These small changes make the game much more sophisticated in terms of strategy. Capture oil derricks provide you with a steady source of cash. Hospitals heal your infantry and outposts repair vehicular units. Controlling an airport allows you to call in paratroopers. In addition to the regular structures that can be garrisoned, there are a few 'tech' buildings that can provide bonuses. Apart from the strength bonuses you get from garrisoning, it's really, really cool to watch your enemies march through a fast food restaurant parking lot while your units mow them down through the drive-through window. And since much of the game takes place in urban areas, you'll want to make good use of this strategy. First off, you can garrison units inside buildings. There are a few neat surprises here for veteran C&C players.

I can't wait to get the final so I can see how it ends. From there, you go on to amphibious assaults, street fighting, and war in open fields. When they let you blow something like that up in the first mission, you know the rest of the game's going to be good. Your forces must battle through Allied defenses for a chance to assault the five-sided heart of the American military. In the very first mission, you're called upon to blow up the Pentagon. Like I said before, I didn't get as much time in the Soviet campaign as I did with the Allies, but I did play through the first few of the twelve total missions. And when the successful completion of one mission resulted in the nuclear destruction of an entire city.well, let's just say that I was very, very upset. I felt much more connected to the action within the missions as a result of the strong story. Some of the narrative plays out during the course of the mission. And it's not just relegated to simple cutscenes either. I should say at least that there is a definite and coherent story in the campaign. I could talk a little more about the specifics of the campaign, but I don't want to give away the story. While there's a kind of universal strategy to the Allied side, the missions are varied enough that you'll have to invent several ways around different problems. You'll have to fight through Soviet defenses to rescue the President from the White House, carry out an amphibious assault on Chicago, and use your spy units to infiltrate an enemy base and blow up the missile silos. But from there, things start to deviate from the RTS model. In the first mission you'll have to use Agent Tanya to place C4 charges in the enemy base. But there are a lot of variations on that theme here. The missions involve blowing up or capturing certain buildings and eliminating enemy units.

I skipped right by the boot camp (I have played an RTS before) and went right to the action. That way, if you're a hardcore strategy gamer, you don't have to wade through the same boring tutorial missions that normally start off most RTS games. The normal one or two mission training period has been removed from the campaign and placed in a separate 'boot-camp' tutorial. The first thing to mention is that there's no handholding in the aafirst few missions. After completing a substantial part of the Allied campaign and a few missions of the Soviet campaign, I have to admit I'm very impressed with the game.Д«eing the patriotic NATO type that I am, I spent most of my time on the Allied campaign. And let me tell you, I can play a lot of Red Alert in a day. The game is very nearly complete and Westwood extended to me an invitation to play through as much of the game as I could in one day.

While I love to see the Westwood folks, I had an ulterior motive - I wanted to get my hands on Red Alert 2. Yesterday I flew out to Las Vegas to see the folks at Westwood.

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