The first time I gave into the hype machine was in mid-2008 with the announcement of Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. The trailer looked great and it had been a long time since a flight game was expected on PC. I had played a few air-combat games as a kid and I always enjoyed the rush.

In my over excitement I went to my local game store to book the game. The confirmation drove me to the point that I went to my hardware dealer who was next door and ordered a Joystick (The Logitech Attack 3) which I got 2 days later (still in use for those who care). This is where the problem began, I had a joystick and something to look forward to but nothing to play right now. Thankfully, I learnt that Ubisoft had a previous series called Blazing Angels so I went and picked the second in the series off the shelf at a local store.

Let’s see how it holds up 12 years later:

Story:

The story starts off at an air show where Captain Christopher Robinson, a retired World War 2 veteran is taking off. Once in the air he begins to tell the tale of his fighter pilot days during World War 2 where he led a 4-man squadron running special operations against the Axis powers. The team was made up of Robinson, Teach and Thorpe. The game is a flashback of Robinson’s feats in World War 2.

Along with the team the story includes the love interest Marguerite, an allied secret service agent and her childhood friend, a German officer and ace pilot, Max who obviously joins you later. The story is so generic that if I made an award section for this site the story would be automatically nominated.  

The story is delivered either in game or by animated comics between missions.

I don’t know why the game is called “Secret Missions of World War II” because everywhere you go people know you’re an American Unit. 

Sound:

The menu has an upbeat army like music that plays till you get in game. It’s not bad and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

In the game there is no music but it is not missed since there is always so much going on. You can hear the wind blowing past at high speeds and the engine sputter at low. Weapons sound right as they fly by, the machine guns sound perfect. Torpedoes and bombs make a whistling sound as they fall but the explosion sounds are underwhelming compared to what they look like.

The voice acting comes through clearly and the characters tone of voice helps you separate them easily. The weak part of the voice is that when giving commands Robinson and the receiver of the command have a very short list of lines so you hear the same phrases repeated over and over.

 Graphics:

The buildings and ground vehicles look like they are from a PlayStation 1 game when you get close. Humans look like sprites and the trees might as well be sprites. All this is on par for flight games since they usually take place miles off the ground but Blazing Angels 2 is closer to the ground than most flight games so you do notice them but not often enough to ruin the game. Mission specific elements on the other hand are well done. Ships, missiles and giant constructions that you have to fly under all look good.

Blazing Angels 2 is graphically another game in the air. The planes aren’t brightly coloured since it’s World War 2 but they are coloured accurately and have the correct markings. They are well modelled and look decently similar to their real-life counterparts. The effects and particles in this game look godd even by modern standards, from the water and engine sparks to ship trails and flashes from enemy fire, all look great even today.

Some positives and some negatives show that Blazing Angels 2 while not the best looker around today, probably was quite good for it’s time.

Gameplay:

A flight game’s stars of the show are obviously flying metal machines and Blazing Angels 2 is no exception. Each plane feels unique, the fighters are light and manoeuvrable, the bombers are heavy with a turning radius of semi-trucks and the jets while fast as hell can’t take sharp turns at high speed. All this shows that part of the game goes into learning to fly each beast, flight game regulars will pick it up in seconds! There are upgrades to your planes which are purchased with points obtained from kills and stunts that do help at the start but eventually destroy the challenge.

Blazing Angels 2 is mission-based so each mission has to vary. This is very well done by having each mission in a very different location, with a different objective and planes to use. The missions range from defending an area, bombing an area, terrain following to some really fun ones like dropping Marguerite onto a train, defending her on the roads of Berlin while not shooting when you are on radar to avoid AA guns. The missions as a whole are fun except for some minor parts.

One mission that really stood out was the introduction to defensive weapons which was named: Flashlight to a Gunfight. The mission starts off with Robinson and Milo trying out a new defensive weapon that fires a flash of light from the wings of their planes blinding followers. After taking turns blinding each other they get contacted by Marguerite whose submarine is stranded nearby. Milo rushes back to get support while Robinson carries out low-level flying between icebergs to find her using her signal. The mission kicks off in force after the submarine is found when enemy planes arrive. Since Robinson (and in turn you, the player) doesn’t have any weapons he has to force the hostile craft to chase him into crevices between icebergs while blinding them so that they crash into the ice.  I have replayed this mission a few times just to see how many I can take out at once.

Playing the missions is a treat for those who relish chaos. You’re either chasing a hostile craft while matching them turn for turn or doing your best to avoid enemy fire while doing stunts to get a good shot at a ground target hiding between buildings. Trying to get your plane to nail turns it was never designed to, while dodging hills, trees and enemy fire is exhilarating especially since the missions are target rich. All this along with the close to ground combat makes the game challenging but not overly annoying.

Bugs:

Before giving my final word I would like to point out the following bugs on Windows 10:

1. Game crashes on launch. To fix this you can do the following:

   1.Download Direct Input 8 from the pcgamingwiki here
   1. 1 Copy the .DLL file to the bin Folder of Blazing Angels located at X:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Blazing Angels 2 Secret Missions of WWII\Bin
2. I wasn’t able to get it to run at 1920×1080 though some online claim it’s an option for them
3. Random frame drops in and out of combat

4. On 1/3rd of all launches: the game doesn’t detect input in game, have to quit and start again

5. Once in a while after you quit the game it starts up again

6. On some quits Steam doesn’t detect that the game is closed which means you have to restart

Conclusion:

I would like to recommend Blazing Angels 2 for it’s fast paced combat and mostly well done missions. The bugs are annoying but if you can see past them there is a sturdy game in here.

Pros	Cons
Great Voice Acting	Average Story
Graphics are good in the air	Bad graphics for land-based NPCs
Missions are overall good	Missions have minor boring sections
Fun, hectic and chaotic combat	Buggy

Recommended Purchase Price: $10 or ₹350

Final Score: 7/10