Usually you expect an add-on to continue the story or have new campaigns and get some new features. Instead Counterstrike pulled off Master Levels for DOOM II — it only added 16 separate unrelated missions.
Thankfully, someone thought that it’s kinda a lazy rip-off, so they combined it with The Aftermath, added some cutscenes, arranged the missions into campaigns and released that for PlayStation with subtitle Retaliation.
Thankfully, the Remastered Collection used that release as a template, so we got the campaigns and the cutscenes. And now this is the proper way to play Counterstrike and The Aftermath.
Besides originally not having a proper story it also lacks any new units. Instead of escalation this add-on doesn’t even allow to use the full tech tree. You are always stuck with the most basic units and no magicks.
With no pressure from the achievements, this time i’ve been playing on easy. And it’s kinda too easy on “easy”, the units are really strong your army can overpower numerically superior forces. Playing kenk 1 this way could be alright due to the stupid unit AI and low resources. Pity the achievements demand to finish all the content on hard, including the duplicate missions and dinosaurs. With slightly better unit AI in Red Alert, with better balance and plenty of resources, trading 10 enemy units for one yours is not that fair. But after finishing the main game on hard i already had my fill of the second Command & Conquer so i decided to stick with blitzing it casually. Maybe i will play The Aftermath on normal — there are new units and i want to see if they are any good in a fair fight.
Despite Red Alert story ending one way or another you play as both factions in offence. Is this some kind of midquel or what? To save money the maps are grouped into missions by four, so there are only a few of new FMV cutscenes, with the rest being in plain text or recycling the vignettes from the first game.
The maps have some gimmicks and some attempts at gimmicks.
The Soviet campaign is more fun. After another stupid indoors mission they have an outright Excessive Quake map. Most of the weapons are remixed — tanks shoot tesla, infantry is roided, mammoth uses flame tower and artillery is equal to cruisers. The fourth map sees the return of tesla tanks, but in a different form. The seventh map gives control of the super commando and the superdog.
The Allied campaign has its share of new tasks, but it’s not as fun. More bases more commando maps.
I started the “secret” It Came From Red Alert! campaign on hard, but the first mission was extremely difficult so instead i completed it on easy. It is a rather cool short campaign. The first mission starts tough but when you establish the dominance you just need to survive the rest. The second mission expands the map and remembers most of the things you did in the first one. The third mission offers a combination of units from both factions with more options to capture. Your goal is to escort special units to the nests. The fourth mission is a tunnel rats one with fog of war.
Retaliation really elevates the experience. It makes this solid.
Inside my shell i milk and hate 