Ubisoft's Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII review [XBOX360]
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JoeUser Forums
Since it's release a little over a week ago, I've been thoroughly enjoying Ubisoft's new WWII flying game, the aptly titled Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII. Since I mention enjoying the game a lot, you can probably tell in advance that this review will be mostly positive. Hopefully you'll read on a little further, and perhaps enjoy a little of the eye candy screen shots I've found and am linking here.
Blazing Angels is, at least on the Xbox 360, a visually impressive game. It's not absolutely lifelike, but it is fairly realistic. As you can see from the image above, and hopefully a few of the images below, the vintage aircraft and surroundings are beautiful to look at as you fly your airplane around trying not to get shot down and trying to take out the best that the enemy has to throw at you.
Mainstream reviews (IGN, Gamespot, etc.) have been mixed for the game, coming in around 6/10. Personally I think the reviewers have been overly harsh, though I'll touch a bit on some of the comments I've seen and offer my own thoughts.
First, one of the complaints I've seen is that the game is boring. I don't believe that is the case at all. The campaign mode puts players into historical air battles from WWII, starting at Dunkirk, the battles over London, on to runs over Africa, on to the Pacific (including Pearl Harbor and Midway) and more. There's plenty of missions, each a little different than the last, and all involving various aircraft and armament. There's also a nice Arcade mode, and better still, the game is playable on Xbox Live in a multiplayer dogfighting mode. There's also a nice co-op mode if you want to go down that road. Based on the reading of these other reviews, I have serious doubts that the reviewers actually even made it that far into the various modes of the game before deciding on the 'boring' claim.
Now, to be fair to those reviewers, I will say that I have my own problems with the audio clips and dialog that are used during the game. The dialog is far too repetitive and is quite obviously racist in nature. While flying against the Germans, you'll hear and/or read on screen taunts from the German pilots. The on-screen taunts aren't that bad, but the cheesy accents that are heard along with the comments are very stereotypical. The same holds when going up against the Japanese pilots. And finally, the same can be said of hearing the cries for help from the Brits while flying missions to help them. It would seem that there'd be plenty of room on the Xbox 360's DVD to hold more audio clips, and more taunts to cycle through, but apparently not. In all seriousness, I think the game would have been fine without the supposed 'radio chatter' anyway, or at least without the radio chatter from your opponents.
Having radio chatter from your squadron is to be expected, and actually encouraged. In that area, it seems again that there's not enough variety in the chatter and recorded audio bits. More would have been better here, rather than from the opponents.
Another complaint found in some other reviews is that the game play is in many ways reminiscent of 'god mode' thanks to 'specials' that can be accessed frequently by the player. You can have your squadron mates perform special functions, such as using a focused attack against an opposition target, or giving a cry for help to the more mechanically inclined pilot in the bunch to get tips on how to repair your plane enough to keep going. The repairs are easily executed by pressing the correct button sequences that are shown on the screen (very similar to blog clicking actually), and the timer on the repair function is fairly short. In that area, I think these other reviewers have a very valid point, though if the game didn't offer this feature, it might prove to be too frustrating to many casual players.
This brings me to another point of my own. Something I haven't found in the game is any option to choose difficulty levels. I can't say I've necessarily needed that feature, as the game offers a very adequate checkpointing feature and ability to restart your campaign from those checkpoints. If you happen to fail during the missions, you restart at the checkpoint (if you so choose) or restart that mission from the beginning. If you are highly successful, you'll wind up with higher ratings and more accolades. If you are like me and typically less successful, you'll get lower ratings, but still be able to get through the missions and progress through the campaigns. While it might be nice to be able to adjust the difficulty level, it hasn't really been necessary.
Over all, I find the game, as noted in the initial sentence of this review, quite enjoyable. There are plenty of game modes available, and lots of fun to be had, even as you make yourself disoriented trying to follow your on-screen target through turns, rolls, and other aerial maneuvers. The game is at least worth a rental, and in my own opinion well worth buying and adding to any collection.
Broken down a bit for scoring in major areas:
Graphics: 9/10
Audio: 6/10 (voice dialog), 8/10 for effects
Replay value: 9/10
Audience level: Teen and up
Multiplayer: yes (Xbox Live)
Single player modes: yes (multiple, including Arcade 'Standalone', and Campaign modes)
Overall rating from this reviewer: 8/10
Blazing Angels is, at least on the Xbox 360, a visually impressive game. It's not absolutely lifelike, but it is fairly realistic. As you can see from the image above, and hopefully a few of the images below, the vintage aircraft and surroundings are beautiful to look at as you fly your airplane around trying not to get shot down and trying to take out the best that the enemy has to throw at you.
Mainstream reviews (IGN, Gamespot, etc.) have been mixed for the game, coming in around 6/10. Personally I think the reviewers have been overly harsh, though I'll touch a bit on some of the comments I've seen and offer my own thoughts.
First, one of the complaints I've seen is that the game is boring. I don't believe that is the case at all. The campaign mode puts players into historical air battles from WWII, starting at Dunkirk, the battles over London, on to runs over Africa, on to the Pacific (including Pearl Harbor and Midway) and more. There's plenty of missions, each a little different than the last, and all involving various aircraft and armament. There's also a nice Arcade mode, and better still, the game is playable on Xbox Live in a multiplayer dogfighting mode. There's also a nice co-op mode if you want to go down that road. Based on the reading of these other reviews, I have serious doubts that the reviewers actually even made it that far into the various modes of the game before deciding on the 'boring' claim.
Now, to be fair to those reviewers, I will say that I have my own problems with the audio clips and dialog that are used during the game. The dialog is far too repetitive and is quite obviously racist in nature. While flying against the Germans, you'll hear and/or read on screen taunts from the German pilots. The on-screen taunts aren't that bad, but the cheesy accents that are heard along with the comments are very stereotypical. The same holds when going up against the Japanese pilots. And finally, the same can be said of hearing the cries for help from the Brits while flying missions to help them. It would seem that there'd be plenty of room on the Xbox 360's DVD to hold more audio clips, and more taunts to cycle through, but apparently not. In all seriousness, I think the game would have been fine without the supposed 'radio chatter' anyway, or at least without the radio chatter from your opponents.
Having radio chatter from your squadron is to be expected, and actually encouraged. In that area, it seems again that there's not enough variety in the chatter and recorded audio bits. More would have been better here, rather than from the opponents.
Another complaint found in some other reviews is that the game play is in many ways reminiscent of 'god mode' thanks to 'specials' that can be accessed frequently by the player. You can have your squadron mates perform special functions, such as using a focused attack against an opposition target, or giving a cry for help to the more mechanically inclined pilot in the bunch to get tips on how to repair your plane enough to keep going. The repairs are easily executed by pressing the correct button sequences that are shown on the screen (very similar to blog clicking actually), and the timer on the repair function is fairly short. In that area, I think these other reviewers have a very valid point, though if the game didn't offer this feature, it might prove to be too frustrating to many casual players.
This brings me to another point of my own. Something I haven't found in the game is any option to choose difficulty levels. I can't say I've necessarily needed that feature, as the game offers a very adequate checkpointing feature and ability to restart your campaign from those checkpoints. If you happen to fail during the missions, you restart at the checkpoint (if you so choose) or restart that mission from the beginning. If you are highly successful, you'll wind up with higher ratings and more accolades. If you are like me and typically less successful, you'll get lower ratings, but still be able to get through the missions and progress through the campaigns. While it might be nice to be able to adjust the difficulty level, it hasn't really been necessary.
Over all, I find the game, as noted in the initial sentence of this review, quite enjoyable. There are plenty of game modes available, and lots of fun to be had, even as you make yourself disoriented trying to follow your on-screen target through turns, rolls, and other aerial maneuvers. The game is at least worth a rental, and in my own opinion well worth buying and adding to any collection.
Broken down a bit for scoring in major areas:
Graphics: 9/10
Audio: 6/10 (voice dialog), 8/10 for effects
Replay value: 9/10
Audience level: Teen and up
Multiplayer: yes (Xbox Live)
Single player modes: yes (multiple, including Arcade 'Standalone', and Campaign modes)
Overall rating from this reviewer: 8/10
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Apparently Josh_88 needs to take a few minutes to see which forums the articles he is responding to are showing in 
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