Command & Conquer Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge Reviews

Before the widely hated and greedy company of Electronic Arts took over the beloved Command and Conquer series of Real Time Strategy games, there was good old Westwood Studios. This (now defunct) company put out all the games in the C&C series, up until 2003 when Generals came out. In 2000, they released Red Alert 2, which focuses on an alternate timeline where Adolf Hitler is killed by Einstein and thus sets into effect a war that is initiated because the USSR decides to invade europe. Red Alert 2 was a pretty good game. Not just gameplay wise, but also because of its complexity. You had to actually be intelligent to play it because you have a limited amount of money and resources, and it's up to you to manage them effectively. About a year later, Westwood once again delivered the goods in the form of Yuri's Revenge. Acting as RA2's only expansion, Yuri's Revenge picks up where the ending of Red Alert 2 left off, and sets up a new storyline that involves both the USSR and Allies trying to stop the psychopathic Yuri; a psychic who can mind control his enemies and is the former adviser to the Soviet leader Romanov. It's revealed that due to his ruthlessness, Yuri was most likely the real leader of the USSR in Red Alert 2, not his boss. Because Yuri's Revenge is an expansion pack, it requires RA2 in order to play, and is essentially the same game. It does however up the ante by including 7 brand new story mode levels for the Soviets and Allies (sadly there's no Yuri campaign), new vehicles, new voice acting, and new maps for the skirmish mode. The story mode in this is somewhat confusing and (admittedly) completely ridiculous. You're dealing with things such as time travel, mind control, and during the Soviet missions, you actually travel to the moon at one point to prevent Yuri from establishing a base there. The game still doesn't take itself all that seriously, which is good because if it did, the story would probably be terrible. Just like with my original Red Alert 2 review, I won't spoil what happens in either of the campaigns, but the new units given to each team definitely help out. The soviets get new vehicles such as the siege chopper, which fills the role of a helicopter (which they lacked in the original game). It can land and transform part of itself into a howitzer to pummel long range targets. The allies get things such as the battle fortress, a hulking monster of a vehicle that can crush smaller ones and load itself with up to 5 soldiers (who can fire from the inside). My favored team is still probably the Allies because they're better in the late game while the Soviets are better early on. The Soviets get a lot of tank units which makes them good at smashing enemies with overwhelming force, but later on, the Allies turn the tide with their superior air power and nasty special weapons. Things like the Chronosphere return from the original game, a device capable of teleporting vehicles anywhere in a flash, as well as gap generators, small towers that permanently blot out sections of the map for opponents. The Allies also have the upper hand when it comes to surveillance, using such structures as the spy satellite, which allows you to have full map vision at all times (unless it gets destroyed). This allows players to see everything their enemy is doing, which is a huge advantage. As stated earlier, there's unfortunately no story mode where you can play as Yuri's team, but his faction, simply titled "Yuri", is playable in skirmish and multiplayer. Doing so however is widely frowned upon, because if you know what you're doing, Yuri's team is insanely overpowered. His faction's playstyle requires a bit of getting used to and it's not the easiest team to get the hang of using, but a seasoned player will totally wipe the floor with you. Just to emphasize how unfair his team is, Yuri's standard infantry unit is a soldier which can set things on fire with his mind, and when garrisoned inside buildings, they do a nightmarish amount of damage to even the heaviest of vehicles. He also gets things such as the mastermind, which is basically a giant brain on tank tracks that can mind control up to three units at a time and make them fight for you. Trying to control more than three will cause the vehicle to take damage. The developers tried to balance Yuri's team somewhat by giving him weak tanks (such as the lasher), but they're still on par with the allied grizzly tanks in terms of armor. The acting in this game is still cheesy, but it helps make the whole experience more nostalgic for people who played this over 20 years ago. It's sad to realize that the actors in this game's cutscenes are all much older now and the guys who portrayed Einstein and Romanov are both dead. Just like the game it runs on, Yuri's Revenge suffers from a dire lack of support on modern operating systems. I've seen some people say that it crashes for them even more frequently than normal Red Alert 2 does, which is very frustrating. The game just wasn't designed with new computers in mind. Still, if you can manage to get it running, you'll find that Yuri's Revenge is a great add-on to Red Alert 2 (and its only one) because it introduces new levels, new units, new ways to play, and a very annoying new team to fight against (or as).