""If you are going through hell, keep going.""

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is a brand new World War II flying-action game by Ubisoft. While frustrating at times Blazing Angels is a very rewarding and fun game for action, aviation, and war lovers alike.

The Blazing Angels campaign starts out in England where you start your war-life with some easy practice runs flying an obsolete biplane. The game starts you out pretty easy and progresses through World War II flying as a man from the USA that went overseas to help out in the war. You fly with 3 other wingmen, 2 of them are from Mississippi and are brother in-laws, unfortunately this is all the background info you will get. Later on through the game you pick up a daredevil pilot named Frank. You can assign these guys to fly in formation, attack, or use one of the 3 special abilities: repair, attack, and defend/draw fire. Flying is a lot of fun and the controls are easy to pick up, there are many control set-ups available including using the Nunchuk/Wiimote, the Wiimote alone, or even the classic controller. In the configuration I used the Wiimote was used to control pitch, roll, and yaw while the nunchuk was used for accelerating/braking and for shooting. The Nunchuk was a little unresponsive when used as a flight stick but for me the Wiimote worked like a charm. Using the nunchuk for shooting feels solid, as the Z button is placed a la joystick configuration. The C button is used for dropping bombs, torpedoes, and for shooting rockets. The B button is used for braking, 1 switches to cockpit view, 2 controls landing gear, and A is used to follow a selected target. Sharp turns are made incredibly easy and responsive with use of the follow-cam. Back to the campaign; shooting down enemies is a lot of fun in this game, and getting those kills is satisfying. Apart from the everyday kill ‘x' amount of enemies in ‘x' amount of time you are also assigned to bombing/torpedo runs, escorting bombers, flying through certain areas, and even a recon mission. The missions have a lot of variety and the game doesn't get repetitive quickly. By completing missions you can unlock planes and medals. There are around 40 planes in the game (But some are just different versions of the same plane), including the favorite P-51, the feared A6M Zero, the German Me-109, and even the bulky B-17 Flying Fortress. I loved the good selection of planes and variety of missions.
I've showed you the good, and now the ugly. Some of the missions are down right frustrating, and when the controls never want to respond at the right time...The game turns horrible. When I used the nunchuk, on occasion turning the nunchuk would not have any effect on my plane. Although this was not a recurring problem while using the Wiimote, it still happened on occasion.

After you beat the campaign there are still quite a few things to do. Beating the campaign unlocks a few mini-campaigns which upgrade your planes technical specs and also unlock a few more planes. There is an arcade mode where you are put up against waves of enemies and have to defeat them in a certain amount of time. I also enjoyed the Ace Duel mode where you are put in a 1v1 battle against an ace pilot. These missions aren't real hard, but they do unlock new “ace” paint jobs for your planes. This game also includes multiplayer, which I did not have a chance to explore.

The graphics for this game are meh. The Pacific campaign maps look really good, with nice bloom effects and nice atmospheric details. Planes are top-notch and so are the explosions. Some city textures are ugly and patched and some textures are incredibly grainy. This is especially noticeable when going full-speed, blur-effects are poorly used, if at all and the whole screen turns to a grainy mush. Well, at least the planes look good.

The sound is also nothing special. While the planes sound great (the machine gun sounds are very realistic) the voice acting makes you want to scoff at Ubisoft. Once I shot a German, but well…he didn't sound human, a gargling moan for lack of a better term. While the main character's narration sounds good, the wingmen have no feeling of fear and it makes the game too light-hearted. Laughs and good natured conversations right in the middle of a 24 Zero invasion…yeah right.

Final Word: Rent this game, I beat 80% of the game in a week and a half; while fun this game isn't a $50 buy. If you find it cheap and are a fan of the genre you will probably be pleased, but it's not hard to rent it and make sure you're not blowing off your money.

Gameplay-8/10….Fun, lengthy campaign, plethora of planes.
Controls-9/10…Besides moments of unresponsiveness the game controls great. Plenty of
control schemes.
Story-4/10....There is no background info about the characters, war story is nothing new.
Graphics-6/10….Planes look great, some maps look great, some not so much.
Sound-5/10….Besides the plane sounds there isn't much to say here.
Replay Value-7.5/10….Nice amount of options, but you may get too frustrated to continue.

Average Score...6.583
My Score: 7

Ubisoft made a fun flying game that is a positive role model for control schemes, but the game fails on almost all technical levels.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 04/04/07