Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 Walkthrough

Allies Walkthrough

Soviet Walkthrough

If you like any Command and Conquer games, you must buy Red Alert 2. Red Alert 2 is definitely my favorite in the Command and Conquer series. I feel this is the real-time strategy game all others should be compared to. RA2 runs flawlessly on my system and the requirements are low so most PC users can enjoy this.

In the single player campaign I didn't find a single mission I didn't like. It is of course common for your mission objective to be "destroy all enemies", but the maps are great. Many of these maps are cities as the game takes place in the near future when the Soviet Union attacks America. So, urban warfare is common and the game even lets you garrison buildings to set up defensive zones. Which you will need as the AI can be very challenging at times on even normal difficulty.

There are two campaigns you can choose in Red Alert 2. Play the Americans and their allies trying to stop the Soviet Union or the Soviets trying to conquer the world. The sides are very diverse with strengths and weaknesses. Allied infantry is much better than the Soviets' but a Soviet rhino heavy tank will easily destroy an allied grizzly one on one. I enjoyed the allied campaign more of the two because they get to use the harrier jet and can use it to strike swiftly an undefended building or ore harvester. Not that the Soviets are useless in the air. They get the slow moving kirov airship which can destroy a construction yard with two of its mighty bombs. But, that's the thing I wasn't fond of. It's slow.

Each nation can use superweapons later in the campaign. These are awesome and add some extra flavor to this genre. It's sort of frightening when you can't do anything about that nuclear missile silo and you can see the countdown nearing zero. They launch and take a big chunk out of your base. The allies get the weather controller and the chrono shifter. The weather controller can generate a storm at any designated location and pummel it with powerful lightning. The chrono shifter can teleport mechanical units anywhere on the map for suprise strikes, even right into the enemy base. The Soviets get the iron curtain and the nuclear missile. The nuclear missile is what you'd expect, a powerful explosion followed by fallout. Any infantry in the fallout will die almost instantly if they somehow survived the blast. The Iron curtain is a tactical weapon much like the allied chrono shifter. Use of this superweapon on any units in its area of affect will grant them temporary invulnerability. Beware an invulnerable kirov airship! But then there's not much you can do about it. Destroying a superweapon will stop the countdown. If it's reconstructed the countdown begins anew.

There is a very diverse selection of units in the game like the kirov I mentioned before. Some of these are very futuristic. Allied prism tanks fire a concentrated beam of light which can reflect off of one enemy and damage the surrounding area. Soviet tesla troopers fire an electrical charge at the target which is effective against all types of armor. These tesla troopers can be used to beef up the tesla coil (a defensive structure) by firing their electrical beams at it, increasing its range and firepower. Each nation has unique story units as well which are very powerful in combat but must usually survive the mission. Tanya is awesome! She can kill any infantry in one shot and can plant C4 on a building to destroy it instantly. And there's more, almost every unit in the game can gain levels and gain firepower upgrades, self healing etc. Protect your elite units and you can have a really powerful army. Especially send that damaged elite apocalypse tank to a repair station or withdraw it from battle so it can heal itself.

Spies are a nice feature in Red Alert 2. Spies can disguise themselves as an enemy soldier and, if they can evade attack dogs (one of the only things that can detect them), waltz right into an enemy base and infiltrate its facilities. A spy sent into a superweapon will reset its countdown. My personal favorite: A spy sent into a power plant can shut down all power of that base. This is a great tactic to use before your assault. Without power the allies can't use those damn prism towers.

There is an expansion for Red Alert 2. It's called Yuri's Revenge. It adds another side to the game, allowing you to battle Yuri. Yuri's side is cool with a psychic theme. They can mind control units and have a neat unit called the floating disc you can use. Yuri's side has superweapons of course. Very annoying superweapons if you're on the receiving end. Yuri can mind control a small group of units and cause damage to the surrounding area with the psychic dominator. His side also has the genetic mutator which will turn any infantry in its area into brutes, massive freaks which attack even tanks with their fists.

Red Alert 2 and the Yuri's Revenge expansion (for which I also wrote a walkthrough) are, in my opinion, essential to the real-time strategy gamer. This is also a good game to get you introduced to the genre! It has a very cool storyline, fun missions, awesome music and great graphcs.

Thus, I loved this game and chose to make a walkthrough. I enjoyed it for years and will likely install it again in the future. Red Alert 2 was a work that other strategy games had to be compared to for a while after its release. Still some games come out that can't come close to this one.