Let's start out this review with a quick show of hands: who here loved Crimson Skies? If you owned the original Xbox, there's a good chance that you did. Unfortunately for those of us that love good old-fashioned flying games, that was the last (and only) truly great dog-fighting title released on a Microsoft system. That's why we couldn't help but get excited about Ubisoft's Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII. It looked like Ubisoft Romania was trying to recreate Crimson Skies' intensely arcadey action while setting it in one of the real world's greatest conflicts, making for one hell of a mix. Alas, while Blazing Angels has its share of exciting moments, the game ultimately falls short of its lofty goals.

The game puts you in the flight suit of an unnamed American pilot who's been sent to Europe to help support the British air campaign. Although your early missions are scattered around London, you'll take part in many of the war's biggest battles, spanning the globe from Pearl Harbor to the North African desert. You'll be able to perform a number of different duties in combat, from dropping bombs on an enemy convoy and torpedoing an aircraft carrier to taking aerial photos and straight-up dog-fighting. While the gameplay changes fairly frequently, the levels start to get repetitive, mainly because you'll have to do the same thing over and over against several waves of enemies.


For the most part, the action in Blazing Angels is similar to that seen in everything from Afterburner to Heroes of the Pacific. You'll be tasked with shooting down your air-based foes or bombing those on the ground, and the controls will be instantly familiar to fans of the genre. The left analog stick will allow you to turn, while the right will let you speed up or slow down, which makes it easier to quickly maneuver. The right trigger will allow you to fire your machineguns, and you can drop bombs or fire missiles by clicking the right analog stick. The coolest mechanic is the targeting system, which allows you to lock-on to a target by holding down the left trigger. This makes it a lot easier to keep an eye on your foe no matter how much he tries to shake you. You might get a little dizzy and disoriented at first, but it won't be long until you've become an ace.

Aiding you during your missions are three wingmen, each of whom brings a unique skill to the aerial battlefield. Blazing Angels has an easy-to-use command system mapped to the D-pad, allowing you to quickly give orders to your men. You can give the whole group an order (formation, attack, etc.), or you can have the individual wingmen do their own thing. One guy helps you repair your plane mid-mission (it's essentially a button-pressing minigame), another will take the heat off you by taunting your foes, while the third will attack whatever you've got targeted. Unfortunately, you won't really need to use anything other than the "heal" command, since you can effectively take out entire squadrons by yourself.