The Xbox 360 has seen it’s first 6 months come and go. And what do we have to show for it? One really kick ass RPG in Elder Scrolls, one ball busting first person shooter in Call of Duty 2 and one psycho crazy driving game in Burnout revenge. From there, we get a couple of decent FPSs a solid fighting game with Dead or Alive a passable action title in Tomb Raider and a slightly better then average horror title in Condemned. From there it all goes to crap, King Kong was a major disappointment, the Xmen game stunk, Rumble Roses XX was disappointing. Not the cadre of games I had hoped for at this point, but not wholly disappointing either.
Now this is really just a brief synapsis of the 60 plus games available on the 360, and I’m sure there would be some folks out there that would disagree with me in my above statement and that’s fine. But my point is that there seems to be a real slow process in releasing 360 games, and when they do come out, they aren’t necesarily the “future of gaming” experiences that we were all promised.
Which brings me to our latest review, Blazing Angels. We here at OCmodshop have nothing but your best interests in mind and want to try and convey the best possible reviews to you so you can get a good idea if a title is something that want to purchase. Now with that in mind, of all of the 360 games released need to be looked at in one of two ways, wanna hear about em? Here we go…
In my mind I break all 360 games into two categories, those games that possess the visuals, the audio power and design that could only be pumped out by the 360’s processing power. You know, the in-game dolby digital that rumbles the house coupled with the over the top visuals only seen on an HDTV. And the other games that could have been put out on a lesser system, like the original Xbox or Gamecube. A perfect example of this is the game Gun, a title that came out on multiple systems and does not take advantage of any of the 360’s power. Quite simply it is a port from a lesser system.
So where am I going with this, I thought this was a review for Blazing Angels? Well it is, I am just setting up the stage for what I want to talk about in the other pages of this review. Please continue.
Blazing Angels is a game that simply does not take advantage of the 360’s processing power, when I first started playing the game I was lured into the simple look of the English countryside as I went through the training paces that the game has you do to become familiar with your standard piloting controls. Take off, accelerate, tracking your prey, shooting, dropping items (bombs or leaflets) and dogfighting basics. The initial play of the game, like I said looked pretty good. The local village, the enemy planes, the overcast English sky, pretty good.
But then as you move from training to the actual missions, something started to happen… the graphics began to fail. Plane’s would skip in the air, there was slowdown when a dogfight would get busy and the countryside began to get more and more plain. This was starting to look more and more like a PS2 title then a 360 title, not good at all. In all fairness, the game does do a comendable job of capturing the look of the different WWII era fighter planes, the Warhawk, the Corsair, the Wildcat and the Mustang to name a few of the 42 that eventually become available. In fact planes from four different countries are featured in Blazing Angels; Great Britain, The U.S., Germany and Japan. But where authenticity became more important, the game’s graphics began to slide.
Now obviously the game isn’t horrible, for that you would need to play X-men, and at this point I will admit that the missions that you do are varied and interesting. Each mission ususally has several objectives that help drive the story, for instance in one mission you may have to protect a bridge from German bombers taking it out and therefore trapping allied forces.
Well once the allied troops have crossed the bridge, you then have to destroy it so the pursuing German Panzers cannot catch up to them. All of this is occuring as your allied forces are doing battle with the Germans, so you must learn how to dodge enemy fighters while dropping bombs on small objects. But again, the game fails to capture a true visual experience.
Pulling the trigger highlights your enemy and in doing so, you don’t really see they details of your prey. In that bridge bombing mission for instance, the Panzers (tanks) appear to be all black, I didn’t see any real detail in them and quite frankly, I wanted to see the tank treads rolling or part of the tank flying when they blew up, but instead, it was a canned explosion.
In order to be fair and concise, the game’s controls are pretty straight forward. They are fairly intuitive and the layout of all of the buttons works well for the frantic pacing of air combat. In fact, you must be careful in your constant barrel rolls and looping strikes to avoid flying into the ground or going straight up for too long and causing a mid air stall.
The game does a good job of maintaining the correct control physics of a propeller style plane and what it can and cannot do. I learned quite quickly that in order to get anything done, you need to keep the throttle engaged.
More importantly, as the leader of your own squadron, you need to use your skilled wingmen to the fullest and strategy is a must. If your plane takes to much damage, you can contact your mechanic Joe. Joe can give you instructions to perform midair repairs by instructing you to press the controller buttons in a specific pattern. Failing to complete the combo will mean your plane doesn’t get repaired. And since time is of the essence you really need to get those combos down in time or else.
Your other wingmen are Frank and Tom, two pilots more of the combat variety. When called into action, Tom will act as bait, taunting enemies into coming after him when they are chasing you. He also maintains a close proximaty to you and will protect you like a mother hen gunning down enemy fighters that try and shoot at you, sort of your own guardian angel.
Frank on the other hand is your team’s resident ace pilot. He hunts down the enemy with a steely determination. When his special attack is engaged, Frank becomes a rabid animal with his “Lightning” attack, dropping three or four enemies in a short time.
Your wingmen are always around but you are the one who controls them when you engage them using the D-pad, they can get shot down and rendered useless so you must be careful not to force them to stick their necks out to far. And when I say control them, it just means you press the correct command, it’s not rocket science, but it does open up a bit more gaming opportunities.
A nice little addition is the strong use of diologue. Characters come from four different countries and you can easily tell who is who when they speak. Accents coupled with some relatively decent dialogue does breathe some authenticity into the games main storyline which involves you fighting along side both British and American pilots as you find yourself in different parts of the world.
I have to say that when a German pilot begins taunting you he does so in English with a German accent, this could be viewed as somewhat cheesy, since I would imagine the German language might have held a bit more weight, but I think the developers got it right because the game would be just to difficult if you had to read the translations on the bottom of the screen while engaged in a dogfight. Still, the voice acting (German accented or not) is varied and enjoyable. Often times the voice of a British commander tells you what to do on the fly as missions can change almost immediatley.
Banking on this strong voice acting is sound effects that too are pretty good, when they work. The funny thing about them though, is that my copy does not state that the game is dolby digital. In fact, I also recall the game’s audio cutting in and out during transitions from mini-cutscenes to in-game action and again when different characters would begin speaking.
At first I thought it may have something to do with the position of the planes speaking to me (voices coming out of the right speakers if the plane talking to me was on the right). But that simply was not the case. The audio just has blips in it’s consistency, so while the voice acting is good, the implementation of it just is not consistent, and that really is a disappointment.
Simply stated, the game seems to suffer from a lack of even handed distribution. One mission sounds great with the right sounds coming out of the right speakers while another just gets it all wrong, ouch!
OK, so let’s recap:
The game has some good things to offer but like I was saying at the beginning of the review, I expect more from my 360 games and this one simply does not provide them. If developers want to make a title that really stands out and helps drive sales of their product and the 360, they need to take full advantage of all the benefits a powerful system like the 360 has to offer.
As it is, there is still another five months before the PS3 comes out and then the norm will be what is currnetly the best. These subpar developed games won’t impress anyone enough to warrant purchase of a $400 to $600 system. Hmmmmmm……
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