Reviews - Red Alert 2 YR: New Horizons mod for C&C: Yuri's Revenge

Mod stolen and build upon Apocalypse mod. After mod cleanup and re-launch I am upping my rating of it by 5 points and more in the future. The 5 extra points are well-deserved on the single player part that is quite nice and all it needs is some quick polishing. The skirmish/MP side remains way too chaotic. Air units are way too overpowered compared to AA defenses, paradrops are also OP. There are way too many units of the same type - this should be limited to at most 2 types of the same one (one empty and one fully loaded and cost-calculated). I can say the mod goes towards improving, but there's still work that needs to be done. Waiting for future versions and I will certainly update the rating towards a better one.

The perfect example of a mod that falls short of its inherent potential, New Horizons is an admirable and ambitious project to believably expand every RA2:YR faction, making the experience of play deeper and more interesting as each side deploys dozens and dozens of new troops.

But you've no doubt seen the rating, so why so low?

The mod's unpolished, in so many words. The installation is clunky as the files are distributed uncompressed and wild, permanently marking up an entire install folder of RA2- meaning its best to copy the entire game folder to play. Running the mod is awkward as it required some RA know-how to ensure it ran on my system, but the mod did have some documentation to this. It lacks the slick CNC-net derived menu ui of other mods for the original, classic menu, in its low res, somewhat slow glory.

Graphically, while there are hundreds of new units, most range from mediocre voxel or shp work (often sourced from places like YR:Argentina, or PPM)to outright ugly- as with the BMD units, and the Abrams and Bradley. There is some quality unit graphics on display, but little is clean or consistent of any kind of style or unified theme. Some Allied units sport dark yuri-esque camo greens while others rock classic allied baby blue and an unfortunate few are in ghastly shades of tan. Much the same is true for the soviets. In testing, some units seemed to outright not fire their weapons correctly, showing incorrect firing frames for (some) infantry, audio glitches for certain units weapon sounds, and a over-use of the IFV's missile graphic for projectiles.

Gameplay wise, there is something worthwhile here, buried beneath the awkward presentation. Having so many units is inherently enjoyable, and theres a lot more strategy in what you can pull off as a commander now. Any sort of airborne ability in this mod is borderline insane and completely overpowered. Some units have clever multiple weapon systems and perform extremely well. Others feel like vestigial remains of the original faction tacked on, or are outright useless, like most of the radar vehicles present in the mod. Special mention goes to the effort done to spice up buildings and defending in general, some of the new options reminded me of making for fun 'sim city' bases back in the day. More fun buildings like that would be welcome. As a personal note, the infantry selection for the allies felt ham-fistedly tied to chrono technology, resulting in redundant-feeling units like the chrono GI or the deployable chrono 'blocker'. By comparison, the soviets had some pretty cool infantry options.

All this sounds pretty grim, so why isnt the score lower? Well, the mod functions and runs as advertised, though it suffers from some classic RA quirks. Its also so off the wall nuts that it has an endearing quality to it. A huge positive is that the author went to the trouble of ensuring the original campaign of both yuris revenge and the original game are in the mod and playable- which is a real treat and absolutely a selling point of the mod.

This score could improve SUBSTANTIALLY if the following things are addressed:
-Unit voxel graphics, especially of certain god-awful allied units like the apache, bradley, abrams, prism-soldier, and soviet units like the depleted uranium tank, BMD, halftrack, etc.
-Polished weapon projectiles, sounds, etc.
-Slight balance patch to address outstanding OP units and abilities; the paradrops for instance, or certain tesla units
-Unified faction aesthetics for the big three factions, so that at a glance a player can tell what faction a unit belongs to.
-Further expand on what makes the mod special, and add even more unit variety.

I hope this review does not discourage the author or other players. It's still worth checking out, especially if your a soviet player like myself. Allied players, I sympathize with half your core units looking terrible; I'll crush them with an armada of T72's and Armata tanks quickly, to wash away the shame of such an ugly force!

Aside from the fact that this is a direct and shameless rip of Red Alert 2: Apocalypse by Borg.Overmind, this mod is an extremely sloppy pile of public assets that have no artistic cohesion whatsoever. Units of the same faction don't have any overarching styles or color schemes, and the factions' build lists are excessively bloated by 3, or sometimes even 4, copies of the same exact unit, just with different combinations of infantry inside.

The "Specific accuracy" system (which is just the BallisticScatter Min/Max logic Ares introduced) is extremely annoying and heavily destabilizes the balance of the game.

Also, as one reviewer above noted: holy crap, the mod's install process is absolutely horrifying. This package redistributes half of the entire base game along with its mod files--and again, speaking of redistributing things in possible violation of copyright, it redistributes an entire copy of Apocalypse V3.3.000 within its own files, which it relies upon because it rips pretty much the entire mod.

To hammer the point home again, nobody should support this mod because it is a direct rip of Red Alert 2: Apocalypse, and virtually every single infantry unit in this mod is stolen directly from Apocalypse, as well as a significant number of tanks, buildings, and superweapons.

Apocalypse was nothing special either, but it was certainly better than this craptastic rip job. If you like some of the units in this mod, go play Apocalypse instead.

This mod does not feel like it has improved since it got removed off of ModDB for stealing assets for a long time. I'm very disappointed to see that the creator didn't listen to my criticism and suggestions to improve the mod. This mod is not worth 1.8 GB of your file space and your internet.

The mod is fun but has some strange bugs. I like the new units, buildings, and maps. All it needs for now is several revisions

you ruin ravange game

Like this mod, for so many units

not good at all

good job bit rough

Really good