Command and Conquer Red Alert Mobile

Command and Conquer Red Alert for the mobile is a decent attempt at transferring the global brand to the mobile phone market.

Like some of the previous attempts which have seen the C&C brand emerge as some of the most sought after games, this will undoubtedly appeal to those fans and many more. Although it does lack some of the speed and features that the full PC version has to offer, there’s quite a few nice touches which have been included and they all add up to make quite a punch.

For those of you who’ve lived in a cold war bunker for the past 30 or 40 years and have not heard of Command & Conquer, it roughly sums up as this; what if Russia had been able to circumvent the Second World War? Having Einstein create the time machine and help wipe Hitler out before he even began his cruel tyranny. The shape of the world would have been one quite different to the one we have today.

That being said, the oddball scientists of the red army have certainly come up with quite a few bizarre contraptions which leaves Zeppelins dropping bombs as quite a reasonably sane option.

This is a real time strategy (RTS) which allows you to control and move your various military pieces around the map in a balance between tactics and action. Controls are simple (although not quite as good as it would be if you had a mouse), and they make a pretty decent stab at letting you move around the terrain quite freely. You use a variety of point and click moves via moving the cursor to the desired target and if it’s free space, you’ll run there, if it’s occupied by the enemy unit or a vehicle or building, you’ll attack or disable it accordingly.

Missions increase in their difficulty as you progress in your campaign. The first few act much more like a tutorial than a proper mission, but certainly they will teach you all you need to know and if you’re astute, possibly even more!

The campaign mode’s well scripted and follows the path very diligently. The bottom three keys on your keypad all activate various building menus, letting you construct a base, barracks, turrets, factories and many more. By doing your initial planning and development, you’ll probably end up winning the battles and indeed the war. I say this because, these various special units not only help protect you but also enable you to conscript army units, tanks and other specialists which will add quite a fun twist (and may just help you win the war).

Don’t be fooled, despite all the units you have at your disposal, you will still need to keep your brain in gear as it can quite rapidly go downhill if you aren’t paying attention. As a fan of RTS games, I’m really pleased to see this title take the bull by the horns and not just churn out a fairly weak attempt of a classic title.

Rating 94%

Positives

Good RTS for the mobile phone

Great graphics

Engaging plot

Simple and effective controls

You can decide whether you want to simply use tactics and cunning over brute force

Negatives

Limited to using only 2 units at any one time

Controls are not really sharp but not terrible

Screen gets quite cluttered quite quickly with so much on the screen at any one time