New Red Alert 2 Details

GameSpot dropped by the Westwood offices in Las Vegas to catch up on the development of the company's upcoming crop of games. While there, we had a chance to play Red Alert 2 for an extended period of time, and we came away with a handful of new details that we didn't cover in our April preview.

Red Alert 2 takes place 20 years after the events of the original game, and it continues the struggle between the Allies and the Soviets. Red Alert 2 is being developed using a scaled down version of the Tiberian Sun graphics engine that sheds some of the features that hindered that RTS game - features like deformable terrain and soldiers rendered with voxels. Even though these changes might sound like a step backwards, the new engine is actually visually superior to its predecessor and now boasts units and buildings that are nearly 30 percent larger than those in Tiberian Sun. Additionally, stripping the engine of some unnecessary components has sped it up significantly, resulting in faster gameplay. Red Alert 2 seems to play about as quickly as real-time strategy games such as Starcraft and the original Red Alert.

As it turns out, the game will have a lot more units than were initially announced. The Soviet side will have 20 units in all, plus ten buildings and ten types of defenses (walls, sentry guns, etc). Likewise, the Allied forces have ten buildings and ten defensive attachments, but they have one fewer unit - specifically, six different infantry units as opposed to the Soviets' seven. Furthermore, each side will be split into multiple factions for multiplayer skirmishes. Those who prefer the Allies can choose to play as the British, French, Germans, Americans, or Koreans. The Soviets have Russian, Iraqi, Libyan, and Cuban factions.

These factions don't just differ by name - each group has one unique unit not available to any other. The unique Korean unit is the Black Eagle attack bomber; the Libyans' is a suicide truck; the Germans have a powerful anti-tank unit; the Cuban unique unit is a terrorist that disguises himself as an Allied spy and uses C4 to blow up buildings; the Iraqis have the heavy Tesla tank; and the Brits have a sniper with deadly accuracy. The unique American unit wasn't revealed to us, unfortunately.

Every unit in Red Alert 2 is capable of gaining experience points. Points are gained with each successive kill racked up by that particular unit, and when enough experience has been acquired, that unit will achieve an elite status. An elite unit will not only look different than its standard counterpart, but it will also receive a new, more powerful weapon to replace its original.

We'll update our preview of Red Alert 2 in the coming weeks, as there's plenty of new information to talk about. Stay tuned.