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Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions of WWII

Quality Assurance - what's that?

Out of the box, Blazing Angels 2 has some puzzling bugs. Joystick and gamepad support is apparently programmed in, but it simply doesn't work on numerous configurations. In our testing the only system that managed to cooperate with Blazing Angels 2 and an USB controller had an old PS2-type keyboard. None of the systems using USB keyboards would cooperate no matter what we tried. We asked Ubisoft about the problem, but they had no solutions to offer at this time - we got an apology and an indication that apparently a patch is in the works. Maybe someone should buy some USB keyboards for the Ubisoft's QA lab?

Then we have the landing gear bug. Nobody apparently bothered to play a single mission with controls set to "simulation", as the function to extend landing gear does not work. Only workaround is to pause the game, switch controls to "arcade", unpause, extend the landing gear and switch back. This is even more puzzling when you consider that the game is completely unplayable in "arcade" mode. The "simulation" controls are what I would call arcade-style, and the "arcade" has absolutely nothing to do with airplanes, and any attempt to fly with it tends to result in a wrecked airplane.

Missions also include numerous small scripting bugs, and it's not uncommon to have to try the mission several times because the script couldn't handle something unexpected happening. Our playtesting finally ended to a brick wall in a mission named "Top of the World" where you are supposed to escort a hijacked bomber out of a mountain base in the Himalayas, covering it from a pile of fighters. I couldn't quite manage to kill them all, but I kept them away using the super-secret 'flash' weapon that blinks some bright lights to any airplanes behind your own, blinding them. Even with every enemy plane well clear of the bomber or smashed to the mountains while flying blind, the AI-controlled captured bomber keeps on hitting a mountain with less than 10% damage taken. It's clear that the game was never properly tested before release.

Visual mediocrity

At the first glance Blazing Angels 2 looks okay. Planes resemble their counterparts in real life, and landscapes are drawn with plenty of detail and a fairly long draw distance. The game also does a notably good attempt at simulating different weather conditions, at least visually. However, once you start looking closely, the first impression doesn't hold up, and in later missions there are inconsistencies in visuals and some truly bizarre world design.

At times, Blazing Angels 2 can look fine...

...or bizzare. What is the function of this thing over the river? Give me pylons to avoid?

Nothing in the visuals really indicates that the system requirements are very high. While the game does list things like an NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon X700 as the lowest supported video card, it's simply unplayable on such hardware. A GeForce 6600 GT barely managed to get by at 640x480 resolution with every setting set at minimum. To actually play at 1024x768 or higher, you need more. Much more.

All settings at low. Playable using the YouGamers minimum setup.

Medium detail and post processing effects set at low - very playable on the YouGamers recommended setup.

Ubisoft lists a GeForce 7800 and a Radeon X1900 as recommended cards, and this is a close to the truth as far as what you need to actually play, but if you truly want to maximize all settings and run at a high resolution, nothing short of a  GeForce 8800 GTX will give you good enough minimum frame rates. As an example, on a  Radeon HD 2900 XT, used to test the game, I did manage to hit the built-in 60 fps cap from time to time at 1600x1200, with everything except antialiasing maximized, but the card couldn't keep the average anywhere near that, and in worst cases the frame rate plummeted below 20 fps when flying through smoke or close to a detailed cityscape. To get the minimum up to a playable point, the draw distance had to be cut to medium. The CPU doesn't seem to affect the frame rate unless we're talking over three year old single core CPUs, as the engine is very much video card limited.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Mission detailsPage 3: Bugs, graphics & hardwarePage 4: Presentation, conclusions & Scores

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