Don't be compelled to buy Yuri's Revenge, the official expansion to last year's Red Alert 2, just because the box shows a mind-controlling maniac giving you the cold stare--besides that, there are plenty of perfectly good reasons for owning the game. This impressive add-on to the fun and frantic Red Alert 2 does what other great real-time strategy expansion packs, such as The Conquerors for Age of Empires II and Brood War for Starcraft, have done before--it makes an already great game even better, not only by piling on new features, but also by adding enough significant enhancements that the result stands out as being not just broader than its predecessor, but legitimately different. That means Yuri's Revenge will more than likely renew your interest in Westwood's over-the-top game.

Yuri's Revenge introduces an all-new faction to Red Alert 2.

The original Red Alert 2 was set during a near-future war between the Allies and the Soviets--a serious-sounding premise, but Red Alert 2 didn't take itself seriously. Actually, the game's sense of humor proved to be one of its strong suits, as it gave the designers license to come up with some truly bizarre units--the Soviets could deploy mind-controlled giant squids, while the Allies had access to elite troopers whose special weapons could literally erase their foes out of time. Yuri's Revenge steers Red Alert 2 even further toward the absurd--most notably, the game introduces an intriguing, all-new playable faction headed up by the titular Yuri, a renegade Soviet psychic. Yuri, played with panache by veteran creepy-character actor Udo Kier, has assembled a truly unusual army composed of various evil gadgets, mind-control weapons, and experiments-gone-awry. Yuri's forces are the enemy in the two new campaigns featured in Yuri's Revenge--one for the Allies and one for the Soviets, each with seven big missions. It's too bad that Yuri doesn't get his own campaign--but you can control his forces in skirmish or multiplayer modes.

Many of Yuri's units are very interesting. His Gatling tanks fire faster and faster upon their targets--if you can protect them long enough, they'll eventually be dishing out huge damage at a tremendous rate of fire. These flimsy units can be great for defense from within Yuri's tank bunkers--immobile fortifications that let his tanks fire on attackers without fear of retaliation. Meanwhile, the mastermind unit, a strange tanklike vehicle, can automatically mind-control any enemy unit that crosses its path--it mind-controls units automatically, but the catch is that it starts short-circuiting if it mind-controls more than three. Yuri also commands legions of Incredible Hulk-like mutants called brutes, which can go toe-to-toe with enemy tanks. He has defensive structures that automatically mind-control groups of units that enter their sphere of influence--truly an imposing obstacle. Plus, he's got a very nasty nuclear submarine in his arsenal. Altogether, Yuri's new faction is very different from those of the Soviets and the Allies--even his ore harvester, called the slave miner, is nothing like the harvesters for the other sides. It's a self-contained refinery, and slave units automatically shovel ore into this armed platform to fuel Yuri's war effort. Like the other two factions, Yuri's side has a lot of personality and largely consists of units that are well designed, memorable, and worth using in most any battle. Yuri's forces are physically weak when directly compared with those of the Allies and Soviets--but they can be used to devious effect.

Yuri himself can mind-control anything--even enemy structures!

Fortunately for the Allies and the Soviets, they each get several powerful, new weapons that can level the playing field when up against Yuri's dirty tricks. For instance, the Allies get what's called a battle bunker--a vehicle so large that it can crush enemy tanks under its powerful treads. Up to five of any kind of infantry can be placed into a battle bunker, allowing it to be an extremely powerful multipurpose weapon that can keep the enemy guessing. The Allies also get a powerful new addition to their already strong infantry division: the Guardian GI, whose antitank weapon can wreak havoc on enemy armor and flying units alike. The new Allied robot tank is another great new unit--this mechanized weapon can hover over any surface, including water, and it's immune to mind control. But Allied players who put all their eggs in one basket by investing in many robot tanks have to be careful, because if the enemy knocks the Allies' power plants offline, all robot tanks in the field will go dead.