by Dave

The Blazing Angels II demo hit XBL yesterday and you are one lucky bastard, because I played it, so you don’t have to. Ubisoft has tried its best to recover from the floptacular Blazing Angels and after playing the demo they didn’t.I love flight sims, I loved Secret Weapons Over Normandy and Heroes of The Pacific for Xbox.
The story line looks like it might be interesting, they even include jets, but the game play itself is what lost me.

First of all there, is no airspeed gauge, so that means that speed is not an issue. I took my plane vertical and throttled all the way back and there was no stall, I just kept climbing and climbing. Finally when I reached the height that they deemed a good stopping point I stalled regardless of how much throttle I was putting out. Limiting, instead of realistic, this is not a good thing.

Re-arming was an issue for me as well. In most games you have to land, fly away from the combat zone, or you get unlimited ammo. In this game, destroying certain things got you more ammo. I understand that is so you can keep fighting without stopping, but it made no sense to me. When you run out of rockets you have to seek out a plane or building with a missile symbol over it. What a pain in the A.

In most games like Battle Stations: Midway and the titles previously mentioned, the weapon damage levels are very believable. For example to sink a ship the size of a cruiser or destroyer, you have to hit it with bombs or torpedoes. Not the case in this game, one strafing pass with machine guns only can knock out a gigantor Cruiser.

The only bright point at the end of the tunnel is the fact that the Medal of Honor: Airborne demo comes out today. If you are an FPS fan I think you should give it a shot, I know I will. After I delete the “Blazing” disaster from my hard drive and the new download commences, I think today is going to end up being a great day. Unless Airborne sucks, then you’ll hear about it.

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