the Soviet ending for Yuri's Revenge is absolutely amazing
Soviet troops parading down Wall Street, as the stock market closed forever... the new golden age of space exploration... who knows what the future may hold, as communism leaves the boundaries of our planet, and expands across the solar system
It's funny to me how common the trope of "good guys win only to not do anything to fundamentally change society to address root conflict and end up where they started come the sequel" is. End-of-History liberalism in a nutshell.
My introduction was Call of Duty 2, and I mean like the original CoD 2 released in 2005. I just thought the soviets were bad ass for protecting their homes and I knew the nazis were evil cuz they were racist invaders. It all just made sense and look at me now
Treyarch tryna tell me the red army was bad for executing surrendering nazis (probably ahistorical) and I'm like "I dunno boss, kinda based, probably doin' 'em a favour, can't imagine being a pow in Russia was that pleasant for a nazi"
Same. I played the first two Call of Duty games as a kid when they were released and immediately understood the Soviets to be on the right side fighting against the evil Nazi war machine. I could see they made the greatest effort and sacrifice to turn the tide, take Berlin, and end the war.
A few years later and I had a flag of Soviet Union hanging in my room.
Allied ending: Following the siege of Moscow, an Allied platoon discovers Stalin buried alive in the rubble of the Kremlin. As they begin attempting to remove the debris from the fallen Soviet leader, General Stavros unexpectedly enters the room and stops them. He "convinces" them that they saw nothing and orders them to leave the premises. Stavros then stuffs a handkerchief into Stalin's mouth before covering his head with a large stone and walking away.
Soviet ending: As the Soviets celebrate their victory at the newly captured Buckingham Palace, Stalin commends the Commander (the player), but is poisoned by Nadia, who guns him down as the poison overcomes his body. Following Stalin's death, Nadia tells the Commander that the Soviet Union is now under the rule of the Brotherhood of Nod, who plan to return to the shadows again and reemerge in the 1990s, leaving the player as the puppet ruler of the USSR, ready to do the Brotherhood of Nod bidding for "the foreseeable future". She is betrayed and shot in the back by Kane, who reveals to "Comrade Chairman" that he is the true mastermind.
Sometimes I feel bad for the kids these days who never had a chance to role-play as the Soviet Union in a computer game when they were younger. It was truly an experience, and I don’t even know what games these days can come close to providing an equivalent of that.
For Cuba and South America there is Tropico and for USSR there is Workers and Resources. What would be the simulation game for Laos/ Vietnam/ China/ North Korea/ East Germany/ other socialist projects?
Sort of, yes, but that doesn’t come with a janky, campy story complete with live action sequences about how erasing Hitler from history led to the rise of Stalin and his evil plans to dominate the world. It’s not the same lol!
Red Alert 2 is a beloved part of my childhood and probably did lead me on a certain path. I was never good at the game but massing kirovs and those siege copters were my favorite
My first experience with communism was Call of Duty World At War. I didn’t understand anything, but the last scene where you carry the Soviet flag while getting shot at, almost getting killed by a Nazi only to get saved by your comrade, was quite memorable for a kid.
I remember reading about how during development, the villains were originally going to be Nazis but that got canned because Westwood didn't want to get locked out of the German market due to censorship as the previous year's Tiberian Dawn was a surprisingly huge hit there. That puts everything into perspective, really, since you can see little bits of it poking out (like the Soviets specializing in stupidly-heavy, overdesigned tanks).
jokes on you liberals! they looked way cooler to my 6 year old brain, so the allies never had a chance
It helps that the villain factions tend to be cooler than Quasi-NATO in C&C games, only exception was Generals which had China as (anti-)heroes.
Happened to me as well. I was like "Holy shit a tank with 2 guns? This I'd the coolest thing I've ever seen."
The communism part came later. But I was sold on tanks from the get-go. I mean, tanks are just battle tractors. Using refurbished farm shit for war is one of the oldest traditions.
I started to recently play ra3 uprising again. This time I will complete all the challenges. Biggest problem ra3 has is air meta. Aircraft are easiest to manage, they don't have to worry about hills and ramps and other places ground units can not go so ground units need more skill thus are more entitled to power. Anti communist propaganda would make nazis blush but Yea all the nuance will be lost on children, apocalypse tank, kirov and tesla troopers are way too cool. I heard online that ra3 is actually very well balanced rts game that was designed to rival starcraft2 competitively. Sucks that they made this decision with a game that has rather casual fan base. Ironicly ra3 uprising was the only game ended with unresolved conflicts. Would make more sense to continue more games after that compared to previous games which usually resolved everything at the end.