Blaze of Glory
Blazing Angels may be the first flight game to sport SIXAXIS controls, but that doesn't mean it's any more innovative. Fortunately, the game itself isn't half bad.
Published: December 12, 2006
That the game would pour so much oppression into the first couple missions -- despite being historically accurate -- seems to set it up so that someone renting the game wouldn't ever want to move beyond the first few objectives. The aggravating checkpoints are just one of many random little issues in the game. Pilots talking over each other, or end-of-mission narrative bits that just have you flying around for what seems like minutes listening to your character drone on just suck some of the life out of the game.
There are options for just jumping into historical fights once you've played through some of the game, and you can square off against aces to unlock new skins for the planes, but they don't make up for a game that seems rather arrogantly ready to make newcomers work to really find the fun in the game. Once you find it, the game becomes quite enjoyable, but getting there is certainly an uphill battle.
I would love to tell you how the multiplayer panned out -- especially considering a new mode, Assault, was added, but I couldn't for the life of me find more than one other person to play with, and going from skies choked with planes and gunfire to two lonely people putzing around in the great blue just isn't indicative of what the online experience is going to be like. If at some point we manage to find an online presence, we'll update things, but something tells me it ain't gonna happen. I suppose that says as much about the online as it does the PlayStation Network, but then we are only a few weeks into the PS3 launch.
If there's one thing that really sells the game, it's in the visuals. Even those first few levels with overcast skies and heavy-handed visual style sport an insane number of buildings and some nice pixel shaded water. Once things are allowed to breathe a little, though, the game can really shine. With more open or sparse ground details, the number of planes that can be thrown into the air gets nuts, and actually gives a proper next-gen sense of scale.
The framerate can absolutely chug if you fly into multiple explosions, but for the most part it stays fairly solid, though it never really hangs onto the butter smooth framerates you'll see if you fly around an area with minimal detail. Much of the game's text, too, can be completely absorbed into the background, making it hard to pick out what people are saying -- especially when they're all talking over each other.
Aurally, things are little spottier. The voice acting for the most part is competent, but sounds a little like a handful of clichés thrown into the game to give it a semblance of personality. You have your drawling yokel, your smarmy loudmouth and your stoic, war-hardened narrator. Worse, and I know I keep harping on it, but what's the point of having voice acting if they have people talking over each other? Fortunately the rest of the audio is fantastic. Dolby Digital pumps droning engines and chattering gunfire though all channels, and music is a stirring, somber mix of strings and brass.
Blazing Angels is an odd beast. The SIXAXIS controls do feel bolted on, but left to traditional controls, it succeeds in being a solid flight game. It may not have some of the polish in the presentation that more impressive games like the oft-mentioned Ace Combat games have, but it's still fun. Fun, yes, but you'll have to work at it, investing a couple of hours before the game really comes into its own. Should you last that long, you'll find a flight game that does indeed feel next-gen. It's not perfect, but for a launch title, it admirably demonstrates what the PS3 is capable of now, and hints at what we'll be seeing even a few more months down the road when something like [ps3game=23]Warhawk[/ps3game].
