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Command & Conquer: Red Alert, is a real-time strategy computer game in the Command & Conquer series by Westwood Studios. The game is an alternative history where Allied Forces defend Europe against an aggressive Soviet Union. It was available for PC (DOS & Windows 95 versions included in one package) and was subsequently ported to PlayStation. The Command & Conquer: Red Alert series is also certified by the Guinness Book of Records as the best selling Real-time strategy game in the world, with over 35 million units sold.

Story

Main article: Command & Conquer: Red Alert Series Story

In Red Alert, world-renowned physicist Albert Einstein invents the Chronosphere, a device which he uses to go back in time and chronoshift Adolf Hitler. This upsets the entire balance of world power, causing the Soviets led by Joseph Stalin to start a massive invasion of European countries (The actual game involves the player fighting on one side of the resulting battles). Following a European victory, a period of approximately twenty years passes, during which the defeated USSR secretly begins building up high-tech military forces. Around twenty years after the end of the first war, the USSR embarks on a major invasion of the continental United States, but are ultimately defeated by the Allied forces.

The concept of the Chronosphere, used both in the game's premise and during the game as a teleportation device, is based around the conspiracy theories regarding the Philadelphia Experiment - indeed, an ingame cinematic shows the USS Eldrige vanish, only to reappear after a few moments.

Counterstrike & Aftermath (1997)

In 1997, two expansion packs for Red Alert were released, Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Counterstrike, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Aftermath. New units, missions, and music were included in the expansions. While the Counterstrike add-on adds many more multiplayer maps, it lacks in originality as its single player missions appeared to have been scrapped from modified units (Red Alert 1 units can be modified by editing the game's internal text files) and bundled together to give a feel of new and more powerful units than its predecessor. Of particular note is the addition of the secret Ant Missions to this add-on which the player must unlock in order to play against giant red ants with super weapon capabilities.

The add-on Aftermath however added many new units available in single and multiplay modes, with Soviet units like the Missile Sub, the Mutually Assured Destruction Tank (MAD Tank, for short), the infantry Shock Trooper, the Demolition Truck as well as the Allied units like the battlefield mechanic, the Chrono Tank and more. The add-on also includes hundreds of new maps as well as maps with huge map sizes.

Music

All the music in the Red Alert was composed by Frank Klepacki. Among his most famous songs from the series is the theme of Red Alert, titled "Hell March", which accents the style of the game with adrenalized riffs of electric guitar and synthesizers to the dramatic chant of "We want war, wake up!" It alone has enlisted itself as a staple in the Red Alert series (i.e. a second version of Hell March was even created for Red Alert 2).

Tracklist for Red Alert soundtrack CD:

1. Hell March
2. Radio
3. Crush
4. Roll Out
5. Mud
6. Twin Cannon
7. Face the Enemy
8. Run
9. Terminate
10. Big Foot
11. Workmen
12. Militant Force
13. Dense
14. Vector
15. Smash (hidden track at end)

When playing the single-player campaign, a limited number of tracks are initially available, and more are unlocked as the player progresses through missions. When playing a multiplayer or 'skirmish' game, all tracks are available from the start.

Gameplay

Red Alert is a real-time strategy series in which the player commands an army and is responsible for gathering resources, building bases, training units, and fighting the enemy's army.

Red Alert was praised for its user interface, which was much more developed than other games at the time. For example, there are no limitations on the number of units one can select. One also can give a unit many orders at once, which it can execute in sequence.

Red Alert battles have 3 domains of fighting: air, land and sea. Each side (Allies or Soviets) can train naval units, aircraft, and land forces. Each side also has its unique capabilities, although in Red Alert II they were balanced so that each unit's ability was countered by a similar one on the other side. For example: in Red Alert 2, the ultimate Soviet Tesla coil defensive towers were matched by the Allies' "Prism tower".

Notable units for the Soviet side includes the Heavy Tank, the V-2 rocket launcher, the flamethrower, the Mil Mi-24 Hind attack helichopper, submarines, the Mammoth Tank as well as the MiG attack aircraft and anti-infantry minelayer. The Allied faction has the Light Tank, the Medium Tank, commando unit Tanya, anti-tank minelayer, the Ranger jeep, Gunboats, Destroyers as well as Cruisers and also the AH-64 Apache Longbow attack chopper.

Game Balancing

This represents an interesting game balance between the strengths of the Allied and Soviet armies. The Soviets are formidable because of their brute force: their weakest tank is still more powerful than the best Allied equivalent even though it is only marginally more expensive and this, coupled with the fact that the Allied anti-tank defensive structure (the turret) is inferior to the Soviet Tesla coil (powerful and extremely accurate, like a bug zapper), means that the Allies are at a significant disadvantage during land based combat. This status quo is repeated in the field of aerial engagements where the Soviets have various specialised planes. For short powerful strikes, there is the Yak for dispatching infantry and light buildings and the MiG for armour and heavy buildings alike, while the Hind chopper is for staying power against both armour and infantry. The Allied army simply has one chopper, the Longbow which is best suited to anti-armour work.

Naval warfare, however, is another matter. The Allies have three ships: notably the Destroyer (modern guided missile destroyer) which is a good all-around vessel that can deal with aircraft, submarines, and land targets; and the Cruiser (some aptly call it a battleship) whose massive and (extremely) long-range guns can bombard an enemy base to rubble within minutes. In comparison the Soviets only receive the submarine that only exists to counteract Allied naval activity rather than provide a threat to the enemy's base. Considering that virtually all Red Alert maps contain various bodies of water this makes the Allies a much more credible threat. The Allies' second strength is their ability to indulge in acts of subterfuge. Allied commanders can build units and structures to recreate the "fog of war" effectively blinding the enemy. They themselves can launch a GPS satellite into space to see the whole battlefield. Other Allied units can jam radar, plant mines, steal money, spy on the enemy and plant explosive charges on buildings (Tanya). This means that Red Alert was a much more dynamic game than many of its time and stood in stark contrast to games such as Total Annihilation in which both sides had units with practically identical abilities.

Unlike the 'rock-paper-scissors' balancing of more recent games, Red Alert requires each player to make best use of their side's strengths to compensate for the weaknesses.

Connections to the Tiberian Series

Command & Conquer: Red Alert was designed as a prequel to the first C&C game Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn. During the Soviet campaign Kane makes infrequent appearances as an advisor to Stalin. Kane, it seemed, instigated the battles of Red Alert, in order to secure a power base for his Brotherhood of Nod. Indeed, Nadia (one of Stalin's advisors) asks the player to 'keep the peace' until Nod becomes active. Kane shoots her, and informs the player that he is the future. During the Allied Campaign, a news announcer reporting on the Allies' loss of Greece also announced that the United Nations had create a special military task force to deal with future global conflicts. It was assumed that this group was the Global Defense Initiative (GDI).

A debated theory to resolve the apparent timeline error is to consider Red Alert as the genesis of two parallel stories. If the Soviet campaign is played in Red Alert, Russia emerges as the dominant power and Kane and the Brotherhood Of Nod take control of this new empire. This leads directly into Tiberian Dawn. On the other hand, if the Allied campaign is played in Red Alert, the Allies emerge victorious, and the timeline leads directly to Red Alert 2. Of course, this is not without consistency flaws. As mentioned above, during the Allied campaign in Greece, the newscast refers to the formation of a "Initiative of Global Defense" to combat Soviet militarism in any form, a clear reference to the military alliance of the same name in Command & Conquer, yet if the Allied campaign is played, C&C never takes place, and Red Alert 2 contains no mention of GDI. The problems arise mainly because, of course Red Alert was originally conceived solely as a prequel to Tiberian Dawn, and only after its mass popular success was a separate sequel planned, muddying the timeline.

An example of the connections with the C&C chronologies is displayed (difficult to be noticed) in Command & Conquer: Renegade. In the last mission where Havoc infiltrates the Temple of Nod there are various portraits of Nod posters. One of the portraits shows two Soviet Apocalypse Tanks from Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. This could mean that the events of Red Alert did happen and Nod was involved somehow.

See also

• Command & Conquer: Generals
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series
• Kane

External links

• The XWIS server - an alternative server to Westwood Online (WOL) created by Olaf van der Spek and sponsored by the EA Germany Community Team.

• Command & Conquer series
• Alternate history games
• Electronic Arts games
• Windows games
• DOS games
• PlayStation games