With so many World War II games out on the market, you could easily fashion yourself into an amateur historian by zipping through all of them. From reenactments of the Normandy invasion to stories of the Pacific front, nearly every moment of the war has been relived the world over via controllers and keyboards—except for those secret missions to take out Nazi experimental weapons technology, of course. Not content with the drama of historical reality, Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions of WWII offers a new lesson for the budding gaming historian. As neat as the concept is, its excessive difficulty and limited online following make it tough to recommend.
Blazing Angels 2 follows the story of four elite pilots tapped for covert operations during the Second World War. You serve as the squad captain, commanding the other three pilots in missions across the globe from mainland Europe to central Asia. The 18-mission campaign is at the heart of the game, offering a string of loosely-related combat scenarios. Supposedly there's an overarching story, but it's lost amid all the action. This is just as well because the action that it provides is quite intense and varied.
Missions frequently require utilization of your wingmen, in particular later stages of the campaign that are needlessly difficult. Each of your three wingmen possesses a specialty--defense, offense, and repair--that bolster your combat abilities. Repairs are handled automatically during missions, although it's up to you when to issue go orders for your other two pilots. Tap left on the directional pad and you instigate the taunt command which draws enemy attention away from your plane. Hit right on the directional pad and the order is given for an ace attack; simply put, this initiates a temporary blitz against enemy forces that enables you to eliminate a handful of units in a matter of seconds. Since both abilities offer a distinct advantage in battle, the game limits their use by requiring a charge time. As such, there's a bit of strategy involved in deciding the ideal time to use your wingmen that brings dimension to the game's challenging combat.
Blazing Angels 2 is much harder than the first game, often characterized by unforgiving enemy intelligence and seemingly impossible objectives. Completing missions can be downright painful. One mission, as an example, tasks you with protecting Moscow's Red Square. What begins as an appropriately challenging mission to clear the square of Nazi bombers quickly degrades into an unfair fight against the computer. The square continues to take a beating long after you've eliminated enemy resistance, leaving you to wonder what needs to be done to save it. Frustrating trial and error is the only way to figure the mission out, as is the case with so many others. Instead of being encouraged to try again, the ridiculous difficulty motives you to just stop playing.
Shooting down other planes isn't the only thing asked of you; in fact, the game features a rather surprising range of action and stealth unheard of in an aerial combat game. Nearly every mission involves some dogfighting, although several focus on alternative objectives such as knocking out planes patrolling Parisian airspace while avoiding radar detection or flying low above a moving locomotive in order for a spy to drop down to it. On the whole these scenarios are entertaining, even if a few end up being too difficult or not at all fun. At the very least, the variety livens up the experience and differentiates Blazing Angels 2 from countless other World War II-era fighters.
Along with the variety instilled in the campaign is a wide range of historically accurate aircraft that can be configured for battle. As you work through the campaign more are unlocked, with bonus planes and new weapons becoming available based on your performance. You're also free to purchase upgrades using prestige points earned during missions. Racking up kills, performing stunts, and completing objectives reward you with the in-game currency; naturally, the more you amass the greater number of enhancements possible to your aircraft. Accessing certain upgrades and experimental system makes life easier in later missions, so building up prestige is all but necessary for completing the campaign.
Venture away from the campaign into multiplayer and you find most of the game's aircraft at your disposal in any of nearly a dozen modes. Full support is given to Xbox Live, along with split-screen play for up to four and system link to a maximum of 16. Cooperative play through the campaign headlines the list of modes that also includes standard deathmatch (called dogfighting here), capture-the-flag, and other objective-oriented game types. Dogfighting remains the favored game type, though the others are good fun like Kamikaze which tasks an attacking team to crash into the opposing side. There's a lot of enjoyment to be had from playing Blazing Angels 2 online, but one key issue prevents that from happening--there aren't enough people playing. Whether it’s a factor of Halo 3 drawing away players or low sales, there just aren't a lot of people logging online.
