A good title with a few issues
Written: Jan 04 '01
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Ease of gameplay, good weapons, many single player missions to complete
Cons: Weak graphics, somewhat clumsy unit movement commands, AI is not the brightest bulb in the pack
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| jared_ellars's Full Review: Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 for Windows |
This is my first Command and Conquer game that I have played. I had high expectation of this game and in most cases I was not disappointed.
Game Play
The game play is fairly easy, you start out with a mobile construction vehicle and you have to effetely balance material resources, defensive and offensive measures and unit construction.
Each side has their own strengths and weaknesses. The Allied side strengths include air support and spy satellites networks. The air support is great because you can bring your planes in to attack ground troops and tanks, and also do long range attacks on enemy bases. But you have to be very careful of anti-aircraft guns. The spy satellites are also very nice because they reveal the whole map to you so you can see what the other person has or is doing. The weakness of the Allied forces is their armored vehicles. Though they can do some damage, especially the prism tanks, they will not last long in any kind of firefight, especially tank versus tank.
The Soviet forces strengths are almost the opposite of the Allied forces. The soviets have a mind reading device, which shows you where the other person is coming from and where they are going to attack. The Soviets anti-aircraft guns are much better then the Patriot Missiles that the Allied forces deploy. Along with the mind reader device, the tanks of the Soviets are very strong, but have a shorter rang of attack. Still the tanks are a force to fear, considering one Soviet tank could take on two Allied tanks. The weakness of the Soviets is that they do not have any satellites, which means to find the enemy you have to scout around with a tank or soldier. The Soviets also do not have any type of air force so you have to relay on medium range V3 Missile trucks to attack targets.
Along with the standard weapons, the Allied and Soviets have their own super weapons. The Allied supper weapons are a transporter device and a weather machine. The Soviets supper weapons include an Iron Curtain, which make unit invincible for a short time, and a Nuclear Solo.
My issues with the game
The Graphics
The graphics are not terrible, but they lack real good detail. The game also lacks a zoom or rotate feature, which would be nice when selecting one unit out of a group. Also I believe that they game should leave the skeletons on the battlefield to add to the feel of the game.
Game Controls – Moving and Selecting units
I still have problems with the way the game makes you select and move your units around. The problems lay in that the select and move commands are located on the same button. Sometimes when I want to move a unit to another place close to another unit I will get to close the other unit and end up selecting him instead of moving my unit. This always happens when I’m getting attacked. Grrrr.
No real depth to the battle
This actually ties into the next point, but the game does not have that element of unpredictability as other RTS game have like Age of Empires. The computer gets stuck in ruts. It will always attack me in the same place or take a curtain path on curtain maps.
Unintelligent Artificial Intelligence
To put it bluntly, the computer is dumb. Though when I first started the computer walked all over me, now I can easily beat it. It would not be bad if the computer countered the moves that I make, like if I build a building near their base, the computer will walk right pass it without attacking it. Or my favorite blow up the bridge linking you and the enemy and he will never rebuild it. Boy you can win battle that way can’t you. Now I will admit, if you turn up the level of attack the computer is little more of a opponent, but it will still do stupid things.
Overall…
The game is good and entertaining, but they need to improve on the AI and graphics to really meet all of mine expectations. Still I would highly recommend this game to anyone who enjoys playing Real Time Stagey games.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
jared_ellars
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Location: Des Moines, Iowa
Reviews written: 61
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