Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII Review - PS3

Sadly, owners of Nintendo’s latest console are going to have to endure several more months of game publishers porting over existing games to the Wii with often little more than casual nod to the system’s unique control scheme. In the case of Blazing Angels, Ubisoft has revamped the controls considerably in porting the game to the Wii. But in the end, it’s still a fairly average air combat game.

Wiild Blue Yonder

Blazing Angels is an action-heavy WWII aerial combat game that chronicles the exploits of a bunch of Yankee flyboys on their quest to hit up nearly every major skirmish that took place during the war. Throwing caution (and reality) to the wind, you’ll dogfight, strafe, and bomb your way through a lengthy campaign (and a couple of bonus ones).

As the game is only partially grounded in the real (and often boring) world of flight sims, your wingmen can grant you some amazing powers, like the ability to repair your plane in mid flight. Or taunting enemy planes off your six. Silly? Sure. But in the context of action-heavy combat such as this, it works well enough.

Props!

Amazingly, so do the controls. I’ll be honest, I’ve been more than a little disappointed at the half-assed approach many developers have taken with regards to the Wii Remote. I was expecting the worst when I took remote and nunchuk in hand for the flight tutorial at the beginning of the campaign.  By the end of the tutorial, my faith in the Wii control scheme had been restored.

Controlling your plane on the Wii is easy and intuitive. The default mode uses the Nunchuk as a flight stick. Simply pull back or push forward to climb and dive. And tilt the Nunchuk left or right to turn. The analog stick controls the throttle and the “Z” and “C” buttons are your weapons. The rest of the controls are mapped to the Wii remote.

You can switch the flight controls over to the Wii Remote if you wish, or ditch the Nunchuk completely and play the entire game with the Wii Remote turned sideways. Any way you slice it, once you get over the initial learning hump, the game is completely playable and even enjoyable with the Wii controls.

PRO TIP:  When steering, don’t over compensate. Whipping the controller around will not make you turn faster. Instead, use smooth, steady movements for the most accurate controls.

Blah-zing Angels

Unfortunately, the controls don’t make up for a genuinely average game. Blazing Angels isn’t bad. It’s just bland. The missions don’t have tons of variety. Perhaps the problem is that every single mission has the same excitement level. There’s no ebb and flow to the game.

Visuals range from good to downright awful. The sandstorm effect and the overall look of the Africa missions are embarrassing. There’s also a strange audio glitch that sometimes happens at the end of a mission. While your character is yammering on and on about the plotline, the mission will occasionally cut out to the “results” screen, shutting him up prematurely. I’m not sure this qualifies as a bad thing.

It’s a Wii game, so of course online multiplayer is out of the question. The splitscreen multiplayer and numerous game modes therein are a weak compromise. Why? Because performance takes a major dive during multiplayer. The game gets so choppy that it’s nearly unplayable.

Next Verse, Same as the First

Any other compliments or criticisms from earlier versions of Blazing Angels stand. If you’ve already played the game, there’s no sane way to justify the full-game price on the Wii, nifty controls or no. If you’ve never played it before, you’ll find Blazing Angels a good, but not great game. It’s a perfectly acceptable time waster for a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Article by: Greg Bemis
Video produced by: Mark Fahey