To be honest, I always found Westwood strategy games to be very one dimensional compared to other strategy games even in its own era.

I never understood why people loved them so much. Perhaps it was because of their simplicity thus allowing for more mainstream appeal?

Im sure I’ll get downvoted by the Red Alert fans with their rose tinted glasses for saying this because a lot of people forget just how basic those games were. But I played a hell of a lot of strategy games back then (it was my favourite genre) and Westwood did some of the most simplistic games in the genre.

Where Westwood excelled at was the presentation more than the game play. Great music, FMV in the later games, etc.

Anyhow, I might check out this OpenRA project if they’ve tweaked the mechanics.