Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Command & Conquer: Red Alert is a real-time strategy game developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive Entertainment in 1996 for MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows. It was ported to the PlayStation in 1997 and rereleased on PlayStation 3 in 2008.

It is the second installment in the Command & Conquer franchise and it serves as a prequel of the first installment in the franchise, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn.

Plot
At the Trinity Site in New Mexico in 1946, Albert Einstein prepares to travel backward in spacetime. He activates his experimental time machine to find himself in Landsberg, Germany, on 20 December 1924, where he meets a young Adolf Hitler just after the latter's release from Landsberg Prison. Following a brief conversation between the two, Einstein shakes Hitler's hand, which erases him from the timeline.

Hitler's death prevents him from rising to power as leader of Nazi Germany. This creates a new timeline, in which eliminating Hitler's actions has caused a change for the worse. Without Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union grew powerful under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Unweakened, the USSR seizes land from China and then invades Eastern Europe, to achieve Joseph Stalin's vision of a Soviet Union stretching across the entire Eurasian landmass. In response, the U.S. and the countries of Europe form the Allied Nations, and start a guerrilla war against the invading Soviet Army. Over the course of the game's story, the Allies and Soviets fight for control over the European mainland in an alternate World War II.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Fixes many flaws that the first game had, such as the lack of a construction queue.
 * 2) Nice FMV cutscenes, amazing for that time.
 * 3) Added a Skirmish mode, which allows you to play a random map game against a computer opponent.
 * 4) Instead of the classic "rock-paper-scissors" systems adopted by most RTS games at that time, the game requires you to exploit you faction's strengths to compensate its weaknesses.
 * 5) Good story, which predates Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn.
 * 6) It's one of the first games with a competitive multiplayer gameplay.
 * 7) Many ways to gain money, such as ores and gems, unlike the first game, where you had only the Tiberium crystals.
 * 8) Two expansions called Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Counterstrike and Command & Conquer: Red Alert: The Aftermath were released. They were later rereleased on the PlayStation in a compilation called Command & Conquer: Red Alert: Retaliation.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The sound effects tend to become repetitive after a while.
 * 2) The PlayStation version has no online multiplayer, due to the technical limitations of the system.