Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike (1997)
Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike is a 1997 real time strategy (rts) video game made by Westwood Studios and Virgin Interactive Entertainment.
The first expansion for Red Alert keeps the tone and widens the map. It packs in sixteen new single-player missions split across the Allies and the Soviets, plus a stack of fresh multiplayer battlegrounds from the original designers. The oddest addition is a secret run of missions pitting you against Giant Ants, a whole new enemy with nothing to do with the cold-war fiction and everything to do with fun. The base loop is untouched: harvest ore, raise a base, and out-build your rival. It assumes you already own Red Alert.
Quick answers
What is Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike about?
The first expansion for Red Alert keeps the tone and widens the map. It packs in sixteen new single-player missions split across the Allies and the Soviets, plus a stack of fresh multiplayer battlegrounds from the original designers. The oddest addition is a secret run of missions pitting you against Giant Ants, a whole new enemy with nothing to do with the cold-war fiction and everything to do with fun. The base loop is untouched: harvest ore, raise a base, and out-build your rival. It assumes you already own Red Alert.
When was Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike released?
Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike was released on 3 April 1997.
Who made Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike?
Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike was made by Westwood Studios and Virgin Interactive Entertainment.
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A few thoughts on Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Counterstrike
You need Red Alert underneath this, so its soundtrack fits: Command & Conquer: Red Alert gathers Frank Klepacki's score, the same industrial pulse driving these missions. For a fuller campaign once you have cleared them, StarCraft runs the real-time formula into a tighter story.
War strategy stories where two sides fight for total control
Counterstrike adds sixteen missions split between the Allies and the Soviets, each a fresh round of the same fight for total map control. The Book of Five Rings lays out real strategic thinking behind that kind of contest, House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones turn a single throne into a reason for endless war, and Avatar: Fire and Ash scales that fight to two civilizations.
Gag-a-minute stories that swerve into pure absurdity
Counterstrike buries a run of secret missions against Giant Ants inside its otherwise straight-faced cold war campaign, and treats the swerve as completely normal. Crayon Shin-chan and Dr. Slump both build entire chapters around one absurd detour, The Simpsons has spent decades dropping a wild non-sequitur into an ordinary week, and City Hunter swings just as hard between a real case and pure slapstick.
Aggressive rock albums built for going to war
Red Alert's missions run on a driving, metal-tinged score built to make base-building and tank rushes feel like combat. Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast and Piece of Mind both turn galloping riffs into something close to a battle march, Judas Priest's Painkiller pushes that same aggression to its limit, and Muse's Black Holes and Revelations wraps the same urgency in widescreen, apocalyptic scale.