It's generally accepted that the Soviet roster is the more colourful and fun of the two factions, but while that may be true of later Red Alert games, the factions of the original are well balanced. For example, as a strategy game, Red Alert is more even-handed than people tend to remember. But the quality of Red Alert's design shines through in lots of surprising ways. It's a spectacular experience, which seems odd to say about a game that is visually so antiquated (unless you're playing the remaster, of course). But the way these scenarios see you rip through units and structures is almost arcade-like. This isn't to say they are mindless affairs you've still got to navigate the map carefully to ensure Tanya doesn't get mauled by Soviet attack dogs or squashed by a tank. This is particularly the case in smaller-scale scenarios, such as an early Allied mission where one-woman-army Tanya Adams joins up with a handful of units to destroy a network of bridges and halt the Soviet advance. The pace of Red Alert, combined with its fondness for explosives, often makes it feel more like a top-down action game than an RTS. But in the absence of the Third Reich, the power of the Soviet Union grows unchecked, spreading through both Asia and Europe, while a ramshackle group of European Allies struggles to hold back the tide. Instead, Red Alert segues dramatically into an absurd alternate history, one where World War II never happened because Albert Einstein travelled back in time and erased Adolf Hitler from existence before the war broke out. But this wouldn't happen until 1999's Tiberian Sun. After the success of Command and Conquer, Westwood could easily have made a straightforward sequel, one that continued that story of GDI versus Nod. Red Alert's thematic choices are endlessly fascinating.
But upon this skeleton, Red Alert builds an experience that's more frenetic and more imaginative, as well as being shamelessly ridiculous. Red Alert adopts C&C's skeleton wholesale, including the interstitial cutscenes and the open-ended campaign structure that often lets you choose from a selection of missions. The game relies heavily on the RTS framework Westwood established with Dune 2 and mastered in Command & Conquer, that effervescent mix of resource-gathering, base-building and fast-paced battles. Naturally, it helps that the foundations of Red Alert were already laid at the outset of its production.
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