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				Graphics: 7.8 Gameplay: 8.0 Sound: 7.8 Control: 8.5 Replay Value: 9.0 Live play: 8.8 Rating: 8.0 Publisher:  Ubisoft Developer:  Ubisoft Romania Number Of Players:  1-2 (1-16 online) Cheats Screenshots
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Editor’s note: Review preformed on a Sony 60” SXRD 1080p TV, ISF calibrated by me. Your mileage may vary.

  Blazing Angles Squadrons of WWII is one of the biggest “mixed bags” I have ever played, on any system and certainly on the Xbox 360. It runs so hot and cold it makes one wonder if any one person was in charge or just a bunch of departments doing there own thing slapped the product together at the last minute. What it all boils down to is this, do the plusses count in the right spots for you and/or are the minus deal breakers? For me the plusses out weighed the minus but some of the minus are very annoying and your tolerance will vary.

  Singleplayer

  The first thing you should know about Blazing Angles Squadrons of WWII is the fact you don’t go at it alone, you have a squadron after all, comprised of wingmen that fight along side you and help you out in various ways. You can give these wingmen three basic commands via the D-pad. Frank will attack any target you designate. Tom will defend you and can also taunt the enemy and act as a distraction. Joe is the mechanic and can fix your shot up plane in mid-flight. This however takes a little effort on your part as you play a quick game of Simon (press combination of face buttons) which may sound easy but when you are in a middle of a dogfight it can a bit of a challenge. What is really cool about this feature is that it carries over to the multiplayer portions of the game. When you are in need of healing, you can call out for help to your teammates, if one of them responds they have to play the Simon game to repair you. If you can’t shake an enemy plane from your tail, call for help and if a teammate accepts, your tailgater becomes his target.

  The singleplayer game runs through eighteen missions all based on historical WWII battles. You will command the skies in the Battle of Britain, chase the Nazi war machine out of Paris, defend Pearl Harbor from Japanese dive-bombers and kamikazes. You will also be involved with bombing runs and a little espionage photography, which is actually one of the worst missions in the game, yuk. The levels are varied somewhat and are broken into sub-missions which also act as mid level save points. In addition to the singleplayer campaign, there are three Standalone Modes, Mini-Campaign, Arcade and Ace Dual. By completing these modes, you are able to upgrade plane performance. Note: you must complete the regular eighteen-mission campaign before you can play Mini-Campaign.

  Overall, the missions are a mixed bag. Hey, I told you so. Some are very fun and challenging while others border on stupidity and yet others are so damn difficult it makes one wonder if this game was ever play tested properly. As I mentioned earlier, one mission has you sneaking behind enemy lines in the desert to snap some pictures of enemy encampments. With no radar or direction you just fly around in a haphazard fashion, well I can tell you that was no fun at all.

  Gamplay Controls

  The overall gameplay and controls run towards the arcade side, making the game accessible to more people. Here is a quick rundown on the controller setup, which is not adjustable in anyway, except for inverting ‘Y’ axis and turning on/off vibration.

  • Left thumbstick – pitch and turn

  • Right thumbstick – roll and speed, secondary fire (click)

  • D-pad – squadron orders

  • Left trigger – follow camera

  • Right trigger – primary fire

  • A button – next objective

  • Y button – display score

  • B button – closest threat

  The left thumbstick is your rudder and turns the plane. The right thumbstick acts as your throttle (up-down) and your flaps (right-left) which will cause your plane to barrel roll. It is a bit more advanced but you can pull off cooler maneuvers and fly upside down if you wish. If you are a novice, I would suggest just using the left thumbstick in the beginning. Also, note backing off the throttle will allow you to turn sharper.

  The most innovative control function Blazing Angles brings to the genre is the ‘follow camera’ (left trigger). When an enemy is within range and you press the left trigger the camera will lock onto the plane so no matter what direction you are flying he will always be in site. This is like you turning your head while in the cockpit and not stuck staring straight ahead. This really helps when you are in close quarter dogfights, and trying to get behind the enemy plane. It some respects the follow camera is too much of a good thing and can be overused. It great to help find and put the enemy in front of you but it can make it harder to line up a shot or lead the enemy plane with a volley of hot lead. I found that a little went a long way.

  Graphics

  All of the planes look great, as they should; they are after all the stars of the game. The environments however range from fantastic to down right fungly. London and Paris for example look very sharp with hundreds of buildings and landmarks populating the entire map. Flying though the Eifel Tower and spraying bullets up and down the Seine River is not only very satisfying but also a sight to behold. Knifing you way through the large plumes of water that shoot skyward after a missile detonates on the surface all the while dodging tracer fire really feels authentic, like what you see in old WWII gun mounted camera footage. The color palette will often change from vibrant to muted as battles range on. The sky fills with smoke filtering the sunlight all helping to set the tone. Bloom lighting however is often over done and along with an edge blur effect tends to wash out what could have been a good looking image. Then there are some maps that just look poor no matter what is going on. I understand it is hard to make a desert look interesting, but the over use of some of those effects just make it all worse.

  Now for the rant portion of this review: Smeared across the entire game like some sort of digital scarlet letter, screen tearing rears its ugly head. It is an artifact from the disabling of vertical sync or V-sync. I look at it more as a cheat rather than a programming technique, which is used to keep the desired level of detail, polygons, framerate, etc. performance up. If they enabled V-sync, which would stop the screen tearing, the framerate would drop to an unacceptable level so they would have to either A) reduce the games assets or B) do a better job of programming. Many game programmers have gone this route including Ubisoft’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. In the case of GRAW, the tearing is not as bad and that game being slower paced makes it less noticeable. With Blazing Angeles the action and camera panning is much faster and the screen tearing is more noticeable. [/rant]

  Sound

  The overall sound presentation is good with a couple of exceptions. All of the engines sound powerful and take center stage with each plane having its own unique hum. The sound effects get the job done but I felt the guns could have used a little more oomph. The placement of all effects within the 5.1 space is right on but nearly all Xbox and Xbox 360 games have nailed this. Where this game comes up just pure wacky is with the orchestral soundtrack. It’s not the music itself but the placement of it. I do not believe I have ever played a game where music was heard from the rear channels only. That’s right, not one note emanates from any of the three front speakers. This is so odd I have no idea if this was intentional or not. When I switch over to custom soundtrack and play my own tunes, they are heard over the front left and right speakers, just as they should.

  Ok, I saved the best or should I say the worst for last. Point blank, the voice acting is this game is absolutely horrendous. It assaults your ears on all fronts, from the lame ass script to the truly embarrassing accents. The one-liners are repeated at nausea and come at you from both your squadron and the enemy pilots. How many times can you here a Japanese pilot say, “ you fry like a woman” before you simply pull the plug. Now you can go into the options and turn off the voice but then you will not here important info about your mission.

  Best for last

  All is not lost my children, if you are still with me this game is salvageable. This silver lining comes in the form of Xbox Live multiplayer. This and this alone is worth the asking price but just like the singleplayer has some issues, Doh! First the good, Ubi Romania did put a lot of effort into the multiplayer portion of the game and it shows. There are three basic categories; Solo, Co-op and Squadron (team), each hosting many game modes like Dogfight, Aces High, Seek and Destroy, Onslaught, Bombing Run, Kamikaze, Capture the Base (my favorite) and Historical Battles. As you can see, there is a lot of content here, something for everyone. Up to sixteen pilots can take to the skies in all but the co-op modes, which tops out at four. The host can pick the era (early/mid/late) of aircrafts to be used unless you are playing a historical battle. He can adjust the respawn type and limit, time and score limit, friendly fire, allow rockets (secondary fire) and also turn off the follow cam, which can make for some interesting dogfights.

  I have played many games online, some with me hosting and rarely experienced any lag or teleporting. With my connection speed I can only do eight, hosting the full sixteen takes a mighty phat pipe. What is lame is that they only allow you to host 2, 4, 8 or 16 player matches, nothing in between. Little things like seeing who is talking in the lobby and identifying the host would be nice too. Why Microsoft does not implement these basic standards is still a mystery to me. However, the biggest wft comes from the fact that you cannot change any of the game modes once the server is created. Just the other day I heard a newbie ask the host is he could change the game type to kamikaze and he was told that the room would have to be killed and everyone would have to be invited back in after selecting the new game type and creating a new server. If any game screamed patch me now this is it. The thing is the online gameplay is really fantastic and there is none of that horrid voice acting (expect co-op) to put up with. It is always much more satisfying taking out other gamers rather than AI bots. Just make the game so we can enjoy all those cool modes you designed.

  In the end

  In the end, it is all about the multiplayer with Blazing Angles. My final score weighs heavily on it. If you cannot or have no desire to play online then I would shave 2 points off my overall score.

5/31/2006  Eric 'Jetson' Pfoutz