Blazing Angels 2 - 360

[Kotatsu Neko]

I got this one today having liked the demo, and I must say it's pretty damn fun. One of my all time favourites last gen was Crimson Skies on Xbox, and this game looks like being the closest thing we'll ever see to a Crimson sequel. It has a really similar atmosphere and style, and even has very similar music and voice acting.

As a game you might expect it to be just chasing dots in the sky, but it's actually a good deal more varied than that, and really mixes things up with the locations too. And speaking of locations, they really look fantastic. The ground detail is pretty astounding, with literally many thousands of buildings and trees, many of which are surprisingly detailed. The colour palette is worth mentioning too, as it's nicely faded and tinted, with vignetting around the screen edges giving a nice old world feel to things. There are lots of planes in the sky too, it really feels like you're in a massive battle.

Another nice thing is the use of rumble. Usually I'm not too bothered about rumble, but the way it's used here really adds to the immersion - you can really feel how the engine is pulling or stressing, and of course, when you open up with the cannons.

The only down side is the frame rate, which is inconsistent and suffers from tearing. So far it's been at it's worst on the first training mission, and has been better since then.

I'm sure most people will not bother with this with the likes of Halo 3 and Eternal Sonata out now, but if you liked Crimson Skies then I'd highly recommend this one.

Oh and it has some online stuff too, but I haven't around to trying it yet.

[cavalcade]

Hate is a strong word. But it is fair to say in terms of Blazing Angels 2 - or ***king Blazing ***king Angels ***king 2 as I like to call it - Ubisoft have taken my hatred of the Blazing Angels series to new, dizzy heights. It didn't start out with hate. It started out with great promise. Finally a combat flight sim returns with the proper flight controls - left stick up down, and roll, right stick yaw and throttle. Graphics are pleasant, if somewhat blighted by framerate and tearning issues. Even the storytelling, while cheesy, is quite well done in a faux comic book style.

So why the hate? Because this game is hate. It flows through its core. This game is the devil. This game is every bad thing about gaming in one place. It laughs in the face of good games, and hides some of the most infuriating, teeth gnashingly, face punchingly, swearword inducing mechanics both on and offline of any game in history. The reason why it is so hateful is it thinks it's actually quite a good game. "Hey!" it says in a jaunty voice. "Look at my nice graphics! And kooky story! I'm about the fun baby! Big fun!".

So you try to like it. You try to be its friend. And then it stabs you in the neck while you're looking the other way and runs off with your life savings. Case in point, Mission 2. Now I'm not crap at games. But I have a small rule in life - if a task isn't achivable in 10 attempts on a game I'd rather go off and do something more productive. Like playing the guitar or eating a yoghurt.

Mission 2 starts with the fundamentally fun premise that hey! woo! we're going to drop a woman spy, from a Hurricane, on to the back of a moving train. Sounds good huh? bet it sounded good in pre-production. Bet it had a room full of game producers and level designers at Ubisoft rubbing their hands together with glee, what fun!) And then starts one of the most horribly irritating game levels I've had the misfortune to play, possibly in my life.

Assuming you can wrestle the plane above the train, and the train is on a straight bit of track, and you're holding your speed to a bare minimum, and you're practically sitting on top of the train, then a small white pie chart begins to fill. And fill. And fill. And fill. And then of course the train reaches a corner. Being unable to turn the plane enough to keep pace with the angle of the turn using the rudder alone, you have to roll. And to roll, you need to keep your wings clear of the train, which makes you go a little higher, which means the pie chart stops filling up. And by now you're too far down the train as you're going slightly faster than it, which means you need to turn around and try again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Each time, the same voice samples trigger. The same whiney voice samples. Until they drill into your brain.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Now I have no doubt there are 1000s of people who have played the game who did this first time no problem. Who are laughing at my lack of skill. Who deny that this is an issue in the slightest. But I do think it's an issue. Perhaps I'm approaching the problem wrong. Maybe if I try it again tonight I'll get it in one. Perhaps I was too tired. In any event, what I went through was torture. Like someone slowly sawing off my fingers and pouring hot tar into my ears. And I felt anger. I felt hate. I felt a hate so deep and strong, had I been in charge of a country with armed forces I'd have sent them to war. And I'd have attacked Belgium. I love Belgium. The fact that this game would potentially lead me to ordering armed forces to raze it to the ground shows how angry Blazing Angels can make a man. Who knows? Perhaps Osama is stuck on this level too. One wonders how many of the worlds ills are down to the hatred and suffering this game has probably spread. In every country I imagine there is someone just like me. Just as angry as I am.

If I was MI5 I'd start watching me now, because if I get my hands on a bag of fertiliser God knows what havok I could perpetrate in the name of Blazing Angels 2.

And to top it all off, online is also infuriating. Though I was clearly better than a room full of other pilots, consistently getting on their tails, I appeared to be firing slugs at them. And not the bullet type, but literally slugs, for all the damage I appeared to do to their aircraft. They all knew the location of, what I can only describe as, some sort of super cannon.

Fights would always go:

I chase enemy plane.
I fire machine gun for 30 minutes in to back of enemy plane. Watch energy bar go down very slowly.
Enemy plane reaches whatever pickup they kept picking up.
Enemy plane loops over.
Enemy plane shoots me twice. My plane explodes.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.

And no, I couldn't find this pickup. or select whatever plane it was they were all flying. it is with some smug sense of satisfaction that even though it was my first game online, and even though I was fighting in a bath with wings on that fired slugs, I still shot 4 or 5 of the b**tards down, or forced them to panic and fly into a cliff. But that small glimmer of enjoyment is vastly outweighed by the hatred.

Sheer hatred.

I'm angry even writing this. I'm off to punch a puppy in the face.

Ubisoft has done this to me. Ubisoft have made me into this man. War claims another casualty.

EDIT: 8/10

[Paulos G]

So, 7 out of 10 for you then?

[Swallow]

cavalcade's reads like an 8, he'll probably give it a 6 to appear cool though.

[Kotatsu Neko]

Would it be wrong for me to admit that I cleared the second mission on my first attempt?

[Paulos G]

No, I think that would be fine. Just don't let cavalcade know.

[chopemon]

This is how all reviews should be written. I don't care about the features of the game, just the reviewers experience playing it.

Good work Cavalcade.

[cavalcade]

A new day, a new attempt at Blazing Angels 2. I would like to apologise for my above comments that were written under great stress, though while I offer an apology (both to you, and to Belgium) I offer no forgiveness to Blazing Angels 2.

The level I wrote about above is essentially impossible, or near to it with the Advanced Controls enabled. However, a thought occurred to me and I switched to Simple controls, and completed it first time. The game is essentially broken in this regard, anything that requires you to track something with the rudder requires Simple Controls, as in Advanced the rudder makes as much difference as putting your hand out of one side of the cockpit window to induce drag.

Once I learned to switch back and forth between the two modes, suddenly the game because passable, and I sauntered onwards about 5 missions in. None of it was very enjoyable, except for perhaps the Zepplin level in Egypt, which was ludicrous, but funny.

I would like to make a special mention of the incredible level 3 (I think...it could be level 4) which features probably the daftest combat mission in any flight combat shooter, ever. After bombing and destroying the entire Italian fleet single handedly (as you do... it's very realistic), the end of the level requires you to shoot down some fighter bombers. But you have no forward machine guns. So the game asks you to fly in front of and slightly below said enemy planes so your AI controlled partner can pop them. Now add in the fact the enemy seem to be flying around a Scalextrix track in the sky, and are only slightly slower than you are and you end up with the closest approximation of Benny Hill I've yet seen on a next generation console. Round and round you go, with the "doodle doo doo doodle doot doodle doodle doo" music playing, until 15 minutes later you are the inevitable victor. After this bit I was left with a feeling a bit like the first time I had sex - vague disappointment, a tinge of shame, a sense of loss. A not uncommon feeling as you play Blazing Angels 2. But then at least Blazing Angels 2 doesn't end up sleeping with your best mate in your own bed, the backstabbing unfaithful cow.

OK, I digress. Sorry. Where was I?

And back on to online, refusing to be beaten. I was a Crimson Skies GOD (I was like a two legged Douglas Bader), so I decided it was time to persevere. Once again, after establishing fundamentally why I was getting shot down all the time (I found a better aircraft with guns that worked) I managed to scrape myself into mid table or just above. There is still a whole load of crap going on I don't understand - I seem to spend a lot of my time electrified and with no control over my plane spinning towards the ground. But I suppose it was tolerable.

I'm not sure I'll ever play it again, but my PAL 360 is dead and I only have an NTSC-J one working at the moment, so the fact my copy of (the non-region free) Ace Combat 6 won't play is driving me into Blazing Angels' arms like a widow sleeping with the brother of her ex-husband.

[Welrain]

brilliant. I might have to buy this just to see what you are talking about!

[Mr_Skinny]

I rented this recently and I have to agree, mission 2 = unpossible

I didn't think of trying it with the crappy simple controls