Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge

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Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge
Developer(s)	Westwood Studios
Publisher(s)	EA Games
Latest version	1.001, 2001-11-12
Release date(s)	October 8, 2001 October 10, 2001 October 19, 2001
Genre(s)	Real-time strategy
Mode(s)	Single player Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen ELSPA: 15+
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Media	CD-ROM
System requirements	Windows 95/98/2000/NT, 266 MHz Pentium II Processor, 64 MB RAM (450 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM needed for 3-8 player multiplayer game), 4x CD-ROM, 2 MB video card, DirectSound-compatible soundcard, full retail version of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2
Input	Keyboard, Mouse

Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge is an expansion pack for the Westwood Studios. real-time strategy computer game Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2. It was released in 2001.

Contents 1 Background 2 Plot 3 Gameplay 3.1 New Units 3.2 Yuri's army 4 See also 5 External links 5.1 Mod sites for Yuri's Revenge

[edit] Background

In Yuri's Revenge, the Allies are celebrating their victory over the Soviet Union in the previous game. However, Yuri escaped both the Soviets and Allies and formed a secret army of his own, drawing heavily on telepathic abilities and genetic manipulation. He then constructed a network of mind controlling Psychic Dominators all across the world in order to control the entire planet all at once. He activated the network and started turning the world's population into mindless slaves. At the last minute, an air strike ordered by the President of the United States Michael Dugan barely manages to damage the nuclear plant powering the device in San Francisco, saving the United States military command from falling under Yuri's control.

[edit] Plot

Both Allied and Soviet campaigns involve time travel back to the time of Soviet invasion of the United States of America, using a Temporal Displacement device (time machine) invented by Albert Einstein to prevent Yuri from building his Psychic Dominators and subvert the minds of everyone in the world. The battle takes place in places such as San Francisco and Hollywood (featuring parodies of famous actors). The Soviet campaign also includes a mission to the Moon.

The Allied campaign takes the player and his forces back to the first Soviet invasion of San Francisco, where the first task is to eliminate the Psychic Dominator on Alcatraz Island (which is still under construction) and thus prevent America from falling under threat. The subsequent missions focus on consolidating the Soviet surrender to the Allies and preventing Yuri from furthering his goals by destroying the other Psychic Dominators (One in Egypt, the other in Antarctica), and then pursuing him to his secret base in Antarctica for a final showdown with Yuri's forces. The Allied campaign ends with Yuri being defeated and locked away in a specialized prison cell. At the end of the game, the two timelines (the original one in which Yuri succeeded in activating his Psychic Dominators, and the new one caused by the Allied mission back in time to stop him) merge, the result being that Yuri was defeated and imprisoned before he could ever activate his Psychic Dominators, and General Carville is now alive. Also, instead of the Allied commander taking Tanya to the victory gala, he takes Lt. Eva.

The Soviet player is given his first orders of the campaign by the imprisoned Premier Romanov. The Soviet player is ordered to steal the Allied time travel machine, to address the threat of the Psychic Dominators and disposing of the "traitor Yuri" as the Allies planned to do. However, the Soviets also want to go back in time to ensure that they don't lose the previous war against the Allies. With the Soviet commander's information that Einstein's development of a Chronosphere was the turning point of the war that allowed the Soviets to lose, the Soviet player is sent to destroy Einstein's lab: this mission (titled "Déjà vu") is actually a replay of a mission from the original Red Alert 2, but this time played from the Soviet side instead of the Allied side and using Yuri's Revenge units and technologies. Successful in this mission, the Allies soon surrender to the Soviets, and now must aide them in their battle to defeat Yuri. As it turns out, Yuri has a secret base on the Moon, from which he was planning to orchestrate his Psychic Dominator attack on the world. The Soviets capture Yuri's launch base located on a Pacific island, and use his spaceship to land Soviet units on the Moon and defeat Yuri's forces there. Yuri retreats to his "ancestral home" in Transylvania, using mind controlled Soviet and Allied units, but is again defeated. The Soviet campaign ends with Yuri attempting to flee in the stolen time machine, but thanks to some last minute sabotage, he finds himself stuck in the time of the dinosaurs. The final cut scene shows the Earth-controlling Soviets using Yuri's captured space technology to usher in a new Soviet-dominated space age, which will spread socialism across Earth, and beyond...

The timeline of the Yuri's Revenge campaigns is in parallel to that of the original Red Alert 2 storyline (the Allied campaign's plot is the prevailing one), with the focus on fighting Yuri rather than the original war, which can be assumed to be being carried out by the rest of the military as the player hunts Yuri's forces.

[edit] Gameplay

The game introduced new types of military units on both the Allied and Soviet sides, as well as an entirely new faction, called "Yuri's Army" in skirmish and multiplayer games, but unusable in single player. Contrary to rumors Westwood never released a single-player mission for Yuri side. Some mod makers have made missions with Yuri’s side playable in the single- player mode, but these are unofficial and often require other mods.

[edit] New Units

Each of the three factions (Allied, Soviet, and Yuri) gain a Force Shield (under the conditions that a Battle Lab is built and must not be destroyed, also the base must be provided enough power for totally 4-5 minutes before the shield ready), a device which functions like the Soviet Iron Curtain Device, but only works on buildings. This was made to create an effective counter against superweapons. The shield shuts down the user's power for some time, even after the shield has been taken offline.

The Soviets re-gain the Spy Plane, though no longer a speedy MiG, but a slow plane, as well a Battle Bunker, which up to 5 units can garrison. Another added structure is the Industrial Plant, which reduces vehicle building cost by 25%. New mobile units are the Siege Chopper, which can deploy an artillery cannon and evacuate into the air anytime, and Boris, a Soviet counterpart to Tanya, who is capable of speedily disposing of anything on land with an AP AKM Rifle and a targeting laser which can target airstrikes from MiG-29s. However, The Soviets lose most of their psychic-based technology, namely the Cloning Vats, Yuri, and the Psychic Sensor, although they keep mind-controlled squids.

The Allied armies gain a new anti-tank/anti-air Guardian GI, a heavily-armored APC called the Battle Fortress, and a Robot Tank, an amphibious unit which is immune to radiation and mind control, but will not function if the controller's Robot Control Center is destroyed or the power is shut down. They also are able to train Navy SEALs in skirmish and multiplayer modes.

The gameplay paradigms of both sides have thus been altered to a degree. Originally the Allies focused on fast though comparatively weak units, strong airpower, greater information gathering through the spy satellite, and specials forces commandos and spies, while the Soviets focused on land superiority through stronger vehicles. Now, the Allies have a strong super-tank, the Battle Fortress, capable of breaking into bases and even destroying an Apocalypse tank at close range (by running them over), as well as tough but slow Guardian GI's. Meanwhile the Soviets now have their own special forces unit (Boris), their tanks are cheaper, can scout easier with the Spy Plane, and have the Siege Chopper as a strong, fast air unit. In Red Alert 2, if the Allies sent Prism Tanks guarded at close range by Grizzly tanks, the Soviets would have little choice except to fight their way through the Grizzlys to attack the long range Prism Tanks. Now, a group of 4-5 Siege Choppers proves a fast and effective counter to the Prism Tanks, easily able to hunt them down over a distance and destroy them due to the incredibly weak armor of Prism Tanks.

The "secret units," which in Red Alert 2 were obtained as options when a Spy was sent into an enemy battle lab, are now based not on the player sending the spy, but solely on the opposing side's battle lab. A spy in an Allied Battle Lab unlocks the Chrono Commando, a spy in a Soviet Battle Lab unlocks Chrono Ivan, and in a Yuri Battle Lab, the PSI Commando.

In addition to gaining new units and structures, new laws of play are also introduced. For example, in Red Alert 2, the Allies could train as many Tanyas as they wished. In Yuri's Revenge, however, a limit has been set to one Tanya for the Allies, 1 Boris for the Soviets and one Yuri Prime for Yuri's army. The only way to get two hero units is to build a Cloning Vats structure (Yuri only), which produces a second copy of every infantry character created by the Barracks, including Yuri Prime, Tanya, and/or Boris.

The ability to return units to Cloning Vats to gain more cash has been replaced. Yuri is able to build a structure called a Grinder that crushes tanks and infantry units to gain money by recycling them back into raw materials. A common tactic for Yuri armies is to psychically gaing control of enemy units, then feed them into a Grinder. A Soviet mission involves destroying a Psychic Beacon which is coercing the local populace into entering a nearby Grinder.

All vehicle and naval units from all sides now have their own individual voice. Allied Grizzly Tanks and Destroyers, and Soviet Rhino Tanks and Dreadnoughts retain the original voices from Red Alert 2, while the rest have been given new voices.

[edit] Yuri's army

Yuri's faction is extremely different from the other factions and focuses on his powerful psychic technology. He uses genetic mutation to manipulate the battlefield, potentially turning enemy troops into Brutes (Hulk-like monstrosities with the ability to rip apart both infantry and tanks using their muscular arms). Yuri himself can play on the battlefield and mind-control infantry, tanks, and even some buildings. The player can only make one Yuri Prime (unless the Cloning Vats building are built - two Yuri Primes would result from this). Yuri uses slaves to carry out his mining, bringing ore to a mobile Slave Miner unit rather than a stationary Ore Refinery building. This makes Yuri players invulnerable to theft by the Allied Spy unit, since mobile units cannot be infiltrated by Spies, unless deployed in where the Spy can enter.

Yuri's basic infantry unit is the Initiate, a psychic in training which uses pyrokinesis to attack its enemies. It costs $200 - the same as an Allied GI, or the equivalent of two Soviet Conscripts ($100 each); though does about 3 times the damage of a normal Conscript. It also has a proportionately shorter range. These units can garrison buildings just like their Allied and Soviet counterparts, but when in a building, they have shorter range, but the firepower and rate of fire is much higher, so buildings with Initiates in them are much more of a threat than those with GI's or Conscripts, but they can be outranged quite easily.

Yuri's army focuses heavily on psychic and gattling technology. His equivalent to the Allied Prism Tower and the Soviet Tesla Coil is a Psychic Tower, which will automatically mind-control up to three opposing units, which can then be turned against their former owner or directed to the Grinder, which will give the Yuri player 50% of their value in cash. However, although able to build grinders, Yuri is unable to build repair bays. Another notable weapon is the Master Mind unit. While the Allied and Soviet equivalents, the Prism Tank/Mirage Tank and Apocalypse Tank, focus on range/stealth and power/armor respectively, the Master Mind (a large, mutated brain within a tank) can mind-control a limited amount of units. It costs just as much as the Apocalypse Tank, and will overload if it mind-controls more than three enemy units, eventually exploding and freeing the captured units. Two ways to avoid this is to have said units attack each other until there are only three being mind-controlled, or you can simply haul them off to the Grinder. One drawback of his psychic technology is that it cannot control most animals (attack dogs, squids, etc) and, more importantly, allied robot tanks. As such, robot tanks (specifically designed for immunity to Yuri's mind control) are a favoured weapon amongst players when fighting Yuri.

Another example of Yuri's strategy of co-opting and corrupting the battlefield is the Floating Disc unit. Permanently airborne (and thus immune to mind control), it fires a laser beam at any ground-, air-, and water-borne targets. Although relatively light-armored and with a slow rate of fire, the Floating Disc has several special abilities that make it a worthy addition to Yuri's army. When directed to "attack" an enemy's power source (Tesla Reactor, Nuclear Reactor, etc.), it shuts down power to the entire base, regardless of the number of active power sources available. When directed to "attack" an Ore Refinery, it drains credits from the enemy instead of firing upon the structure. When directed to attack any defensive structure, it will float above the structure and disable it (other structures will continue to operate). Note that Floating Discs cannot attack (not even by "force-firing"): any power source, ore refinery, and any power-draining defensive structure (Tesla Coil, Prism Tower, Flak Cannon, etc) The only exception to this rule is if the Floating Disc is using its drain ability and is within firing range of a Prism Tower, Tesla Coil, or Psychic Tower. Only then will it fire on these structures.

Yuri's equivalent strategic superweapon to the Allied Weather Controller and the Soviet Nuclear Missile is the Psychic Dominator, capable of permanently mind-controlling a number of units, and causing great damage to buildings in the selected area, even more than that of the Nuclear Missile, minus the radiation. His tactical superweapon is the Genetic Mutator, which can 'mutate' any land infantry unit within impact radius into a Brute under the control of the owner of the Mutator (it is notable, however, that dogs, giant squids, dolphins, and other animals will not be mutated - they will simply be killed - also note that this is in the users manual).

Unlike the Allies and Soviets, Yuri does not have a Naval Shipyard or surface warships. Instead, he has a Submarine Pen which produces Boomer Submarines. Boomer Submarines are multi-purpose units, able to attack all ground and water-borne targets, with torpedo launchers and ballistic missiles whose range is one of the longest in the game for most units (exceeded only by the Allied Aircraft Carrier and the Soviet Dreadnought). Although Boomer missiles can be targeted upon and shot down, a medium-sized group (12-15 units) of Boomers can easily overwhelm anti-air defenses and destroy critical enemy structures. Yuri's Floating Disc air units are an ideal support for Boomers, providing air reconnaissance and support. Boomer Submarines automatically detect the presence of other submarine units (i.e. the Soviet Attack Sub), and can fire upon any water-borne target.

[edit] See also

• Yuri (Command & Conquer)
• Command & Conquer series
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2

[edit] External links

• Yuri's Revenge on the official website of Westwood Studios
• Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge at the Internet Movie Database
• Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge at MobyGames

[edit] Mod sites for Yuri's Revenge

• Mental Omega homepage
• Red Alert 2 Deezire homepage
• The Project homepage
• Fan site for the Eagle Red modification