For the most part the atmospheric sounds of Blazing Angels do a good job. The planes all sound great and the explosions are loud and powerful. What I think killed the experience for me was the very poor voice acting in the game. The characters of your squad are constantly, and I mean 90% of the time, saying something stupid. It gets very annoying very quickly, and the other 10% of the time you have enemy soldiers in your radio. Now how can that possibly be realistic? Not only do they speak in English with bad, stereotypical German or Japanese accents but they say ridiculous phrases such as “The Fuhrer will be displeased,” or “Die, Die, Die” a coward play on the phrase “Tora, Tora, Tora” it seems. It took me out of the experience very quick. I have no clue how this idea ever passed, it takes any World War II authenticity in this game and spits on it with disrespect.
I found the Multiplayer aspect of Blazing Angels quite good. It had tons of options and the aspect of your garage filled with planes is an awesome idea. The actual gameplay online was great as well. I did notice that not many people were playing online though and once I was in a match dog fighting with other players; it just didn’t seem quite as fun. Many people were hoping that this game will pick up where Crimson Skies left off; unfortunately it doesn’t quite achieve that level. Still if you enjoy the single player portion, this is a nice extension to more of that.
Final Word
Ubisoft’s Blazing Angels is a game that combines realism with an arcade feel; I just don’t think they balanced the two very well though. It seems as if the developers had a game designer that left in the middle of the project and someone new took over to take the game in a completely different direction. Your squad’s constant, irrelevant chatter is just extremely distracting and to make it worst the game uses “Comic Sans MS” font as the subtitles, which makes it look kiddy, un-realistic, and even unprofessional.
The plane models and battles are pretty accurate but I don’t think this game will appeal to any WWII buffs. There isn’t much new here as far as the time era is concerned. The few positive points about the game are largely overshadowed by the negatives and eventually whatever you were clinging onto the game for, disappears. Still, there are aspects of this game that may attract a few people and for that I suggest you try the game out before going to buy it.
