Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WW2 ^(Wii)

Genre: Flight Action Publisher: Ubisoft Developer: Ubisoft Romania Players: ?

By Keith B (11th Jun 2007)

A gaming experience that is unparalleled at the moment

Does anybody remember Red Baron from the early PC days (I mean really early �" we’re talking 286DX and 386 processors)? That game no doubt was a quantum leap in terms of immersiveness, realistic flight physics, and sheer dogfighting fun. Ever since then, newer games grew to look better and better, and they got bigger and bigger. But the foundation was laid: Since Red Baron, we know what a good aerial shooter must feel like… Or so we thought. Now, another quantum leap has been made: After having seen the first wave of sophisticated flying games for the Wii, I’ll never touch a ‘joystick’ again �" whatever I thought I knew back then must be revised. So if simulated flight is your thing, if you like dogfights, dropping bombs, airborne rescue missions and all that, then the Wii and Blazing Angels could be the blissful cream on your gaming cake. 
 
Before even going into any further details, I think it’s safe to start off by saying that Blazing Angels is one of the better games available for the Wii right now. But let’s not forget the range of other flying games coming out for the Wii these days �" so since this is only one in a series of Wii flight simulator reviews on Hellbored (let’s not count the minigames in Super Monkey Ball and Wario Ware, shall we?), you should definitely also check out the reviews for Heatseeker and Wing Island in order to refine your opinion about them all. 
 
Blazing Angels is a reworked version of last year’s game of the same name, originally released for Xbox and Xbox360. The Wii version is slightly expanded (2 new missions), and has been outfitted with a variety of control scheme options designed to make full use of what the console has to offer in the input department. In the game, you assume the role of a U.S. fighter pilot. You’ll follow him around to all sorts of WWII scenarios (some historically accurate, some made up), where you will have to succeed in a great variety of missions �" ranging from simple things like dropping leaflets to some missions that involve multiple challenging goals, such as the timed bombing of moving ground targets, lightning-fast dogfights, reconnaissance flights, and lots more. The narrative of Blazing Angels is tied together by the voice of the pilot whose role you assume. His ‘story’ (which he mostly tells at the beginning and the end of missions) can be rather annoying sometimes, and while the contextualization of grand historical events in private narratives is of course very a la mode in the U.S., I could definitely do without it. 
 
But let’s go on to more important things: Flying itself is incredibly fun in Blazing Angels �" and this, no doubt, is what really counts in a game like this. After a brief visit at the ‘flight academy’ (i.e. tutorial), you will be ready to go. The game offers several playing modes, of which the campaign mode is definitely the most engaging. You have the choice between three control schemes: The first uses the Nunchuk for movement, speeding up and slowing down, as well as for firing the machine gun (Z button) and dropping bombs (C button). In this option, you use the Wiimote only for changing perspective and such things. The second control scheme features a more balanced combination of both Nunchuk and Wiimote: Here, you move your plane by pointing the Wiimote, while still using the Nunchuk buttons for firing. Your last option is to use the Wiimote-only controls. Here, the Wiimote is held sideways �" it’s the classic arcade style mode, so to speak. While all three options are intuitive and work quite well, it is the first option that I find the most impressive. It seems that this is as close as you can get to flying a plane within the comfortable confines of your living room. Aiming, shooting, bombing, giving orders, and changing perspective �" it’s all in a little gesture, a flick of the thumb, or a little shake of the wrist. Each control scheme furthermore lets you chose between ‘arcade’ mode and ‘simulation’ mode. In the first the plane will, without much ado, simply turn left or right upon your input. The second mode makes your plane role along a horizontal axis more realistically, which means that steering it is quite a bit harder. 
 
As in most flying games, you can choose between a cockpit view (with H.U.D. turned on or off according to your preferences) and a neat external view, where you see your plane from behind. A little more regarding the graphics: Overall, they look at least as good as anything we’ve seen on the Wii so far. If I were a little more sarcastically inclined, I’d now say that this, of course, doesn’t mean much. But let’s not go there. Regardless of all bitterness about the inefficiency of most developers’ use of the Wii resources, the Blazing Angels graphics are pretty amazing. While some of the general details (such as clouds or surface texture) might not look the best, there is a lot of detail in the cities, and some of the visual effects (reflection on water, blurring of the surface when you speed up) are simply stunning. Also, the high level of graphic detail is maintained even when you choose to descend down onto a city and fly low over the Eiffel Tower, over the city of London, or over any of the other highly atmospheric scenarios. The same goes for the impressive special effects, such as explosions or smoke trails. 
 
One slightly problematic aspect of Blazing Angels is the lack of realism resulting from the relatively low degree of difficulty. Also, apart from the quasi-realistic controls and flight physics, there isn’t much in your plane to remind you of the highly specialized and complicated tasks you are carrying out. For example, there are next to no instruments in your cockpit, which lends the flying experience a strong arcade feel. During longer missions, the game will automatically save your progress at designated points, so you will never have to fly an entire mission all over again. This is certainly convenient, but who has ever heard of WWII fighter planes respawning in the skies over a North African desert? 
 
Fortunately, Blazing Angels partly makes up for this by offering your a wide array of realistically designed unlockable planes (30 altogether), as well as by the realistic A.I. of both wingmen and enemies. The sound scheme continues this good effort in realistic simulation: If you have a Dolby Prologic Sound system set up with your Wii, you will be able to easily hear enemy fighters sneak up behind you, and after a while you’ll appreciate the way different planes all sound very differently �" which tells the seasoned pilot how to proceed with regard to the projected shooting-down of those nasty Krauts. 
 
The 20 missions range in length between 10 and 30+ minutes. It is obvious that a lot of effort has gone into designing them to be as diverse as possible. After some time, however, nothing can hide the fact that you are, after all, repeating pretty much the same thing over and over again. When it comes down to it, shooting down one plane isn’t so different from shooting down the next, and bombing various ground targets can also get slightly repetitive over time. It’s a good thing that Blazing Angels is so fast-paced and enjoyable that you’ll come back to it for occasional duels and dogfights long after you’ve unlocked the last plane and shot down the last campaign opponent. The two split-screen friend-play modes may be another reason for some fans to keep Blazing Angels around. Although the game offers no true online gaming experience, it nevertheless lets you fight a buddy or team up with one to descend upon a slew of enemy planes. 
 
All things considered, I would agree with those among my friends who say that Blazing Angels is better on the Wii than it is even on the PS3, despite the obvious difference in the sophistication of the graphics: The Wii might be a little low on the NextGen specs, but thanks to the controls and their perfect implementation in Blazing Angels, the game guarantees a gaming experience that is unparalleled at the moment.