GameSpy Review of Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII

Let's start out this review with a quick show of hands: who here loved Crimson Skies? If you owned the original Xbox, there's a good chance that you did. Unfortunately for those of us that love good old-fashioned flying games, that was the last (and only) truly great dog-fighting title released on a Microsoft system. That's why we couldn't help but get excited about Ubisoft's Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII. It looked like Ubisoft Romania was trying to recreate Crimson Skies' intensely arcadey action while setting it in one of the real world's greatest conflicts, making for one hell of a mix. Alas, while Blazing Angels has its share of exciting moments, the game ultimately falls short of its lofty goals.

The game puts you in the flight suit of an unnamed American pilot who's been sent to Europe to help support the British air campaign. Although your early missions are scattered around London, you'll take part in many of the war's biggest battles, spanning the globe from Pearl Harbor to the North African desert. You'll be able to perform a number of different duties in combat, from dropping bombs on an enemy convoy and torpedoing an aircraft carrier to taking aerial photos and straight-up dog-fighting. While the gameplay changes fairly frequently, the levels start to get repetitive, mainly because you'll have to do the same thing over and over against several waves of enemies.


For the most part, the action in Blazing Angels is similar to that seen in everything from Afterburner to Heroes of the Pacific. You'll be tasked with shooting down your air-based foes or bombing those on the ground, and the controls will be instantly familiar to fans of the genre. The left analog stick will allow you to turn, while the right will let you speed up or slow down, which makes it easier to quickly maneuver. The right trigger will allow you to fire your machineguns, and you can drop bombs or fire missiles by clicking the right analog stick. The coolest mechanic is the targeting system, which allows you to lock-on to a target by holding down the left trigger. This makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on your foe no matter how much he tries to shake you. You might get a little dizzy and disoriented at first, but it won't be long until you've become an ace.

Aiding you during your missions are three wingmen, each of whom brings a unique skill to the aerial battlefield. Blazing Angels has an easy-to-use command system mapped to the D-pad, allowing you to quickly give orders to your men. You can give the whole group an order (formation, attack, etc.), or you can have the individual wingmen do their own thing. One guy helps you repair your plane mid-mission (it's essentially a button-pressing minigame), another will take the heat off you by taunting your foes, while the third will attack whatever you've got targeted. Unfortunately, you won't really need to use anything other than the "heal" command, since you can effectively take out entire squadrons by yourself. To say that Blazing Angels' graphics are a mixed bag is an understatement of the highest order. There are some visuals that will absolutely blow you away (a smoke-covered London and Guadalcanal at sunset immediately come to mind), but there are plenty that make the game look like a current-gen Xbox title, as well as some framerate problems. Still, there's a nice variety of environments, and each of the planes is meticulously detailed and beautifully rendered. And the less said about the audio, the better. Although Blazing Angels has a nice orchestral score, you'll spend most of your time listening to the pilots' inane banter on the radio. The voiceovers are just plain offensive in a number of ways. Not only does it sound like they were done by the development team, all of German and Japanese pilots sound like horrible stereotypes.

Thankfully, the game shipped with a multiplayer mode that'll keep people from feeling like they got ripped off. You'll be able to take part in a variety of gametypes, including Dogfight (the game's version of Deathmatch), Seek and Destroy (in which players race to shoot down target planes), and Aces High (one player against everyone else). There's also a pretty nice co-op mode available, allowing you and a few friends to tackle the campaign mode. Although you won't be able to use the command system, it's a fair tradeoff for the fun you'll have with your buddies. The netcode seems to be very solid, as we were able to play game after game without any problems, even with the maximum of 16 players.


Although it's far from the second coming of Crimson Skies, it's fair to say that Ubisoft's Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is an enjoyable flying game. If you're a fan of the genre, it's worth checking it out the easy-to-use targeting system and the impressive scale of the battles, while multiplayer fans will undoubtedly enjoy the white-knuckle dog-fighting that they'll find on Xbox Live. Ultimately, playing the game makes you wish that the developers had spent more time refining the command system (or finding a decent cast of voiceover artists). It'll also make you dig out your copy of Crimson Skies, just to see if it works on the Xbox 360. (Editor's note: It does. Oh yes, it does.)

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