in Age of Empires or SimCity 2000 so the player can multitask better)
Spies can now act as thieves as well (replacing them; can steal from refineries)
Cows you control won't get attacked by the enemy
No more ore silos
Less high ground than in Tiberian Sun
Can't make prism tanks in a group combine their beams into a super beam
Building production is dependent on headquarters - can still create troops from within production buildings without it
Concrete walls are still rather weak
Regenerating harvesters (up to 100% health here though it takes a while)
Harvester is still selected when box selecting multiple units if it's inside the selection box (Tiberian Sun; can be annoying but you can use P or control groups to avoid it)
Only rocketeer units can attack air to air until the Yuri's Revenge expansion where two of the Soviet units have this ability
The enemy AI doesn’t constantly rebuild like in the first C&C game - only on some missions and in skirmish mode if set to a high enough level
Killing civilians or wasting your troops generally doesn't matter here (in TS it affects score, which can affect resources on the next mission when playing as GDI; here there's no such continuity)
Can't manually change the target of a SAM site/anti-air turret (makes engineer strikes easier)
Can't change difficulty in-between missions during a campaign (default was Hard in the cracked version I downloaded in 2020 however the allied campaign seems to have started at Normal anyway - going from the tutorial into the campaign)
Infantry have a tendency to start crawling when fired upon (double click usually gets them up?) however they don't seem to move any slower here
Tech building effects like the spy satellite are removed if you sell or lose them
Can't use pillboxes or even prism towers to extend your base's area of buildable terrain here - can be annoying but might've been done to avoid rushes? (makes it hard to establish defenses around captured oil derricks and other remote buildings)
Can't repair planes via a service depot - they slowly regenerate instead
If you've selected a mixed group with chrono legionnaires in it then the legionnaires will teleport ahead of the others when giving the whole group an attack order
-
Various control/interface issues (can't queue up buildings (only units) however the separate tab for defensive ones helps a bit, still missing hotkeys for building and training - can only select between the four added category tabs (buildings/defensive buildings/vehicles/infantry), scrolling is a bit slow even on fastest - can press the arrow keys while scrolling to speed it up but still, can't use waypoints for aircraft, can't combine deploying and moving transports or soldiers using waypoints, can't use E to select everyone on screen here - only P to select all attacking units, can't load transports while they're moving and they don't stop if you try, unit pathfinding isn't noticeably better than in Tiberian Sun besides units not getting stuck on walls here, can't exit the pause/options menu with Esc or Enter and can't load a save with Enter, can't exit the game with Alt+F4, tooltips are a bit slow to pop up and don't exist for the lowbar icons (unit commands), can't see units lost or resources used/collected on the ranking screen/debriefing, can't remap hotkeys? - waypoint mode is mapped to Z for example, still can't review seen videos during a mission - objectives tend to be repeated in text form while playing though, can't remove a rally point?, no cutscene subtitles, no game speed options in SP (have to add -speedcontrol to the game's desktop shortcut - see below), a unit can't belong to more than one control group (if you assign it to a new one then the old one is lost) - a reset button would've been preferable, can't check which difficulty level you're at during a campaign, planes without ammo will still lift and then land if you order them to attack, some units will keep moving for a bit after pressing S to make them stop, planes tend to spread out making them less efficient at dealing with anti-air units)
Sometimes lacking animation (killed paratroopers for example) and some doodads look pasted in like mid 90s pre-rendered games or a quick photoshop job
Can't send a destroyer's plane out against ground targets - only subs
Some trial & error (no hotkey or explanation of the mission objectives sub menu (top right), sudden enemy or allied reinforcements, placing longer walls isn't explained, various hotkeys aren't explained in-game besides the options menu, some units aren't fully explained in-game, certain angles seem to give better range to certain units)
Sometimes uneven difficulty (there's a bit of a difficulty spike at Mission 6/Operation Liberty for the allies and then a dip in the next mission (can finish it very quickly if you rush once you know where the enemy base is) and the next few missions after that one are easy as well, in the final allied mission you can win with 6+ chrono legionnaire as it's fairly easy not to alert the bulk of the enemy forces if you first reveal the map and then teleport in at the right spot)
Some tedious bits (can’t immediately press escape to replay (or reload a save) after failing a mission
Can’t skip in-game cutscenes
Searching for that last unit or building on a large map when you’ve clearly won the battle already - not needed in certain missions though, )
Some annoying parts in some of the music
No power command here (turn off or on activity on individual buildings to temporarily save power - Tiberian Sun)
Sometimes idiotic AI (your own units don’t react to artillery fire (even in guard mode), enemy AI rarely focuses fire, sometimes doesn't make use of buildings it could garrison, sometimes sends long range units right into your units, easy to use a decoy on it to draw attention from Engineer-carrying APCs or special infantry, sometimes doesn't use all available troops in their base when attacked, can lure some of its units to where you want them by attacking and retreating)
If you lose or sell the spy satellite building then even what you've explored before building it is re-covered by shroud
Bugs:
-Sometimes if you press D to deploy soldiers behind sandbags right as they're about to attack an enemy, the action is canceled
-Alt+Tabbing to desktop and back doesn't work properly
Notes:
-Add SP speed controls: https://forums.cncnet.org/topic/1875-is-there-any-way-to-get-speed-control-on-ra2s-campaign-campc-collection-2003/?tab=comments#comment-16881
-Type "hires" on the menu screen to enable HD res (the GUI becomes too small at the highest setting though)