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April 24, 2006 | 3:43 PM PST
by: Chad Mullikin
The Xbox 360 has received its first air combat game courtesy of the fine folks over at UbiSoft, but unfortunately Blazing Angels: Squadrons of World War II isn’t quite the spiritual rebirth of Crimson Skies most of us would have liked. While there are many strong qualities in Ubisofts aerial effort, a litany of minor weakness prevent this plane-ride from truly taking off. Fans of multiplayer dog-fighting however, are likely to get a decent amount of mileage out the game’s online component.
Set during, you guessed it – World War II, Blazing Angels follows the pursuits of an elite squadron of pilots as they contribute their efforts towards a series of historic aerial battles. Players begin the game by their lonesome, playing as an American volunteer in England assisting the Royal Air Force in defending against an assault of German bogeys, and over the course of their travels from hotzone to hotzone, will meet up with fellow Yankees Joe, Tom and Frank. Once the squad is complete, players will eventually fly out of Britain and into locales such as North Africa, Hawaii, Paris, and eventually Berlin.
Outside of your role as a pilot and the general context of World War II, there isn’t much of a story to be found, which is somewhat disappointing considering how well Ubisoft’s other major WWII franchise, Brothers In Arms made the player feel as though they are living someone else’s legacy. The only indication the player gets that these pilots even know each other, much less care about each other, is from generic radio chatter throughout the missions. Its hard to find the will to character about a character in a videogame, when not even the other characters seem to.
Gameplay
The major distinguishing feature that separates Blazing Angels from the rest of the dog-fighting pack is the fact that players have the ability to issue direct orders to three unique squad members. Each squad mate can be ordered to attack enemies on sight, defend the player’s plane, or regroup around the player and essentially follow their lead. Commands are issued entirely through the use of the d-pad; one press in the direction associated with the squad member of choice will have them await an order, at which point the player may choose the order by pressing the d-pad once again in the direction associated with a particular command. It’s an intuitive system that reaches a healthy compromise between depth and accessibility, and players will likely to setting up flanking maneuvers after very little time behind the controller.
While every member of the squad is capable of performing every standard order, each member of the team also has a particular specialty, which not only makes them more adept at certain tasks over others, but also provides each with a nifty special maneuver. These special powers are available so long as the special meter is fully charged, which occurs automatically. Unfortunately, the ease with which these special maneuvers can be abused, seeing as they can be used an infinite amount of times, robs quite a bit of tension from the aerial battles – and a good chunk of the fun along with it.
Frank is the mandatory gruff pilot who excels at dog-fighting and generally rendering enemy planes into plummeting piles of burning scrap. As such, he’s generally the go-to guy if players are looking for help clearing the screen of enemy fighters, or they need help taking down one specific, incredibly annoying fighter. Frank’s special attack is also effective at taking out multiple fighters in quick succession, essentially clearing a good portion of the screen of enemy presence. Tom on the other hand is something of the yin to Frank’s yang, as he excels at defensive maneuvers and is a good choice if the player needs help covering their tail from flanking fighters. Tom can also bust out a sweet little trick or ‘taunt’ maneuver that serves to infuriate any enemies that seen him to the point of dropping everything and attacking him, leaving the player alone to flank and take them out.
Then there’s Joe, who damn near kills the game all by himself. Joe is something of wunderkind with machinery, and not much else – asking him to try and kill anything or defend anything is akin to asking Slippy Toad to stay alive for 3 seconds. It’s simply not going to happen. However, he can, seemingly through the use of some black magic, repair any damage the player’s plane happens to sustain. All a player must do to turn their fiery wreckage into an air-worthy death machine is call Joe via the d-pad and play a quick game of Simon-says with the face buttons. The more correct input the player provides, the more health is restored to the plane.
Unfortunately, since players can call Joe essentially any time they need him, since the special meter refills fairly quickly, there is rarely any danger of being shot down. Combined with the fact that the squad members are seemingly invulnerable (we’re not 100% sure of this, but upon playing through the entire campaign, twice, there was not one instance in which we lost a squad mate), the tension that typically comes hand-in-hand with dog-fighting has effectively been removed. There’s no fear of being shot down, and the basic ‘shoot, repeat as needed’ gameplay model isn’t bolstered enough by the squad mechanics to make up for that loss. If anything, they only make it worse, as players can simply abuse the system, without fear that they will lose the valuable abilities of their squad mates. Had Ubisoft simply limited the number of times each ability could be used, and perhaps made the squad mates somewhat more vulnerable, that crucial tension would still be in place, at least somewhat.
Set during, you guessed it – World War II, Blazing Angels follows the pursuits of an elite squadron of pilots as they contribute their efforts towards a series of historic aerial battles. Players begin the game by their lonesome, playing as an American volunteer in England assisting the Royal Air Force in defending against an assault of German bogeys, and over the course of their travels from hotzone to hotzone, will meet up with fellow Yankees Joe, Tom and Frank. Once the squad is complete, players will eventually fly out of Britain and into locales such as North Africa, Hawaii, Paris, and eventually Berlin.
Outside of your role as a pilot and the general context of World War II, there isn’t much of a story to be found, which is somewhat disappointing considering how well Ubisoft’s other major WWII franchise, Brothers In Arms made the player feel as though they are living someone else’s legacy. The only indication the player gets that these pilots even know each other, much less care about each other, is from generic radio chatter throughout the missions. Its hard to find the will to character about a character in a videogame, when not even the other characters seem to.
Gameplay
The major distinguishing feature that separates Blazing Angels from the rest of the dog-fighting pack is the fact that players have the ability to issue direct orders to three unique squad members. Each squad mate can be ordered to attack enemies on sight, defend the player’s plane, or regroup around the player and essentially follow their lead. Commands are issued entirely through the use of the d-pad; one press in the direction associated with the squad member of choice will have them await an order, at which point the player may choose the order by pressing the d-pad once again in the direction associated with a particular command. It’s an intuitive system that reaches a healthy compromise between depth and accessibility, and players will likely to setting up flanking maneuvers after very little time behind the controller.
While every member of the squad is capable of performing every standard order, each member of the team also has a particular specialty, which not only makes them more adept at certain tasks over others, but also provides each with a nifty special maneuver. These special powers are available so long as the special meter is fully charged, which occurs automatically. Unfortunately, the ease with which these special maneuvers can be abused, seeing as they can be used an infinite amount of times, robs quite a bit of tension from the aerial battles – and a good chunk of the fun along with it.
Frank is the mandatory gruff pilot who excels at dog-fighting and generally rendering enemy planes into plummeting piles of burning scrap. As such, he’s generally the go-to guy if players are looking for help clearing the screen of enemy fighters, or they need help taking down one specific, incredibly annoying fighter. Frank’s special attack is also effective at taking out multiple fighters in quick succession, essentially clearing a good portion of the screen of enemy presence. Tom on the other hand is something of the yin to Frank’s yang, as he excels at defensive maneuvers and is a good choice if the player needs help covering their tail from flanking fighters. Tom can also bust out a sweet little trick or ‘taunt’ maneuver that serves to infuriate any enemies that seen him to the point of dropping everything and attacking him, leaving the player alone to flank and take them out.
Then there’s Joe, who damn near kills the game all by himself. Joe is something of wunderkind with machinery, and not much else – asking him to try and kill anything or defend anything is akin to asking Slippy Toad to stay alive for 3 seconds. It’s simply not going to happen. However, he can, seemingly through the use of some black magic, repair any damage the player’s plane happens to sustain. All a player must do to turn their fiery wreckage into an air-worthy death machine is call Joe via the d-pad and play a quick game of Simon-says with the face buttons. The more correct input the player provides, the more health is restored to the plane.
Unfortunately, since players can call Joe essentially any time they need him, since the special meter refills fairly quickly, there is rarely any danger of being shot down. Combined with the fact that the squad members are seemingly invulnerable (we’re not 100% sure of this, but upon playing through the entire campaign, twice, there was not one instance in which we lost a squad mate), the tension that typically comes hand-in-hand with dog-fighting has effectively been removed. There’s no fear of being shot down, and the basic ‘shoot, repeat as needed’ gameplay model isn’t bolstered enough by the squad mechanics to make up for that loss. If anything, they only make it worse, as players can simply abuse the system, without fear that they will lose the valuable abilities of their squad mates. Had Ubisoft simply limited the number of times each ability could be used, and perhaps made the squad mates somewhat more vulnerable, that crucial tension would still be in place, at least somewhat.
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