Game Overview

Urban Warfare

The most noticeable difference between Red Alert 2 and previous C&C games is RA2's focus on urban warfare. The battlefields are cities, complete with streets, buildings, and famous landmarks. You'll see familiar sights in RA2's maps to reinforce the idea that you're defending (or invading) New York City, San Francisco, Washington DC, etc. Yes, this means that you can nuke the Washington Monument or lay siege on the Empire State Building! Other battlefields include European cities, Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Hawaii, Chicago, the Florida Keys, Mexico, and the Arctic!

Allied Aircraft Carrier

Eiffel Tower as a Tesla Coil?

The big question is, how does this affect the gameplay? Having an urban environment means a crowded battlefield. Tanks rolling down a street can't feel safe - infantry in RA2 can garrison in buildings, which increases their range and their attack power. We saw a handful of gunners fortify (a garrisoned building changes in appearance from a regular building to one with barbed wire, boarded up windows, etc) a pair of buildings overlooking a boulevard. Five Prism tanks rolled down that street only to get chewed to pieces by the infantry in the buildings!

Allied forces try in vain to attack

Kirov airships lay siege to the Statue of Liberty

Graphics

Red Alert 2's graphics and interface layout don't stray too far from the proven formula of past C&C games. Don't look for super radical changes like those Blizzard made between Warcraft 3 and Starcraft. Red Alert 2 stays with a mostly 2D world, with voxel enhancements. There are noticeable improvements to the graphics - units are larger, and exhibit a good deal of detail in both art and animation.

The primary interface tool bar remains placed at right, but enhanced with tabs to help organize things: buildings, vehicles, infantry, etc. This is a feature that was actually used in the console ports of Red Alert 1, but didn't make it into Tiberian Sun. Westwood has also included buttons along the bottom to help players organize their armies into numbered groups. They've also taken a page from Ensemble's playbook and added "beacons" to help you point out key areas on the map to your teammates. Moving a step or two further, Red Alert 2 will allow you to attach messages and timers to beacons! Imagine marking off a point on the map and leaving a message + countdown timer: "attack here in 45 seconds."

Westwood Style

One of Westwood's signatures is that they never lack for fanciful, far out ideas for units or attacks. This has never been more true than it is now in Red Alert 2. The game is "balanced high" meaning that the design calls for lots of very high powered units. Both sides in the game are chock FULL of "wow inducing" troop types, structures, and special attacks. Throughout the demonstration we got, the crowd of journalists was dazzled and amazed with the creativity of the designers. It's almost as if Westwood is utterly careless about stuffing in as many wacky ideas as they can into the game with little to no regard for game balance. Yet, they always manage to find a way to make it all work - with all the playtesting they're doing, they're bound to make it work in RA2.