terpfan1980

Join Date 08/2004

+13

Ubisoft's Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII review [XBOX360]

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

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Feel free to add comments of your own, and please note that images above are samples only and not necessarily from Xbox 360 systems. For some of the best images, please check out Ubi's web-site: Link or check out IGN or Gamestop for their collection of screen shots (images) and video clips.

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no offense terpfan, this isnt a forum for talk about blazing angels, i understand that by labeling it as such, people who dont want to read it can ignore it, but this is a forum about galciv 2 and about issues revolving around it, its not the place to help advertise for other games you like, imagine if every other person on this forum posted a review of something unrelated like you did, the forum would be bogged down by it and you wouldnt be able to find anything about galciv, so just use some common sense and if you want to post a review of something go to a website for all kinds of games or reviews, dont do it here.

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josh 88: This is cross-posted from JoeUser and clearly labeled under Console Games: XBOX. Unless GalCiv 2 has been released for XBOX, you're wasting your time chiding terpfan over something you know nothing about.

terpfan: My husband was thinking about buying Blazing Angels, but ended up getting GHOST Recon instead. Sounds like BA would have been an enjoyable game. I'll tell him to rent it!

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Thanks for the comments and corrections of Josh_88, TW. Appreciate it, and would have said same had you not beaten me to it

Apparently Josh_88 needs to take a few minutes to see which forums the articles he is responding to are showing in

Note to Josh_88 and others -- JoeUser feeds into multiple sites and other forums. Because of that, you may see an article for other games that you don't recognize mixed into the middle of a bunch of threads on whatever StarDock's latest and greatest game(s) is or are. Please be aware of it, and also remember that the nice folks at StarDock are quite generous and friendly in letting their users (like me) talk about other games and gaming in general. It is part of boosting their own industry, and perhaps part of learning a little from their competition and/or their prospective buyers and customers. (Smart people at StarDock, very smart

and well deserved of our support and $$ in purchases!)

Now, to follow up a bit more for Texas Wahine: Ghost Recon Advanced Warrior is a gorgeous game. The graphics are unbelievably realistic and incredibly immersive. I have that game also, and just haven't had the time to make my way through it. It is a *must have* game (in my mind) for the Xbox 360, and I will get to play it more soon, but I haven't done a review of it because it wouldn't be fair to review the game without making it through enough of the game to really figure it out.

To get back to Blazing Angels, I'd definitely try to rent if you can. It's quite fun, but some folks have said it is not their kind of game, or wasn't as good as they would have expected. You do have to get through the first few parts and it's not the same as the rest of the game. If you download the demo (highly recommended, free demo available for download in Xbox Live Marketplace) you'll see a little of the graphics, but the demo starts with the 'tutorial' you have to get through in the game and that tutorial starts with the player flying an old bi-plane. Not what you'd expect, and it loses a lot of the 'sexiness' factor of the other planes that are available later in the game.

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Oh, one more note to Josh_88 and others -- it's possible that the article is winding up in the wrong forums through some mis-configuration at JU. If that is the case, let Karma and other site admins for JU know and they can hopefully correct the mix-up.

Finally, please note you should also occassionally see me talking about the game you originally mentioned: GalCiv2. I have purchased that game (through TotalGamer.net, one of the best bargains in all of the world of PC Gaming) and do enjoy it very much too. It's quite impressive too, but has been well reviewed by many before me. I've offered a few comments and suggestions, and stumbled my way through learning a bit of that game too before becoming more familiar with it. I do thank the gaming gods and the great team behind the tutorial that is included with the game, as it was quite helpful to me as I played my way through a few early games.

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Ok, I see where some of Josh_88's confusion comes from - pretty much the same way that I was confused early on with discussions related to 'The Political Machine' showing up with tons of discussion about politics in general -- the same issue that Texas Wahine mentioned, and which I alluded to above - the cross-posting of messages in some areas over into forums for other games and products.

Josh_88 - if you check the very top of the article/forum message, you'll see what area the message is really in. Yes, it also shows up in the 'recent posts' area in the lefthand 'sidebar' column at the GalCiv2.com site. It may be a bit confusing, and can lead visitors to the GalCiv2 site to think a competing product or other products is being discussed in the wrong area, but that may be by design, and if not, hopefully the nice folks from StarDock can get the cross-post mappings updated later for everyone's benefit.

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Your screen shots look better than the ones I saw on a gaming site. I am afraid I will never play this game since I am a PC gamer and UBI puts Starfarce on almost all of their PC releases. Including the demo for this one
I would prefer if someone updated the graphics of European Air War and re-released that game instead of buying Ubi's craptacular Starforce laden trash.
I am Voting with my dollars since Ubi ignores everyone on their forums who asks them to skip the SF. good customer service like theirs doesn't get my $50.00.

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Your screen shots look better than the ones I saw on a gaming site.

For the record, they're not 'my screen shots', just some shots I was able to find on the web and link to. I do greatly appreciate the nice folks that put them up on their sites so that folks like me can link to them.

Understand on not wanting to give Ubi money on the PC side. I'm no fan of developers that aren't nice to their buyers. (And am a big fan of nice companies like StarDock which do treat their customers with a great deal of respect

)

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