Blazing Angels review for Xbox 360

[Jeff4999]

Right here. (http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1139/Blazing-Angels-Squadrons-of-WWII/p1/)-Squadrons-of-WWII/p1/

[Jeff4999]

Right here. (http://reviews.teamxbox.com/xbox-360/1139/Blazing-Angels-Squadrons-of-WWII/p1/)-Squadrons-of-WWII/p1/

[Speckled__Jim]

Well having played the demo, I have to take issue with this sentence in the review:

"From a technical standpoint, Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII is virtually flawless. There are no framerate hiccups to talk about..."

Not my experience. The framerate was choppy, and visually the game was spolied by the lack of vsync.

Now they may have fixed this in the release build, but given that the demo and the retail release are only days apart, why would they use an old build for the demo? It's just showing the game in a bad light.

[sbelli]

I also was a bit disappointed in the graphics in the demo. To me it didn't like anything that the original Xbox couldn't handle (particularlly the first few levels. London was better, but still not impressive compared to other 360 games). Is there anyone who has the final version or someone from Ubisoft who can comment on whether the actual game has better graphics than the demo?

I still may get this game, but may cancel my 360 pre-order and go for the Xbox version anticipating that there couldn't be much of a difference. I seem to be finding more and more that, with the exception of GRAW, developers that any game made cross platform don't seem to put much effort into REALLY taking advantage of the 360's power. And that sucks. Why bother having a better system if you're not going to get anything better out of it!

[dQbell]

He mentions this, "Simply beautiful. Still shots look like oil paintings. In motion, Blazing Angels Squadrons of WWII looks like Pearl Harbor"

I can't say that of the demo, so something must have changed, no?

[Serj42000]

i think the demo is an early Beta, go to gametrailers.com and you can see a new video of blazing angels

[Steiner]

http://xbox.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=11039
Article â
Harry Neary (Akeldama) // Thursday, April 6th, 2006 //â â
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII review
Dogfight or dog's breakfast? We take a look at Ubisoft's Xbox 360 flight-action game.

Unlike the developer of Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII I have no wish to waste your time, so let me start by saying that the game is rubbish. Of course there’s more to a review that just that, I have to do all the justifying the final score malarkey and trying to think up some terrible puns for paragraph headings, either that or just fall back on my old favourite of using Iron Maiden song titles.

So here we are with Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII, Ubisoft’s new flight action game for Xbox 360. Alas long gone are the flight action games of the past such as F15 Strike Eagle aimed at a gaming market that could read and form the most basic of thoughts, so what we have here is essentially a simple shoot ‘em up. However there’s nothing wrong with that. The actual premise of Blazing Angels is a perfectly good one, an action game giving the player a chance to take part in some of the most famous aerial actions of WWII.

Spring Offensive
What happens though when you play Blazing Angels is that you come up against a wall of terrible design decisions and follies that add up to making this game a real stinker. I’ll go through these faults in the order they annoyed the hell out of me. So first of all let’s talk about the script and voice acting.
It’s dreadful, I wanted to cut my ears off rather than hear the terrible dialogue and acting featured in this game. Once again, thanks to a publisher bending over to the American audience, we can’t have something as simple as Brits flying in the Royal Air Force. Just like Michael Bay’s appalling movie Pearl Harbour we have to suffer a plot about an American saving our sorry limey butts in the RAF. And the dialogue itself, it’s just trash, cliché ridden trash, and full of terrible stereotypical nonsense that comes from the Hogan’s Heroes school of European characterisation.


Stereotypes
This utter bilge is delivered in two ways, firstly in what looks like a poor placeholder comic-sans font onscreen. It’s ugly and appears to be just the kind of thing that would have a post-it on the project planning chart saying “remember to upload finished font for dialogue into final buildâ€Â�. The post-it must have fallen off. As did the one that said “hire some decent actorsâ€Â�, the dialogue is mangled into all manner of stereotypes that border on the offensive.
One might cut some slack if an American publisher had brought this game to us, but this is Ubisoft for crying out loud. The most annoying voice is the first one you hear, a redneck aircraft mechanic that outstays his welcome in your home in about ten seconds of you first hearing him. To be fair though, even Richard Burton couldn’t deliver dialogue this bad without sounding like a complete ham.



Dead Stick Landing
Time to take to the air and this is where we hit another major problem with the game, the control method. When I played the downloadable demo of the game the thing that struck me was how odd the control method was. Pitch and Roll in real aircraft exist on the same control stick. The demo had them separated, with the left stick giving pitch and turning, roll appeared on the right hand stick.
Fair enough, it’s a simple approach aimed at novice gamers. Plenty of examples in the genre offer this option. However the demo didn’t give the player the choice of pitch and roll on the same stick. “No matter,â€Â� I told myself. “They’d have to be complete idiots to not offer the choice in the finish game.â€Â� After all, other games of this type do. Well? No this choice doesn’t exist in the game.


Varied Missions
I’ve only just got the plane into the air and already the game has annoyed me with terrible dialogue, a hackneyed insulting plot and a control method for five year olds. Hey but at least the aircraft model is pretty attractive and the controls convey some feeling of flight despite the lack of choice in the choice of how to do things. Blazing Angels is certainly easy to pick up and play. Wow a compliment, did you see that?
The first few missions are fine. There’s a training run that explains the controls, shows how to padlock targets, fire guns, drops bombs. All well constructed despite the awful voiceover. And the next few missions are pretty good too, with action covering the retreat from Dunkirk. It adds some much needed credibility to the proceedings. And then its onto missions in such locations as Paris, Berlin, North Africa, Pearl Harbour, Normandy etc.


Shell Shock
But then you hit the really silly missions like flying into a sandstorm to make you question the sanity of the developers. But then comes the hate as missions become ridiculously hard due to the game coming from the "player has to win the entire war single handed" school of lazy game design. You’ll get very sick of choosing to restart missions for the umpteenth time as you’re expected to complete myriad conflicting tasks all in one mission with only a small group of idiot AI wingmen to help/hinder you. Stupid missions later in the game such as one involving a race through a fjord and some particularly annoying activities over Berlin will have you wanting to give up completely long before I had to.
There are times the game is fun. Some of the easier missions hint at what could have been if the designer behind this title either knew something about the subject or didn’t have some crazed ill-informed bean-counter making gameplay decisions. The multiplayer modes are pretty good too. Moments of fun serve to highlight how bad many of the aspects of Blazing Angels really are. The multiplayer options offer some entertainment, but you’re going to get much more fun out of Crimson Skies on the original Xbox.


All That Glitters
I suppose finally I should talk about the graphics. Alas I can’t tell you about the cockpit graphics because someone forgot to put a cockpit view in the game. Yes it’s all third person, with your large aircraft often obscuring your view. Another terrible decision there then â€" way to go to alienate part of the target audience.
“But Harry,â€Â� I hear you say, “those screenshots look fantastic; at least the game is a wonder to behold.â€Â� Well you’d think so, wouldn’t you? Unfortunately all the moody skies in the world can’t hide the fact that the game looks pretty rough when you play it. The ground scenery is nothing spectacular, certainly on the level of the original Xbox and some way below what you’d expect from a modern PC flight-sim or the Xbox 360 hardware. I do really like the moody style Ubisoft has gone for here, but again, the tone of the plot/action/dialogue doesn’t match this ambition. Imagine if the game had taken its tonal cue from these moody skies, it might have been worth playing.

As it stands Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is a deeply flawed game. From the terrible image tearing to the offensive voice-overs, it’s as big a failure as I’ve seen from a major Publisher for some time. The lack of proper flight controls and cockpit view is bound to put off those with a general interest in flight games. The borderline racist characterisation will put off anyone with taste. And finally the increasingly sadistic missions would put off anyone who plays games for fun. Like I said at the beginning, Blazing Angels is rubbish.
Rating â
Graphics: 5
Terrible tearing and poor ground scenery, but with some good lighting effects and plane models.
Durability: 5
Will keep you occupied for a while if you can stand it.
Sound: 1
Some of the worst dialogue I've ever heard.
Gameplay: 3
Increasingly annoying missions won't take your mind off the technical faults in this poor game.
Overall rating: 2

[RodGoulty]

During the attack on London I got quite emotional & realised the almost impossible task of flying,taking out the enemy & avoid being shot down myself whilst bombs were dropping on my favourite city. Anyone else get this feeling ? Rgds "Oldgit"

[Zogma]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Speckled__Jim: </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

"Speckled__Jim" - hilarious name! I immediately flashed to the Black Adder episode. Wish I'd thought of it!!!

[Baritji]

Sorry to post in an old thread, but....

Is it just me, or is the above review a tad negative? It sounds to me like the reviewer simpy wasn't skilled enough to play the game properly. First, he tells us anyone can pick up and play Blazing Angels, and implies that even a ******ed monkey would be capable of playing it well. Then, he whinges about the latter missions being too hard!!!

Im no pro gamer, and I'm only on my 360 about 3-4 hours a week, but I aced every mission with ease. I only died once during the entire campign, in the Berlin mission.

The game doesn't come with a cockpit view, nor does it have even remotely realistic flight contorls. But who cares?? This is NOT a flight sim, it is an arcade game.

I am a professional pilot, and let me assure you, every dedicated flight sim I have ever played is as about as realistic as a game like Halo..... (Perhaps with the exception of MS Flight sim, but even that is rather dodgy at times)

Personally I thought Blazing Angels was a fast paced blast!! I enjoyed every minute of it!

Granted the voice acting is pretty poor, but you can always mute the game and throw on some of your own tunes like I did!!

If I had to give it a score out of 10, I would give it a 7 minimum, and probably even an 8.

Definetly a game to buy if you have an interest in war birds! There is something romantic about flying over Berlin in a Mustang blowing Messers' out of the sky!!

Cheers.
B

[kristian16]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by sbelli:
I also was a bit disappointed in the graphics in the demo. To me it didn't like anything that the original Xbox couldn't handle </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

HOTP looked better on PS2 tbh. I really wanted this game but the demo and other reviews put me off.
The reviews have been better for PS3 so I'm giving that version a blast. http://forums.ubi.com/images/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif