Back in the year 2000, Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 caused a sensation. This was a sequel to 1996’s classic Red Alert game, a real-time strategy game in which the Allies had to fight the Soviet Union in a fictional world in which Nazi Germany never came to be…
And its sequel Red Alert 2 offered players more of the same, albeit with better (almost 3D) graphics and even campier full motion video sequences played by real life actors.
Building bases and controlling soldiers, tanks and planes playing as the Allies and Soviet Union sure was fun in the main game, but developer Westwood Studios (which sadly closed its doors back in 2003) released an expansion in 2001 titled Yuri’s Revenge.
This focused on one of Red Alert 2’s main characters, a psychic mastermind named Yuri, who was played by actor Udo Kier in the main game. It added a new faction to the game (Yuri’s faction), besides more missions and more of the good, old campy FMV videos for players to enjoy. These also featured characters like the gorgeous lieutenant Zofia on the Soviet side (as seen in the image which accompanies this article).
Red Alert 2 has been played by millions of people to date and is still being played by quite a few, who will no doubt welcome the news that the “Mental Omega” expansion for the game has been released in complete form as was recently covered on PCGamesN (via NME).
This fan-made expansion adds 97 new single player missions to the game, aside from 36 maps for co-op play and 22 challenge maps. There are four playable factions: Allies, Soviet, Yuri and the new Foehn Revolt faction introduced in the expansion, plus new units to control on the battlefield.
The people behind the expansion have also improved on Red Alert 2’s visuals, and added new music to complement the phenomenal soundtrack by former Westwood Studios musician Frank Klepacki.
Addtionally, there’s multiplayer support through the CnCNet online multiplayer platform too.
And it’s clear that a lot of love and attention went to the expansion as it’s been more than 15 years in the making, being originally featured on the Mod DB website as one of the most promising mods of the year. This is the final version of the mod after several updates over the years, and has attracted a lot of fan attention too: the number of downloads at the time of writing is getting close to a whopping half a million, which is certainly not bad for a fan-made expansion to a 20-year-old game.
The Mental Omega expansion (which you can get here) does require that you own the Yuri’s Revenge expansion for Red Alert 2, though, which true fans of Westwood’s classic likely do anyway. The Mental Omega expansion itself is free of charge.
Here’s hoping too, that this renewed interest in Red Alert 2 will make Electronic Arts sit up and take notice, and perhaps consider releasing a remaster of Red Alert 2. This is after all one of the most-loved games in the Command & Conquer series, but is looking a bit long in the tooth right now, and surely deserves to be brought up to date like the original Command & Conquer and Red Alert were last year, as both these classics got remastered editions in 2020.
In the meantime, though, the Mental Omega expansion will surely provide Red Alert 2 fans with plenty of hours of entertainment, that’s for sure.