I have a fascination about flying, ever since I was a little kid I always dreamed about flying both in the “superman way” and also flying in an airplane. Many people are terrified about going into the airport, getting in a plane and waiting for takeoff, where as I love it the rush it gives me. Every time I am on a plane I always fight to get a window seat just so I can see everything. There is something about it that just excites me. Taking that into account, I really enjoy games where you are in an airplane flying around. I have enjoyed various flight simulators on the PC to the most recent game in my memory: Crimson Skies. When I heard about Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII, I was more than excited, but was my excitement well founded? Read on to find out.

Players take control of a pilot that is in an elite squad known as the Blazing Angels. Players will start off as an innocent rookie in the beginning of the war, but as time goes on you will fight in some of the most historical battles that occurred during World War II, such as Pearl Harbor, Paris, and even Berlin. You will be going all over the world and your job is to make sure that all four of you (Joe, Frank, Tom, and yourself) survive the war and become victorious.

Most of the missions that you will be going on revolve around the same thing. You will be taking out various German or Japanese forces that are causing you trouble. During the course of the game you will be taking out various other airplanes, tanks, and even ships. What I like is the wide variety of planes that you get to use in the game. Each has its own unique look and feel, along with its own special weapons. What is sad is one of my favorite activities in this game is the missions where you can take off and land your airplane, but there is not enough of those instances. This is sad because it is just extremely fun to do both of those actions.

One of the wacky things about this game is the squadron system and each of the special abilities of the squadron. The worst implemented special ability comes from Joe, your mechanic. When your plane is bursting with flames and smoke, he will tell you to press a four button sequence which will fix it all, and he will say something like we switched to your secondary fuel tank, or using a fire extinguisher. That is not the bad part; the bad thing is that you can do this as many times in a mission as you want. Since this game strives to keep things a little more realistic, I think it would have been more advantageous to limit that to two or three times, instead of fixing the exact same problem a million times.

Another wingman is Tom, and he has the ability to taunt the various enemies around, and they will stop shooting you and aim for him. Your other squadron member is Frank, whose special ability allows him to go on a shooting rampage and take down several enemies before returning to formation. These special abilities are not bad, per se, they just make the game extremely over balanced in your favor as I have not had a single negative consequence from using these tactics over and over again.

One more thing I have to complain about is the lack of damage in the game. If your plane is getting shot at on one particular side, I think that it should affect the way that you have to fly your plane. This would have made the game a lot more enjoyable and realistic, making you want to be more careful in each mission instead of going all out, since you know you can be fixed with Joe’s “magical” fixes.

The graphics for this game are bitter sweet. Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is exceptionally amazing when you view various things (airplanes and landmarks) up close. The planes are highly detailed and look good when they are in pristine condition or when they are bellowing with smoke. The sense of speed that this game gives is something else as well. The motion blur that the developers used in this game really makes planes feel that they are speeding through the skies. Then the various landmarks that you will see in this game were painstaking modeled to look just like their real-life counterparts, from the Eiffel Tower to various other places.

The game seems to falter in the detail department when you are far from the action. For instance, if you see another squad of planes they will be small rectangle boxes till you get closer to them. Another problem is the special effects; while explosions and smoke bellows realistically, they do not leave marks on the ground. When you bomb a building or the ground you expect to see something, at least the ground scored with black crust, but we get nothing. All in all the graphics are good, but they could have been so much better.

The sound effects and music from the game are really outstanding. The grind and roar of the various engines just make you feel that you are in the sky. Hearing the gunfire, explosions, and wind as you blaze through the skies is also very surreal. The music that the developers used is also really good and makes players feel that they are really in the middle of a war. It moves you to want to continue fighting your way through for your survival.

The bad thing about this category, that makes the marks fall way down is the voiceovers and serious lack of dialog. The voices that they used in the game fit some of the characters and the others, such as the German’s, do not fit at all. What makes this worse is the complete lack of variety of the dialog. There is only so many times you can hear a certain phrase said before you want to hit that mute button. It is like the German pilots only knew how to say three phrases total. The first few missions it is palatable, but after what feels like the fiftieth time you are reaching for that mute button fast.

It is obvious that the developers spent a lot of time fine-tuning the multiplayer aspect of this game. First of all, there is a free-for-all mode to see who is the best pilot out there. Then there is co-op mode which has its own modes such as dog fight, bombing run, kamikaze, historical battles. The squadron mode is where up to eight different people can be on one team and they see if they are better then the other team. These modes are really fun and will take up a lot of time.

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is rated Teen for language and violence.

Gameplay: 6.5
While the controls in this game are really tight and easy to get accustomed to, it is the lack of mission variety that really kills this game - that and your squadron's special abilities. Basically this game consists of shooting down a lot of planes over and over again with little variety.

Graphics: 8.6
Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is a pretty nice-looking game, especially with everything up close. The best looking thing about the game is the various “cloud” effects, from seeing your engine burning to the clouds in the sky.

Sound: 8.5
The music and sound effects for this game are really great. The reason why this game gets a lower score is due to the horrid voiceovers and lack of dialog in the game.

Difficulty: Easy
This game is beyond easy. The missions are really straightforward and require no brain input to get it to work. Compound that with the fact that you can repair you plane infinite times on the battlefield. You should be able to beat this game in no time flat.

Concept: 6.5
The game has a lot going for it, such as the wide variety of airplanes and mission locations, but falls apart when it comes to mission variety and squadron tactics. It is a shame too, because this game has so much potential in those very areas.

Multiplayer: 8.2
The multiplayer for this game is one of the game’s strongest area’s. Playing online with up to 16 other players in various modes, such as a free for all, co-op, and squadron is really fun to participate in.

Overall: 7.4
When my friend and I first read about this game we were more than pumped up about it. We both really loved Crimson Skies and were looking forward to another game that would offer the same amount of fun on the Xbox 360. Sadly this was not the case, Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII is a decent game that required more time to polish up the game to make it truly unforgettable.