Why Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a decent vinyl to spin, every so often
Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996)
Command & Conquer: Red Alert (1996)
The question was put to me recently: why has there been nothing new and exciting in the PC Real-Time Strategy genre? And I think I might have the answer: it's not that there are no new innovations, that gamers have grown tired of the genre, that MOBAs have taken over, or even that people are doing the unthinkable and leaving their PCs behind in favour of consoles.
No, I reckon the reason for this is simple: our taste in RTS games is much like our taste in music. There's a lot of wonderful music out there, an overwhelming amount perhaps. Hence, we pick our favourite genre, artists and songs in our teenage years. And then we stick with them for life.
No, think about it. When’s the last time you actually sought out new music? We all complain about modern music, feeling we're way behind on what’s current. We resent just about everything they play in pubs and clubs these days. Hence we find radio stations that play the "oldies", and we get shocked and appalled when they start playing something from the 2000s.
Well news flash mate, this is exactly what happened to your dad, except replace 2000s with 1970s. And it happened to his dad as well, back in the 40s and 50s. We find our musical comfort zone, and we don't dare transgress from it. And whatever musical genre this represents for you, you can guarantee that artists of your taste aren’t troubling any of the charts in this day and age.
Actually, there’s another news flash for you: nobody cares about the music charts nowadays. There hardly exists the concept of a Number 1 anymore. Of course there is a huge amount of obscure music and bands out there that match your preferred genre, and the likes of Spotify and YouTube could help you do just that. But let’s be real, you stick to what you know.
It's that eternal wisdom from Grandpa Simpson: "Now what I’m ‘with’, isn’t ‘it’. And what's ‘it’ seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to yooouuu..." Or, if you want another piece of grandparental wisdom which may back up my point, there’s the time we introduced my elderly grandmother to Spotify.
We invited her to pick a song, any song she wished to hear. She immediately asked for a Nat King Cole number - what else? And as Nat began crooning around our front room, she was amazed, and made the observation, "God, they'll never sell a record with that!" with a pleased surprise.
Actually, she was sort of wrong on that one - I've actually bought records in the last 10 years. Many of us have been doing just that. In fact, I’ve bought more vinyl than I ever bought CDs or - god forbid - paid download music. But those records I bought weren't anything close to modern music, I can promise you that.
This is what has happened in the Real-Time Strategy world also. We find a few of those strategy games that we enjoy early on, and we stick with them rigidly for life. A decent RTS game is, after all, almost infinite in depth.
You can play on an essentially infinite number of maps, using an infinite number of strategies. No two game sessions are truly alike. There are metagames and winning strategies, of course, that top players must adhere to. And there are only so many units and factions to use. But the scope of these games is immense; entire treatises could be written on the subject of a popular RTS.
Perhaps this is why RTS games are no longer big sellers - we gamers only need a few of them to set us up for life. It may be a turn-based game, but I have never looked beyond Civilization II - other gamers out there are jolly content with Civilization IV or V, and they won’t need another one as long as they live. And. while I haven’t checked this, I understand that whoever is ranked the best player of Starcraft in South Korea gets to become Prime Minister of the country.
As for the Age of Empires series, Age of Empires IV received critical acclaim, and great sales - two things which Age of Empires III slightly missed the mark on. The reason why, of course, is that Age of Empires II has proved to be timeless, and it’s the one that does the best numbers to this day - in terms of sales, concurrent players, number of mods and expansions, you name it.
But what of Command & Conquer? The groundbreaking first game in the series was a childhood favourite of mine, and so too was its sequel, Red Alert. Released a year after the original, Red Alert was way ahead of its time, as all great RTS games are. As you load up the game, the famous Hell March theme blares, against the backdrop of that wonderful green Westwood Studios logo, followed by the words "proudly presents" - no truer words - you could not fail to be hyped up by this game.
And yet in my mind, this title has actually been superceded by a game I discovered later in life, but still in my teen years - the direct sequel, Red Alert 2. And I suppose the reason that Red Alert 1 fell off the throne is that this game is just that bit too primitive. Ahead of its time, sure, as I mentioned. But still from the stone age of RTS AI, where the only real quality of life improvements over the first Command & Conquer game are the presence of a skirmish mode for random battles against the CPU.
It was interesting that Westwood Studios, or more accurately a team in Electronic Arts who were probably being watched like hawks, developed a remastered version of C&C and C&C: Red Alert for Steam. It was cool to hear some revamped music by the musical genius himself, Frank Klepacki. Plus there were some other quality of life improvements such as the ability to queue buildings and units. But ultimately, Red Alert 1 is a bit too old and it belongs in the past, though I hate to say it.
I'll still load up Red Alert every so often and spin around in it though, because it's just an iconic game- it introduced us to unforgettable moments, like getting attacked by Giant Ants, or having your units melted by Tesla Coils. I love the sound of Tesla Coils in the morning, don't you? And Tanya was an unforgettable unit, with even more memorable soundbites.
Red Alert 1 is certainly a more serious game than its follow-ups - it’s still preposterous of course, but when a fairly convincing Josef Stalin is talking directly to you in the war room, giving you that infamous quote about one death being a tragedy and a million deaths being a statistic, it’s nothing if not immersive.
The music is amazing, there are a boatload of missions across both the Allied and Soviet campaigns, and for more fun, this game spawned not one but two expansion packs, plus unique ports to the PlayStation 1. It included a Map Creator, and budding hackers and modders could easily change many properties of the game in a tool as simple as Notepad.
It is funny to watch the hapless AI though, in all their 1996 crude glory, getting all of their pathfinding completely wrong. Incidentally, though this game’s winning strategy usually involves building up a deathball of tanks, don't think you can just point them at your enemy and you've won, because there's no such thing as grouping in Red Alert 1. This means you'll see your whole platoon of tanks take the longest route in the world towards the enemy, all single file and driving all over the place, like a bad day on Spaghetti Junction.
Still, if you're playing against an AI, you will always win in the end - once you’ve weathered the initial assault they throw at you, they sort of sit in their base doing nothing. Sometimes they build their base in such a haphazard manner that their units literally can’t get out, so you can come and pick them off however you chose. If you’re up against a human foe meanwhile, the tank rush is obviously the way to go.
But the bigger challenge, as we've mentioned, is actually finding foes to play against in this day and age. They're still out there of course, and they probably always will be. But they're gonna be much better than you, after all these years, and much better equipped to deal with your assaults.
So you'll probably just stick to AI battles and the interesting Campaign mode, right the way up to fighting the Giant Ants in the hidden missions. Except you won't, really, because if you're properly in the mood for some PC RTS, sure, you’re probably gonna go for the old reliables - but not THAT old. Red Alert is that classic vinyl record, maybe fun to spin every once in a while, but you really are better off trying something new.
12 September 2025