All around the world, people are donning German and Soviet military affectations. They laugh with glee as the brave men who oppose them are cut down with machine gun fire, consumed in napalm immolations, and horribly "put under the tread" of a 62-ton MBT. Britain, America, France, Denmark, Sweden - the people of every country in the world seem to have gone stark raving mad.

It's Judgement Day out there, and only the victors will be remembered.

The madness is all about Command and Conquer: Red Alert, the sequel to the blockbuster hit "Tiberium Dawn". Red Alert has blasted it's way across sales charts everywhere, and there seems no end in sight with what Westwood can do to fuel the fire. For those who have been living in a cave, the Command and Conquer series are the games to have started a whole new genre in PC entertainment. It's key deviation from established strategy games is the fact that the game runs in real time. This one key change alters the feel of a strategy game completely.

Previous wargames felt much like chess, with every move being well planned and worked out in advance, and games basically played out "by the book." Needless to say, this makes them very dry, and certainly doesn't make for a good representation of the true fluidity of combat. The true success of the genre is that it can be different games to different people. For some people, it's a mouse-clicking, brutal action game with strategy. Played at a slower pace, it's a strategy game that represents well the many intricacies of fighting combined-arms battles.

Doubtless, many strategy grognards are already shaking their heads about this. In some ways they would be right. Outright realism takes a back seat much of the time, but not always.

This is clearly obvious in the units themselves - tanks have main guns that work against armored units, but not only do they require many hits to destroy another unit, they tend to flail around almost helplessly against infantry because they lack the machine guns that real tanks carry. Emplacements are not only defended by field guns, but also by laser obelisks. But it's not as unrealistic as this may make one think.

Getting units to move into position in a coherent fashion is terribly difficult, and a poorly organized attack will quickly find itself dismantled against well-placed defenses. Choke points become a focus of major battles. Supply lines can be terribly vulnerable. Sieges against fortifications can be long and bloody affairs. Even the somewhat abstract concept of the Boyd Loop in modern warfare becomes understandable. (The Boyd Loop represents how long it takes for someone to recognize, plan, and act on a given situation. Whomever manages the loop fastest is the one who wins the conflict) So many of the classic considerations of warfare become poignantly displayed in the crucible of the game's fight.

The story of Red Alert is like a prequel to Command and Conquer. Shortly after the war, Einstein develops a time machine. He uses this to go back in time and eliminate Hitler before his rise to power. His assistant is ecstatic that the horror of WWII has never happened, but Einstein secretly fears that the vacuum left by Hitler would yet be filled. His worst fears are answered in Russia, where Stalin's forces had never suffered the horrific losses against Germany in WWII. Stalin stages the invasion of Europe, and it looks like WWII has indeed found its alternative.

But this WWII is like nothing you've ever seen before. Germany is now one of our strongest allies - in fact the commander of the allied forces is German. Technology has taken very strange turns. Yak fighters and soldiers from the WWII era are seen with Apache Longbows and Alfa-class submarines. The game pretends that it's all perfectly normal, and it doesn't seem to bother anyone much.

One of the most curious new features is Tanya. Tanya is the equivalent of a Commando from the original C&C. The switch is that she's is a personality unit. Much like the "legendary" units of Warcraft 2, she is utterly unique. If you bungle somehow and get her killed, she will no longer be available to you for the rest of the campaign. A nice twist in the gameplay. Many units have returned in new guises, and a few new ones have been added. Tesla coils are the equivalent of Obelisks, the Hind and Longbow replace the Gunship and Osprey, respectively, and so on.

New units include the Medic, the V2 Rocket launcher, Anti-Tank and Anti-personnel mine-layers, bunkers of several types, Anti-air units, fighter planes, transport ships, and several types of naval units. Basically the unit type and selection has effectively leapfrogged Warcraft 2, Red Alert's closest competitor. Some people have complained over the newsgroups that Red Alert suffers the problem of being a "tank rush". In other words, the person who builds the most tanks the fastest wins. In real modern warfare, the result of the armor battle usually makes the difference between who wins and who loses a battle. The exceptions are when poor terrain prevents tanks from being able to be employed properly.

Since the game's battlefields are mostly devoid of terrain, and none of the maps really look like a jungle (after all, this is supposed to take place on the Eastern Front of Europe), it should hardly come as surprising that the battles hinge heavily on the armor war. This situation could have been addressed by creating heavy forests for some battles that may discourage heavy tank units. Alternatively, making the performance of helicopter-fired anti-tank missiles or shoulder fired LAW missiles more realistic might help. But the fact is that in open terrain, the tank is king of the ground units - and that should come as no surprise to anyone.

Red Alert comes with two different versions in the same box. There is a Windows 95 version which runs in SVGA and gives a very good field of view to players, and there is a DOS version which behaves much like the original Command and Conquer - VGA only. The nice part about this is for inexperienced computer users, there will usually be one version that they can manage to run. Computer-wise, a Pentium 75 or better is recommended with at least 16MB of RAM. The game isn't too taxing on the hardware, so someone with a fast 486 could probably play the DOS version without too much slowdown.

One of the nicest features of Red Alert is ambiguously called "Westwood Chat." This is a system similar to Blizzard's Battle.net. It allows players of the Win95 version to hook up with their internet provider (If their provider handles PPP connections) and play multiplayer games free over the internet. Specialized services such as TEN and MPlayer offer dedicated servers for a price, but the free nature of "matchmaking" servers such as Battle.net and Westwood Chat are extremely popular - in fact, LucasArts has recently made some strong hints that they may set up a matchmaking server for their upcoming games such as X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight. As with all matchmaking internet play, performance is usually less than with the dedicated services, but the value is hard to argue with.

Westwood has capitalized on their talent to produce another winner in the genre they created single-handedly. Red Alert is very nicely polished, offers some nice selection of units, has more of the excellent cut-scenes that made C&C famous, and lastly offers good internet multiplayer support in Win 95.

The game's only real down side is that despite all the new units, the actual gameplay is perhaps too conservative - in fact it still remains nearly the same since the original Dune 2. There still is no terrain elevation. The computer is limited to only one type of AI model. The game makes no distinctions between green units and experienced veterans. Line of sight issues are largely ignored. Units have strict limitations on what kind of autonomy they possess. Granted, the addition of naval warfare is a welcome sight, but that road had been crossed long ago by Warcraft 2.

For fans of the original Command and Conquer, Red Alert is an excellent sequel, especially due to the added internet play - and for this reason phone lines around the world are burning up with the battles over Westwood Chat. Yet, for someone looking for some truly fresh ideas on gameplay in the real-time strategy genre, it might be worth the wait for Activision's upcoming Dark Reign.

More Reviews:

In Nomine
Shadowrun Companion
Live and Direct
Marc Miller's Traveller (4th Edition)
The Babylon Project
Casting Call (Miniatures)
Unknown Providence
Command and Conquer (computer game)
Cthulhu Live