Command & Conquer: Red Alert
Tags: alternate reality, alternate history

Plot synopsis:
Command & Conquer: Red Alert takes place between 1946 and 1953 of a parallel universe.
Starting out at the Trinity Site in New Mexico in 1946 (in our timeline), Albert Einstein prepares to travel backward in spacetime. He activates his experimental time machine to find himself in Landsberg, Germany, on 20 December 1924, where he meets a young Adolf Hitler just after the latter's release from Landsberg Prison. Following a brief conversation between the two, Einstein shakes Hitler's hand while activating his time-traveling device. In the process of Einstein returning to his time of origin, Hitler dies due to the lack of his own equipment for the transit through time. (This is implied by the Allies' Chronosphere in-game, in which usage of its power on soldiers kills them.)
Hitler's death prevents him from rising to power as leader of Nazi Germany. This creates a new timeline, in which eliminating Hitler's actions has caused a change for the worse. Without Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union grew powerful under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Unweakened, the USSR seizes land from China and then invades Eastern Europe, to achieve Joseph Stalin's vision of a Soviet Union stretching across the entire Eurasian landmass. In response, the nations of Europe form the Alliance, and start a guerrilla war against the invading Soviet army. Over the course of the game's story, the Allies and Soviets fight for control over the European mainland in an alternate World War II.
Allied ending: Following the siege of Moscow, an Allied platoon discovers Stalin buried alive in the rubble of the Kremlin. Before they begin to remove the debris from the fallen leader, General Stavros stops them. He convinces them that they saw nothing and orders them to leave the premises. Stavros then stuffs a handkerchief down Stalin's mouth before covering his head with a large stone and walking away. This outcome forces Kane – who was using the Soviet Union to get to power – and his Brotherhood underground, leading to the events of Command & Conquer. This ending also paves the way to the sequel, Red Alert 2.
Soviet ending: As the Soviets celebrate their victory in the newly captured Buckingham Palace, Stalin commends the Commander (the player), but is poisoned by Nadia. Nadia guns him down as the poison overcomes his body. Following Stalin's death, Nadia tells the Commander that the Soviet Union is now under the rule of the Brotherhood of Nod, who plan to return to the shadows again and reemerge in the 1990s, leaving the player as the puppet ruler of the USSR, ready to do the Brotherhood's bidding for "the foreseeable future." She is betrayed and shot in the back by Kane, who reveals himself to be the true mastermind.

Review: What a Prequel, What a Prequel....
This game is the prequel to the acclaimed Real Time Strategy game of 1995, Command & Conquer: Tiberium Dawn, it details the forming of the GDI and NOD forces and an alternate reality in which Hitler never rose to power, a more sinister force emerged, Stalin, and now he is marching across Europe.I love the series and if we are talking about the movie sequnces, then it's great, the acting is spectacular and all fits in well in the story, even though it won't mean nothing to you if you are not playing.Joseph Kucan is a great actor and I hope he won't turn to the big screen because there are Places to go, Buildings to raze..
great game.
a great game that starts out with albert einstien going back in time and eliminating adolf hitler from becoming a threat.
however without hitler keeping the soviet union in check, stalin goes about trying to take over the continent.as either allies or soviets you either defend against soviet invaders or as soviets, try to invade and take over.
a great film that has the characters talking directly to you.
a cool feature that command and conquer doesn't do.
the graphics are cool, and the weapons are great.
a masterpiece by westwood..
Explosive.
Red Alert was not just an incredible continuation to a great game but the underlying concept, of the Soviet Union under Stalin fighting against the European Forces was an important revolution in gaming history.
The cinematics are of higher resolution and even better than what you saw in the previous game.
While several units such as the Mammoth Tank made a reappearance, there are also plenty of new units including full compliments of maritime and air elements.
The level design is even better than before.
The best part of this game is however, the difficulty.
Even under normal difficulty, it is very challenging..
Great computer generated graphics!.
The movie sequences in Red Alert are great!
You can't tell the backgrounds are computer generated and it looks photo realistic.
The only thing I don't like is how the actors talk to the camera.
Tiberian Sun will be better because you will actually be a character on the screen!
Joseph Kucan is awesome!.
Lucas, are you paying attention?
*This* is the way to do a prequel.
After the success of Command & Conquer, this nifty number was created...
Red Alert.
The prequel to the war depicted in aforementioned game.
Each of these games bring something new and interesting to the franchise, each has a running theme, and I would say that the theme of this is time traveling.
It is used for two very interesting purposes, one story-wise and one for game-play.
The first is a take on what would have happened, had someone not only answered the ethical question of "if you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler?" with a "heck yeah!" but actually went on to do just that(although, admittedly, the intro does leave it somewhat open to interpretation exactly *what* happened); from the very start of the game, we are in an alternate reality.
The world where World War II never occurred.
However, Hitler was not the only threat to world peace back then...
and in the story-line presented here, "The Man of Steel"(no, not Superman) fills the void left behind.
This is where you come in...
will you render the world "red", and take your place at Stalin's side as ruler of the planet, or will you wipe out Communism and the Soviet Union as the Allies?
The game-play use of time travel is interesting in more than one way...
the very idea behind the Chrono-Sphere, a machine that through manipulating the time/space continuum can instantly move a vehicle from any point in the level to any other point is an excellent piece of science fiction, and that's coming from a man who is a considerable fan of the genre, and the actual use of this in-game is a real treat, tactically speaking.
I'll leave it up to each player's individual imagination what the effective uses of it are.
This game takes all that Command & Conquer was and expands upon it.
There's a whole slew of new features, and additions to old ones.
When ordering groups of units around, there is now a new queue system, one that removes a lot(though not yet all) of the need of watching over your units.
The few bugs that are left are now for the most part minor, and can be solved by fiddling a tiny bit with whatever is causing trouble.
Keyboard shortcuts give you the opportunity to order units to guard, scatter, etc.
New units include the Field Medic, which means that all units can now have their health restored to maximum in-between battles(though said unit is only available to the Allied side).
Fighting by sea is now an actual option, as both sides get transport ships(think the ones that provided reinforcements in the first game, only less open, presumably for the protection of the units inside).
The Allied get three ships of increasing usefulness(culminating in the oh-so-freakishly-awesome Cruiser), and the Soviets get Submarines.
The name of the game this time is "fairness"...
where the first game had several units and special attacks that were incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to truly guard yourself against, this doesn't.
There is a "Nuke", but it's not going to level your base as the bomb of the original C&C did.
The two sides are reasonably leveled, with the Soviets being big, strong and slow, and the Allied being fast, tactical and good at hiding(quite literally...
Gap Generators, anyone?).
These superior tactical opportunities are represented through, among other things, the Spy, a new infantry unit who, in spite of looking and sounding like a Lothario, can infiltrate enemy buildings and provide new features for the player, such as the Sonar Pulse acquired by sending a Spy into the enemy's Sub Pen(the building supplying them with, yep, you guessed it, Subs(as in Submarines, not substitute teachers) as well as transport ships), which detects and reveals any submarine on the map for a brief period of time.
The Spy can fool any enemy into thinking he's on their side, save for the also new Attack Dog, which is only on the side of the Soviets, and who can sniff out any enemy Spy and make short work of him.
It'll also take out other infantry, but it's somewhat weak.
The Allies also have the Thief, who, whilst looking like Zorro, can lift funds from the enemy's ore deposits(both Refineries and Silos).
The Allied also have useful mobile air defense, in the form of Rocket Soldiers.
More is done with airborne units, as well.
The missions are extraordinarily well done, and, by my count, almost fourteen of them have several choices of level(sometimes with up to three possibilities).
There are almost thirty in total, both campaigns combined.
The multi-player is marvelous.
There is now also a "skirmish" mode, which allows you to battle only computer enemies.
The maps for multi-playing are plentiful and well-done.
The music is utterly magnificent, continuing the trend of the first, but I would say improved upon.
This one also has the incredible "Hell March", one that the team clearly realized the grandeur of, evidenced by the fact that they put it on the track-list for both sides, as well as in the introduction of not only this game, but also its successor.
Story-telling is improved upon, and the cut-scenes are more well-directed.
The briefings are efficient; they never fail to make you feel like you are part of this story, not just a spectator.
The commando is now Tanya, and I have to admit that the role could have been better cast.
The presence and attitude just isn't that strong with the actress.
The in-game voice is a lot better.
This is also the only negative thing I can really say about this, and it's not going to bring it down from a perfect score.
The graphics are great, in-game and cut-scenes alike.
The characters, apart from Tanya, are all well-cast.
The game also features an excellent level designer.
This is quite simply among the best RTS games ever made.
I recommend this to every fan of this kind of games.
A golden oldie!.
I believe Red Alert is one of the few games of the mid-nineties that stood the test of time and that is still immensely enjoyable so many years after it's release.Red Alert was released only year after the original C&C, having started out as a expansion pack but somewhere along the line Westwood decided to convert it into a full sequel.
This shows because the 2 games have similar game-play, graphics and most of the units in Red Alert are exact copies from C&C.
However where Red Alert manages to surpass it's predecessor is with the addition of much more interesting story lines, campaigns with lots of twists and turns, improved cinematic sequences and also a few interesting air and sea units which improves game-play.The player can choose between the Soviets and Allied campaign, each side have different strengths and weaknesses, requiring the player to adjust his strategy to the suit his side's particular strength and weaknesses.
The Soviet units are generally stronger, but more expensive and slower than the Allied units.
The Allied units are quicker and cheaper, but lack the firepower of the Soviet units.
The game is difficult enough to challenge the casual gamer and keep you entertained for hours without being frustratingly difficult.An area where I believe the developers got it wrong was with the balance of strengths and weaknesses of the Allied and Soviet sides, the Allied units are simply not cheap nor fast enough to make up for their lack of firepower, a large Soviet tank rush would usually easily wipe their Allied opponents off the map.
The dumb AI is also not much of an improvement from the previous game, and is actually quite easy to beat once you've got the hang of the game.Criticisms aside, If you are a RTS game fan and never got round to play this game (which is highly unlikely) or just want to go for a trip down memory lane, this game will still be worth your money and time..
Great but Hard.
Rated T for Violence.I played Command And Conquer Red Alert a couple of times at my neighbors house.THe game is very good for its time.It has top-down graphics like Postal and Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 and the gameplay is awesome.This is the only command and conquer game I ever played.I'm not much of a strategy game fan.I'm more of a fighting and shooting game fan so I have not played much games like this.The game is very hard.You have some money to start with and you must choose things like battle stations,electricity stuff you will need to defeat your enemies.You send trucks to find gold as well.This game requires lots of thinking and strategy.Command And Conquer Red Alert is a fun but hard game and I recommend it to any strategy game fan.8/10.
Best of the Best.
This is one of the greatest games i've ever played.
When you turn on the game, you see a movie about Albert Einstein who travels back in time and removes Adolf Hitler out of history.
Because of this change, not Germany, but the Soviet Union caused World War II.You can play the game as the Allies or as the Soviets.
Or when you choose the option "SKIRMISH", you can play as Russia, Great Britian, Germany, and other countries.Well, it is an entertaining and good game.
And I also think general Von Esling was good, and the other actors were good too.
Only some of the effects were a little bit dated.My rating: 8/10.