Blazing Angels:Squadrons of WWII

I bought this yesterday for the Xbox and I think it's a neat little game.

It's essentially an arcade flight-sim set in WWII. As per usual in films and games, the Americans single handedly won the war using a handful of hardbitten, gruff voiced soldiers but terrible plot aside, the planes at least are pretty historically accurate. At the very least they sound and look right (You mean you've never seen a real Spitfire fly past? You wanna come visit the south of England some time).

The controls at first seemed a little simplistic but after a few hours of playing, they become very intuitive and resposive, exactly what you need from an arcadey game. You press the left trigger to follow a target with the camera so you can loop around like a loony and still keep an eye on the chap you're trying to kill. A big let down is the lack of an in-cockpit view which strikes me as simple laziness on the part of the developers.

Like I said, the graphics and sounds are great (For the Xbox). There's always plenty going on and the missions start pretty easy but soon get quite challenging.

I've not had a chance to play on Live yet because apparently I'm the only person in the world with the Xbox version of the game so far.

Anyway, given I picked it up for only £20, I'd definitly recommend this to anyone looking for a fun flying shoot-em-up. Avoid it if you're looking for a proper flight sim though, it is prety arcadey.

So anyone else got this or thinking of getting it?

Double Post:
That was enlightening.

Do you mean the game should have yaw steering or shouldn't?

As it is, the game does have yaw steering of sorts. Pushing left or right on the right stick will roll the plane and turn it that direction. It's a simplified roll and climb manouever. However, you can also roll the plane using the right stick and climb using the left for faster, more responsive turning.

To be honest, when you're locked onto a fast moving target, doing loops twenty feet off the ground, pushing sideways to both roll and turn is pretty handy.

Of course, it's a little difficult to tell from your comment whether or not you played the game or whether you're just another crappy little waste of know it all bandwidth here at GFF.

Edit: Hahahaha, someone deleted his comment while I was replying.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I just picked this up (regular xbox ver.) in hopes of a Crimson Skies replacement.
Haven't played it yet but it looks very nice from what I've seen so far.
But no cockpit view? That's strange, I could've sworn I read somewhere that there was such a feat. Did you check the settings and all that?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yep, the only thing in settings is volume and inverting the Y-axis on the controller. Like I say though, you spend so long using the follow camera you don't really notice the lack of a cockpit view.

I had a chance to play online last night and I must say this game is incredibly good fun online. 8 man free for all dogfights are mental, the team dogfights get surprisingly tactical and the capture the flag (Or base as it is) games are ok, if a little hard to actually score (You have to land on a runway for 10 seconds, absolute sitting duck and it's a bitch to turn round and take off again...).

I think it helps that so few people are playing this online as everyone who is playing seems to be enjoying themselves so there's not really any cheating or bitching or anything (yet). The one bad feature, I think, of online play is that the rewards you win in single player mode carry over to multiplayer so people who've finished the arcade mode or campaign have better planes than those of us who haven't. It doesn't make a huge difference but I do think multiplayer and single player should be kept separate.

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See, I didn't enjoy this one bit.

I downloaded the demo off of XBL (so this is the 360 version I speak of), and it felt extremely slow paced and well, boring.

It felt, to me at least, like a poor man's Skygunner. The lock on camera and the bombing target and everything of that sort screamed that game's name to me, only it felt that it wasn't quite as well done. The pilots in your squadron were horribly voiced and aggrivating to all hell and back, and the two demo missions were a complete bore. Enemy planes were super easy to shoot down, and there was no feeling of accomplishment or challenge there.

Controls were simple to the point of being aggrivatingly so. The lack of Yaw was a bit of a turn off, but I got used to it. They didn't feel as tight as I was hoping for though.

However, I didn't play multiplayer, so maybe it's like Crimson Skies in the way that the single player is kind of drab but the real fun comes from the online play. *shrugs*

How ya doing, buddy?

I don't get what you mean about lack of yaw. Do you mean you can't turn the plane flat sideways coz, you know, that's not how planes turn as a rule.

I've never heard of Skygunner so I can't compare personally. The missions in BA do get a lot more challenging later on but I would agree with you that the wingmen are rather annoying. Also, as far as I can tell you can't shoot them down...

I was speaking idiomatically.

There being no independant yaw control is what I'm getting at. Many other flight games, arcadeish or not, usually have some form of yaw control. I know that's not how planes turn regularily, but it's a nice nuance that you can use to slightly correct your trajectory without having to spin the plane on more than one axis. It's not the hugest loss, but I do like having the option to use it.

Skygunner is pretty rad. If you like this, I'm sure you'll like that. Skygunner is a PS2 game, and it's got a very unique...uhh...style to it, but it's pretty fantastic. I dunno if it got a European release though.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I don't think it did. Flight games are even thinner on the ground over here than rpgs...

FELIPE NO