Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2/YMMV


  • Cult Classic: Many a gamer who grew up in the early 2000s remember Red Alert 2 fondly for its gameplay and also for its cheesy, over-the-top premise. In places such as the Philippines, it isn't uncommon for a typical cornerside internet shop to have RA2 and other similar games like Battle Realms and the original DOTA map for Warcraft III installed. On top of that, it's just a classic of old strategies.
  • Even Better Sequel: Red Alert grows beyond being an offshoot of the Tiberium saga with this installment and many interesting gameplay additions are introduced. The Lighter and Softer camp elements add charm without completely derailing the game. The invasion of mainland USA scenario is as good as it gets. Stalin is hard to replace as a villain, however.
  • Evil Is Sexy: And so is good: the actresses playing both faction's Mission Control chicks got started in sexploitation.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Yuri's entire faction. It's so bad that Yuri is usually banned from online play. In particular, the UFO's. 2 of them can entirely shut down a bases power and slowly drain your credits away, zapping any anti-air infantry/vehicles that try to shoot them down. If these little bastards shut down your base, your only hope is pretty much to have enough aa to take them down, or have an ally help you.
    • The aptly-named Apocalypse Tanks can dish out twice the damage of a standard Rhino Tank, and if not disposed of quickly will easily mow down any Allied attacks with their volatile salvos.
    • France can be considered this from a defensive/turtling point of view. An arrangement of Grand Cannons and Patriot Missile batteries is nigh-impenetrable.
    • Prism Tanks, if properly micromanaged, are damn near unstoppable and can flatten a base in seconds with what appears to be a laser rave from hell.
    • Navy SEALs too. They're basically mini-Tanyas, equally as capable of decimating Infantry as her, and can be mass-produced. Combine with the above Prism Tanks and nothing stands a chance!
    • Sending a flak track full of engineers into an enemy base can end a match in minutes. The AI is aware of this tactic and will use it against you. Not quite as bad as some of the others, due to Flak Tracks being incredibly flimsy and easily falling prey to even token defenses.
    • While expensive, Demolition Trucks under the effect of an Iron Curtain are unstoppable nukes. The best you can do is delay them until the invulnerability fades out. It is interestingly lampshaded in-game as the best way to take down Yuri's base in the fourth mission of the expansion's Soviet campaign, as it's otherwise too cramped and protected to get through with ground units.
    • One cheap tactic would be to have a Crazy Ivan plant his bombs on Demolition Trucks, shove the trucks inside an amphibious transport, then take said hovercraft into an enemy base and deploy them where they would all blow up. In matches where superweapons are disabled, this would make for a rather insidious strategy (provided that you're able to bring the hovercraft deep into the base without getting attacked, that is. And it is in fact literally game-breaking as deploying multiple Demo Truck-armed hovercraft can indeed crash the game).
  • Good Bad Bugs: Even after multiple patches, the game regains quite buggy:
    • The amount of extra damage Prism Towers receive from being assisted by another Prism Tower is defined in the game files as a straight multiplier the game converts into a percentage by multiplying it by 100 before applying. Maps can override this value for that one map only. However, if the [General] section containing this value is declared in the map file (most official maps do), but the value itself isn't, the engine falls back on a default value of 100 that's erroneously declared as a percentage already, resulting in the engine multiplying it by 100 again to make all assisted Prism Towers inflict 10,000 times their normal damage per shot.
    • If a production building is walled off, units that are trained in them would be cancelled upon ending production, refunding all the credits you spent of them. There was an oversight on this in early versions of the base game in which a Soviet player could wall off a Barracks but not their Cloning Vats. The unit that came off the Barracks would be removed and Credits would be refunded... but a clone would still appear anyway, essentially getting any infantry unit for free. This would be fixed so units would not come from the Cloning Vats if the player's main Barracks were walled off.
    • In early versions of the base game, if you had a damaged building, you could exploit a Waypoint Mode oversight so that you could have your Spies infiltrate your own buildings, giving you all the bonuses you'd have by infiltrating the opponent. This made getting Chrono Commandos ridiculously easy.
    • While the Soviet Industrial Plant reduces all vehicle costs, it does not affect the amount refunded when said vehicle is sent into a Grinder. This can be abused for infinite money.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Cool as it is in-game, the destruction of Washington and New York evokes tragic real life events after 9/11. This accounts for why Westwood had the box art for the game changed post-9/11, though the missions still remain largely untouched.
    • Depending on your attitude to politics, the plot of how the USSR is going to capture the whole world will obviously not sound very good. Especially video of military parades with the music of the game.
  • Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: At least in Russia because of Stealth Parody on stereotypes about the Soviet Union and the fact that Red Alert 2 is a rare game where Russian children could choose their country as a protagonist.
  • Narm Charm: This is a Red Alert game mixing solemn and wacky elements, so take your pick. An slightly overweight Einstein with a hammy, atrocious German accent but somewhat grandfatherly and trying to keep it serious is a prominent example.
  • Obvious Judas: Yuri, for the Soviet Union. There's something suspicious about him from the very beginning, and he only gets more suspicious as the game goes on. By the time it gets the point that Premier Romanov is murdered, it's already blatantly obvious that he has an agenda. Then comes his 'proof' that General Vladimir is responsible. Miraculously, the player character still seems to see nothing wrong (or alternatively, he did, but felt powerless due to not having any solid counter-proof).
  • That One Level: "Red Revolution", the penultimate level of the base game's soviet campaign. You are completely surrounded by Yuri's Soviet forces (supported by Psi-Corps Troopers) that are constantly pouring units into you, and will freely use the Iron Curtain to break through your defenses. Your best bet is to quickly take over a cliff next to your base to get the high ground, but even then, you'd stand a better chance building a Nuclear Missile Silo and take out the Kremlin in two hits than trying to break through Yuri's base. It is however possible to cheese the level by taking your two Kirov Airships around the far west side of the map, use the rest of the troops as a sort of distraction to disable some of the flak cannons, and have the two Kirovs sic at the Kremlin, provided that you maneuver them just enough to keep them from getting destroyed.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The fact there was never a campaign for Yuri's unique faction seemed like a missed opportunity, and could have been a way to introduce more named characters working under Yuri.
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