Reviewed: April 13, 2006
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Ubisoft

Developer
Ubisoft Romania

Released: March 23, 2006
Genre: Flight Action
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen

7
8
7
8
7.9

Supported Features:

Like most games of its type, it is more arcade than sim, more Crimson Skies than Ace Combat. But once you overcome the lack of a cockpit view and the quirky controls, especially when you are locked onto a target, there is still a lot of fun to be had with Blazing Angels, especially in the multiplayer modes.

Blazing Angels is a group of elite fighter pilots and you play the American volunteer who joins their group and works your way through a dozen or so missions. Once you prove yourself with a short tutorial you are thrown into a series of missions that will take you to England, France, Pearl Harbor, North Africa, Berlin, and even an arctic surprise. Sadly, there is no real story going on here – just a sequence of missions you play because they are there.

Tom “The Shield” gets his name by taunting the enemy until they have no choice but to try and shoot him down. It’s a great tactic to draw the enemy off your tail and into a position where you can slip in and blow them out of the sky.

Frank is the hunter of the group and when you activate the lightning icon he will aggressively attack the indicated target and anyone else in their formation. When he’s done at least 3-4 planes will be gone.

These guys will all talk to you during combat, sometimes offering useful information, but most of the time its just chatter to help immerse you in the action. The text is color-coded to match the icon of the person speaking.

As a veteran of Crimson Skies I had no trouble quickly adapting to the third-person flight controls. The Follow Camera took me a few minutes extra to master but I was totally comfortable with all of the controls before the tutorial was over. Sadly, many of the GCM staff and from what I am reading on the forums, are not grasping the concepts as easily as I did.

I think the hardest thing to overcome is flying from unique camera perspectives. Blazing Angles practically demands that you use the Follow Cam for most of the combat. It’s the best way to keep a lock on aerial targets and the only way to locate the ground targets and waypoints as they are added to your mission. The problem for most is that even though you are viewing the plane from any of 360 degrees, you still have to fly the plane like you were behind it.

The rest of the controls were responsive and totally intuitive. The D-pad orders your various wingmen and also cycles between Offense, Defense, and Formation rules of engagement. LB toggle landing gear while the left-trigger locks the camera on the selected target. Targets are cycled with the A (next) and B (closest threat) buttons and you can fire on those targets with the right trigger.

Clicking down on the right stick fires secondary weapons like torpedoes or takes pictures with the aerial camera. I found this to be a bit awkward given that the right stick is also used for throttle. I’m not sure why they doubled up the controls when the RB, Y and X buttons were still all available.

There are a few strategies that might help you play this game better, but for the most part you’ll quickly fall into the same attack patterns and often get into “circling wars” where you try to speed up then pull back on the throttle to cut inside and hopefully shoot down the plan on your six. Most of the time you are insanely outnumbered, a fact you will quickly realize during the Battle of Britain, as you go up against wave after wave after wave of enemy squadrons.

You’ll often need to prioritize targets, usually the heavy bombers, then worry about cleaning up the fighters later. Sometimes you have a timer on the missions and other times you simply must keep a friendly base from getting blow up.

There is a grading system at work that looks for the time taken to beat the mission as well as air and ground targets you destroyed. There is a required number and a par time in order to get a good grade, and there are medals and new planes to be unlocked if you perform above and beyond the call of duty.

There are a few nice touches to the gameplay like actually having to swirl the stick to start your engines. This is realistic for the biplane in the tutorial but I’m pretty sure most of the WWII fighters had electric starters. The missions almost always end in the air, which means you don’t get to land more than two or three times in the entire game. Landing on the carrier was fun and there was another landing on a bombed out airstrip that was really exciting.

Blazing Angels is definitely arcade material. With a limitless supply of ammo (reload times not withstanding), the ability to heal your plane (again without limits – just a short power-up time), and a squadron of invincible allies, the only thing the enemy has going for it is sheer numbers. With the exception of one mission where you have to protect Joe, I think it’s impossible for your men to even die.

While most of the action takes place at higher altitudes, you will have the occasion to drop to the deck and these detailed 3D structures as well as rocks, trees, and other environmental objects, really help sell the sensation of speed as you skim the surface. Textures just pop, and you never see that patchwork style of landscape common in flight games.

Planes are meticulously detailed and textured with reflective skins, battle scarring, and animated control surfaces. Machine guns spit fire and so does your engines and tail section if you take too much damage. Oddly enough, the damage is only visual and your plane never loses handling or maneuverability.

The only problem with this (and most other) flight combat games is that the action isn’t very personal, so you never get close enough to actually see the other planes, unless you are pulling in behind a heavy bomber. Most of the time you are engaging target boxes that turn into fireballs and then trails of smoke that fall to the ground. Even with the Follow Cam you seldom get to see the finer details of your enemy.

Special effects are off the charts. The entire game has been filtered with a vintage sepia tone process and the menus and mission briefings are all presented in notebook fashion. Lighting is unbelievable, reflecting off of metallic planes, carriers, buildings, and water, and the fire and smoke is perfect. It’s almost humbling to see huge portions of London on fire with thick black plumes of smoke billowing up into the sky, and it’s just not visual; the smoke is real and can be used to your tactical advantage.

One of the worst missions in the game has you doing desert recon during a dust storm. While I despised this mission, I could still respect the artistry of creating a volumetric dust storm that varied so subtly in density that your visibility was realistically affected.

So to sum up the graphics; scenery is outstanding, special effects are perfect, presentation is authentic with the only downside being the relatively unseen enemies. Just plan on blowing up lots and lots of boxes.

The sound effects are powerful and authentic with machine guns rattling, AA fire popping all around you, and booming explosions. There is also the comforting whine of your plane’s engines that changes as you throttle up and back, and the more disturbing sounds of entire squadrons of enemy planes and bombers.

I have to draw the line at the speech in Blazing Angels. While the designers obviously wanted to immerse you in the action with lots of com chatter they didn’t create enough lines of dialogue, so everything repeats way to often. This includes the remarks from your men as well as the incoming taunts from the enemy.

I’m not sure if all WWII planes had radios and if they did I’m pretty sure they all weren’t on the same frequency, so having to hear German and Japanese insults in some of the most horrible fake accents ever performed is just painful…but a bit comical too, at least for the first 20-30 times you hear them.

There are lots of planes to unlock in Blazing Angels, and you can make these even more powerful by unlocking weapon upgrades by playing through the arcade mini-campaigns. Sadly, you cannot replay the campaign and use any of these planes though – you are locked into the plane assigned for each mission. So why bother?

I’ll tell you why…multiplayer. Blazing Angles has a kick ass multiplayer component that supports up to 16 pilots in the sky for some impressive aerial combat either online or with a system link. You have Dogfight (deathmatch), Seek and Destroy (last man standing), and Aces High (king of the hill) for those looking for non-team battles.

There are numerous cooperative modes including; Dogfight, Onslaught, Bombing Run, Kamikaze, and Historical Battles where you get to play 12 of the campaign missions cooperatively. Each of these modes are totally unique, very challenging, and loads of fun.

Then you have the squad modes, which include; Dogfight, Capture the Base, Bombing Run, and Kamikaze. Yes, some of these modes are repeating but you’d be surprised how different they play out when you are part of a team.

You might finish the single player game in a few days, but the online combat will keep you coming back for months to come. While it can’t hope to compete with online games like COD2 or BF2, Blazing Angels is in a multiplayer league of its own and it reigns supreme in its genre.

There are only 7 achievements you need to get for the total 1,000 points and as you might expect, they are incredibly hard to earn. Most are going to require perfect gameplay and the highest rankings and medals possible. Good luck!

As long as you don’t go into this thinking it’s a flight-sim you won’t be disappointed. Blazing Angels controls and plays great, offering some intense arcade thrills and looks fantastic while doing it. The campaign missions serve as a great tutorial for the countless hours you will likely be spending online with this game.