Friday, October 2, 2009

Blazing Angels Review

REVIEW

Blazing Angel is an arcade game by Ubisoft. This World War 2 flight simulator is excellent in concept. You have all kinds of planes from Hurricanes and Spitfire in London, to Mustangs in Berlin. The graphic is gorgeous, easily the best thing in the game. The simulation is fairly realistic. The enemy ranges from target bunnies to deadly assasins. What can go wrong?

Well, like all Ubisoft titles, there are little things that are annoying. Usually, they're minor bugs. In this case, the only bug I see is the Midway mission (or was it Pearl Harbour?) where in between wave of attack, you fly to intercept the approaching bombers, only to be shot down immediately when the Zeros reinforcement suddenly materialised right where you are. No chance to dodge bullet was given at all. One moment, the sky was clear. Next moment, Zeros all around you. Two seconds later, you die. Sigh.

A few complaints:
1. Minor bug as described above.
2. Time limit is not extended when you continue. You have to start over.
3. Mission is not continued when you die. You have to start over from last checkpoint.
4. Difficulty is fixed per mission, rather than selectable difficulty for all missions.
5. The Berlin level is just punishing. It took me a while to realize that I need to neutralize FOUR radar installation. And when I did, the reward is to do NOTHING, except trying to survive twelve angry German pilots where the bullets flies from ALL directions for THREE WHOLE MINUTES. No, I'm not kidding. Is that supposed to be a reward?
6. No cockpit view.
7. The game interrupts you by pointing out that you can use a button to scan for the next enemies. Sometimes this comes when I was lining up shot at another plane, disrupting the rhythm. I think that once pointed out, the game should steer clear.

Overall, this is a decent game, but I'm not sure the positive outweight the annoyance. I mean, continue from last checkpoint? Come on! That removes the possibility to force the game by putting in more money. How is that fun?

Personally, though, graphic notwithstanding, any driving/flying simulator that does not have a cockpit view, I will consider a toy that is not worth my time.

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