You play the role of an American pilot stationed in England. You’ll be accompanied on missions by the rest of your squadron mates, Joe, Frank and Tom. Each of these pilots will have special abilities to help you out along the way (such as the ability to repair your plane mid-flight) and you’ll be able to assign them to do different things, such as direct fire away from you and onto them. If you’ve played any type of squad-based shooter before, whether it be ground or aerial based, then you get the basic idea.

When the game begins, you’ll start off by joining in the defense of Britain with the RAF. From there you’ll move onto Berlin, Paris, Pearl Harbor, Midway, and more. Each battle represents a historic battle from the war. All of the transferring around does tend to kill the realism of being a WWII pilot, as I doubt ANYONE transferred around that much. However, each fight is pretty exciting to partake in, and is filled with enemy fighters and landmarks.

Speaking of such, the landmarks look beautiful. You’ll truly marvel at the amount of detail put into say, the Eiffel Tower. It’s quite an experience to fly around and underneath the thing, and really adds a sense of thrill when it looks pretty close to the real deal. Also, the sense of movement and speed that you get when pulling in low the ground or traveling over water is fantastic, and you really feel that you’re piloting some fantastic aerial machinery. Unfortunately, when you pull away to the open skies, or are surrounded by land and buildings, a lot of this detail is lost. I’m not quite sure why, but there’s not nearly enough detail in the average building when compared to the more popular landmarks, and flying seems to lose a bit of speed when out in the open. Also, enemy fighters are not detailed very well either, and most are pretty similar to each other. The effects of war are pretty evident on the landscape, and little details like that go a long way towards submersing oneself into the game. However, it’d be nice to see some of the damage done after dropping a bomb on the land, instead of just a large explosion with nothing to show for it.

There are a few other odd graphical details that would make a lot of sense to have in there, but apparently didn’t make the cut. One being exploding planes, which would seem natural to most, but instead when you shoot down a plane, it simply falls the ground. I suppose my pilot was too precise to hit a gas tank? Also, the lack of a cockpit view pretty much stinks. I’m not a big fan of that behind the back view when it comes to aerial fighters, but in this title you’re stuck with it.

Blazing Angels difficulty hovers in the medium range, until you figure out that abusing your teammates seemingly invincible airplane is a good idea. You can command them to draw fire, and when they do, they pretty much don’t get hit. If you want, you can do this quite a bit, and generally float thru a lot of levels. Also, the repair feature helps make things a bit too easy as well. It has unlimited uses, and doesn’t need to target a specific area, just general repairs. As such, you’ll rarely be in any kind of immediate danger.

The sound effects and general score are both really well done. In particular, the FX really puts you in the plane, as bullets whiz by and your engines drone on. It does a lot to really put you into the game. Unfortunately, the voice over work and repetitive comments of your squad mates are massively annoying. I understand that they want each to have a distinct attitude but about midway thru the game I was really hoping they’d take a stray bullet to the face. Also, if they wanted to expand on your squad a bit, they should have included some story to them, instead of just the historical battle cut scenes that we get into between each level.

While Blazing Angels is a fairly enjoyable experience on the 360, one can’t help but get the feeling that a bit more time could have been devoted to polishing off certain features and looks. If you’ve been dying to play a WWII game that doesn’t take place on the ground, then this is the game for you.