It seems like some of us at the Alliance are part of a dying breed of gamers. We can’t quite understand the declining popularity of flight games over the last few years because, quite frankly, a few of us still play games like Flight Simulator and IL2 Sturmovik on a fairly regular basis. There are a couple desks here that have Force Feedback sticks permanently emplaced for lunchtime sessions; and yes, we even have a full rudder pedal setup or two.

One game hoping to reinvigorate the waning numbers of flight combat gamers is Blazing Angels: Squadrons of World War 2. Originally released for Xbox, 360 and PC in early 2006, Ubisoft is now scrambling another squadron to the PS3. This time around they’ve added 2 bonus missions, 10 extra planes, and a new multiplayer mode called “Adversarial.” We were glad to see that there’s a little bit of new content added to this disk, but how much value does it really add?

If you’re unfamiliar with Blazing Angels, the premise is pretty simple. You’ll take control of an American pilot stationed in some of the major conflicts of World War II. You’ll train as a solo pilot, but soon you’ll be thrust into full squadron based combat. You fly with the same three wingmen throughout the game and they all have distinct abilities, even if their personalities are a little bland. Sometimes you’ll be flying solo, but for the most part your teammates will be there to guide you, repair your plane and generally annoy you with their banter.

The missions will find you doing bombing runs, or taking part in numerous historically based battles, such as Pearl Harbor or Normandy. While the objectives aren’t exactly groundbreaking or innovative, it’ll definitely feed the needs of flight enthusiasts. The controls are more than solid enough to get you around, but the Sixaxis functions were a little disappointing. You can use the tilt sensors to control the pitch and roll of your plane, but we inevitably always switched back to analog stick controls. The lack of rumble feedback proved to be a bit of a problem, and we’d rather have rumble than tilt functionality. The left trigger provides a target lock view that, once you get used to it, is extremely helpful for quick switchbacks and tracking other aces.

As you tour the numerous environs, no doubt you’ll notice that the graphics in this game are quite well done. The textures definitely need work in some areas, especially on planes and anything on the ground, but overall the visual style is well conceived. The motion blur effects and aged film look really served to pull us into the experience, but these can be turned off if you’re not a fan. There’s been a lot of talk about framerate drops in this game, but we found it to be less of a problem than we anticipated. Any time you’ve got a lot of particle effects going on onscreen – explosions, etc. – things can take a pretty serious hit; however it didn’t affect our gameplay experience too much.

As far as multiplayer, this game’s definitely got the goods to offer serious enthusiasts of the genre. There are plenty of different modes to keep you entertained – our favorite is the one on one Ace mode. The only issue with the online multiplayer that we found was that there’s pretty much nobody playing this game. It’s tough to battle with the maximum amount of player slots when you can’t even find one companion.

Overall, as aeronautic enthusiasts, we were pretty happy with this game. Currently it serves as the only way to use the Sixaxis as a flight controller, even if it’ kind of lame. The gameplay will definitely satiate fans of this type of game, but it’s highly unlikely that this one will be enthralling enough to pull in new fans to this dying genre. Since the planes are all period machines, the sense of speed and G-force you get from a MiG or an F-22 Raptor just aren’t there; but if you’ve got aviation in your blood and a PS3 on your shelf, you should give this one a try.