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

Tally-ho! Jerry's over the briny!

Posted 27 Mar 2006 16:00 by
OK chaps, settle down, bit of a history lesson here. Back in 1940, Jerry had been making a bit of trouble on the continent for a year or so. We British had been giving him a good hiding, but we were being beaten back a bit by his fiendish blitzkrieg tactics. Although the Yanks hadn't officially thrown their hat into the ring, a couple of their hot-blooded young lads had jumped the pond and joined up with the Royal Air Force.
These chaps distinguished themselves in the air over Britain, France and even North Africa, fighting alongside the boys of the RAF and the commonwealth air forces. Once the Japs bombed Pearl Harbour though, these American lads skipped back home to give the Emperor one in the eye from Uncle Sam. Many of them found their way back to Europe again in time for the final push to Berlin and Victory in Europe. In Blazing Angels: Squadrons of World War II from Ubisoft, you play one of those Yankee fly-boys, starting your career in training and working your way through the war and up through the ranks.

Through the course of the game you will fly hangar-loads of aircraft in most of the theatres of war that the RAF and USAF were involved in, you'll be joined by fellow Yankee airmen and together you'll form a close-knit squad of four that can tackle anything the Germans or Japanese can throw at you.
That's not just a part of the story either, your wing men will actually help you out. The AI is quite good in this regard, give them a simple order like fly in formation, attack the enemy or defend my plane and they will act on those orders in an appropriate way. You can also use individuals for specific tasks, Tom is excellent at distracting the enemy fighters and can keep your six clear of bandits, Frank is an ace pilot and can be let loose to attack on his own and finally Joe is an excellent mechanic and can help you repair your kite in the air. You'll also hear the banter passing between the lads as the mission progresses, pointing out significant events and giving hints to aid your progress.

The enemy too has a highly developed sense of who they are, fighting in pairs, defending each other or just going for their targets with ruthless determination, they all seem to behave in a realistic manner. Somehow your radio also picks up the banter from the Jerries and the Japs too, and its all translated into English so you can understand it.
Most of the enemy dialogue is spoken in heavy, almost fake, accents and is pretty similar no matter who you are fighting against. In addition, you are also joined in the air and on the ground and sea by members of the allied forces who also join in the battles with great gusto and intelligence. That's not to say that you can just hang back and let your friends do all the work, you must still do the lion's share of the blowing up, shooting down and general flying around in order to get through the missions.
Indeed there are some solo missions where you are the only allied aircraft and everything rests with you.

The missions are a varied bunch, ranging from the classic dogfight to more involved bombing and torpedo runs against non-flying targets. You may be attacking the enemy, defending your own side or even performing reconnaissance runs and taking photographs. Each mission is broken up into a number of objectives, these are given to you one at a time as you fly through the overall scenario. Sometimes a new objective will require you to land and change aircraft in order to have access to the weapons you require to perform the next task.
The weapons are a varied bunch as well, most planes have guns that you will use against flying targets and these are always your primary weapon. Secondary weapons include rockets, bombs, torpedoes and a camera and can be used against land or sea based enemy units. Each secondary weapon has its own targeting interface to learn, with the torpedoes and camera requiring you to fly level at the right height and only use the weapon within a certain distance range to the target.
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Comments

Joji 2 Apr 2006 22:57
1/8
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.

PreciousRoi 3 Apr 2006 08:27
2/8
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.
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DoctorDee 3 Apr 2006 09:01
3/8
PreciousRoi wrote:
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.

PreciousRoi 3 Apr 2006 21:05
4/8
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
DoctorDee 4 Apr 2006 08:13
5/8
PreciousRoi wrote:
the enemy pilots talk like the villians in a wartime comic book. Maybe I'm picking at nits here


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.

PreciousRoi 5 Apr 2006 02:47
6/8
"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
sue_raas 6 Apr 2006 12:50
7/8
PreciousRoi wrote:
if this game was a woman, it'd be a pretty hot chick.

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


You're a kind of cross between Roy Ayers and Aleister Crowley aren't you? You devil!
PreciousRoi 6 Apr 2006 15:11
8/8
Sue Raas wrote:
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)
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