Taking to the skies just doesn't seem so thrilling anymore
+ Dogfights are always great
+ Nice attention to plane detail
MISS
- Simulation with the SIXAXIS is horrible
- Details in the environment are seriously lacking
- Voice acting lacks appeal
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(PLEASE NOTE: THIS REVIEW WILL BE HANDLED DIFFERENTLY FROM OTHER REVIEWS, DUE TO LACK OF EXTENSIVE PLAY ON THIS TITLE) Over the weekend I had my first opportunity to sit down and come face-to-face with the Sony Playstation 3. That's right... me and the big black box finally had a formal introduction. This week's game spotlight is on Blazing Angels, the World War II Flight Simulator put together by the boys at Ubisoft. After firing up the game and adjusting my personal settings, I chose my plane (multi-player mode) It was time for a good old-fashioned dogfight! From this point on, I must say I was greatly disappointed. While the detail shown in the planes was quite impressive, the detail of the battle zones were not. Granted, while you're barrelling at a high rate of speed blasting off your onboard guns at anything that moves, the scenery down below might just look rather blocky... but when you get down a little closer (without crashing, hopefully) you will soon come to realize that this game seems rather rushed due to the lack of detail on the buildings below. London and Berlin are perfect examples of how horrible you can make your cities look in a next-gen console game. Africa, however... now that's a different story. When I chose Africa as the battle zone, the first thing that popped into my head was "YEAH! Now I'll get to shoot some enemy planes down into the jungle. Was I ever in for a wake-up call. No jungles in Africa... only desert. At least, that's what Ubisoft thought. This was without a doubt the most frustrating field for a dogfight that I had played the whole afternoon. The sand was too bright and flying upward to get away from it only meant flying towards the sun, which turns the entire screen white. I found myself crashing into the sand more than anything. With that in mind... maybe I should touch on the motion sensing abilities used for this game with the PS3 controller. Control type can be changed in a number of different ways. Most notably, the standard button layout, and the new simulation mode. In this particular mode, your controller will serve as your controls within the cockpit. Tilt the controller left or right to roll your plane in that direction. Titling the backward will raise the nose of your plane while tilting the controller backwards will lower the nose. The controls handle similar to a real aircraft but quite honestly, the response time is horrible. Response from the controller overall is nothing to jump for joy over. This game could probably be handled a lot better on the Nintendo Wii than on the Playstation 3. After a few hours of disappointment in multi-player mode, I decided to check out the Campain mode... the meat and potatoes of Blazing Angels. Immediately, I realized this game was just overall not that great. The voice acting was certainly something in comparison with a B-movie presentation. While this review is extremely short compared to my other reviews, I just don't feel there is any more I could possibly say about this game that would make it better.
Let's check the scoreboard:
SCOREBOARD: (via www.enterthezombiegod.com)
7 (Concept)
3 (Gameplay)
8 (Visuals)
5 (Sound)
3.5 (Value)
4 (Tilt)
FINAL SCORE: 5.1
(Please check out all my videogame reviews at www.enterthezombiegod.com!)