Blazing Angels 2: Secret Missions of WW2

Spare A Moment for all the brave air servicemen who've died protecting our country. But now forget their memories because BA2 is as close to the real events of WWII as Gordon Brown is to posing naked in Playgirl.

After jetting to a few locations to hand pick your squadron, BA2 sends you on a variety of missions. It's not just dogfights and firebombing Dresden: you destroy bridges, drop people on trains, and shoot zeppelins while flying around the Pyramids, and other iconic buildings, in hypothetical planes wielding unlikely weapons.

This is all entertaining, and there's enough diversity to keep anybody's attention with simple, arcadey controls. There are low points though, such as the so-bad-they're-hilarious comic book cutscenes, complete with dodgy voice-overs and no mention of Nazis or Hitler (the latter merely being referred to as "the menace in Berlin" not "that mass-murdering lunatic). Then there's the fact that one level has a difficulty level that's more Mike Tyson than the Hugh Grant standard present in the rest of the game, and also some fiddly controller setup.

Despite this, it's an improvement on the original and if you fancy landing a plane on the Champs-Elysees, this may be your only way to wing it.

Blazing Angels should be instantly familiar to anyone who's picked up the yoke in games like Secret Weapons Over Normandy: It features fast and simple arcade dogfighting set in the European theater. Angels doesn't seem to deviate too far from formula (shoot down the Nazis!), but the execution is spot-on.