Blazing Angels: Squadrons of World War II (Xbox 360)

Was looking forward to this game, after missing Heroes of the Pacific. Think I'll have to track it down now, despite its gripes.

Thanks Spong.

Playing this on the Xbox.

couple of points...editorial actually understates a few things, German and Japanese accents are not only so fake sounding they must be real, they are also borderline offensive, sometimes dancing on the line, sometimes stomping on it with jackboots...dialouge is not only similar, with few excetions its word for word identical with its Axis counterparts.

Repair feature is pretty over the top, which is a flaw in a game which leans toward realism in most respects. Interesting comparison with Medal of Honor, which bloomed on the PC into an realistic combat simuation, but seemingly only gone downhill on the consoles. Though I wholeheartedly agree with the conclusion that with a few tweaks to controls and gameplay, could become an excellent flight/combat game.

It does need a few tweaks, but it is already an excellent game. I can be as bothered with flight sims as I can with thinking of something to finish this sentence.

But Blazing Angels was addictive fromt he first training mission, and the combat missions even more so. It's simple enough to play that an idiot like me can be having fun within seconds.

It's a real arcade flight combat game with enough realism to fool you into thinking it's a sim... kind like Gran Turismo as a driving game. And it looks beautiful too, at least on X360 it does.

if this game was a woman, it'd be a pretty hot chick.

Unfortunately, shes got this voice that makes you want to run screaming from the room. Mute her, and everythings golden though.

Honestly, one of your wingmen (the Taunter, Tom? kinda hard to make a caricature out of something as hopelessly neutral as a Midwestern accent) and the Brits are the only voices that aren't horrible caricatures...the enemy pilots talk like the villians in a wartime comic book. Maybe I'm picking at nits here, but if the rest of the game is good, C-grade voiceovers and hearing the precise same cartoonish lines in two different bad accents are enough of a glaring abberation to taint the overall experience.

Its not as though I don't appreciate the game that is...I just think they need more cowbell

I think you are. I want and expect my enemies to talk like something out of WarLord (incorporating Battle!) comic. I was devastated that the Gerries in Medal of Honour didn't shout "Gott in Himmel" more frequently. I was upset that we didn't hear Achtung, Schpittfueur" more (or at all) in Blazing Angels.

Without reinforcing these ridiculous age-old racial stereotypes, it is unlikely that we will ever have proper, old fashioned, wars (the kind that start because we don't like the cut of their mustaches, or the smell of their lobster thermidor) in future, and all war will be for boring things like control of geopolitical resources, and corporate markets.

Indeed the next war will be sponsored by Coca-Cola (the Murkan Government acting under Coke's orders and influence), and it'll be against Islam, to regain market share being threatened by Mecca-Cola.

"Gott in Himmel!!" is a natural phrase, I find myself saying often, being half-Gerry myself...some broken English taunts would have been lovely "Die, Amerikaner Schweinhund, Die" or something of the sort... Hell, untranslated German/Japanese with subtitles would have been bloody brilliant.

I guess its just preferences...but even in our most jingoistic war movies enemy pilots/soldiers are usually portrayed with more intelligence and dignity than some mad Nip cackling "Smoke and Fire! Smoke and Fire! Muh Huh Hah Hah Haaaaa!" Might be acceptable if this was some cartoonish farce (Wings over Wolfenstein?) but its not, its quasi-realistic enough for me to expect more than comic book dialouge from the 50's.

The fact that they used identical lines for both was kinda disturbing, like they were making a virtue out of laziness or something...like it was more efficient or some bullshit. Its just plain shoddy workmanship, and nothing that should be allowed to exist, especially in contrast to the high quality of the rest of the game without at least someone tugging the persons responsible on their collective sleeve and saying, "That is a s**tty piece of work and you should be ashamed of yourself."

The more I enjoy the gameplay the more unwelcome anything is that has a negative impact of my ability to suspend disbelief.

Y'all had one of those fun little wars once...if we had had the good sense to stay home, perhaps it really would have been the War to End All Wars, instead of merely a warmup act for the real atrocities to come

You're a kind of cross between Roy Ayers and Aleister Crowley aren't you? You devil!

heh, I was going for Christopher Walken as legendary (if Chistopher Walken does say so himself) rock producer (actually sound engineer, not to be confused with lead singer for Iron Maiden) Bruce Dickinson, but I'll take Roy Ayers

sig is Crowley with a dash of Stormy (Sealab 2021)