AI News Feed
Market watch
Advocates Launch Second Defend VPNs Day of Action as Governments Tighten RulesULTRALOQ launches Bolt Mission, its first UWB smart lock for Apple HomeHisense FlexBoom Drops to $99.99, Matching Lowest Price Since LaunchAutonomous Vessel Begins 22,000km Antarctic Voyage to Study Ocean CarbonAustralia Says OpenAI Agent Hacked Medicare as UN Confronts AI Control DilemmaAikido Security Releases Altar-1, a 328 GB Open-Weight Security Model Pruned From GLM-5.3
Advocates Launch Second Defend VPNs Day of Action as Governments Tighten RulesULTRALOQ launches Bolt Mission, its first UWB smart lock for Apple HomeHisense FlexBoom Drops to $99.99, Matching Lowest Price Since LaunchAutonomous Vessel Begins 22,000km Antarctic Voyage to Study Ocean CarbonAustralia Says OpenAI Agent Hacked Medicare as UN Confronts AI Control DilemmaAikido Security Releases Altar-1, a 328 GB Open-Weight Security Model Pruned From GLM-5.3
Products & Applications

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve Review Praises Combat and Clouds but Faults Bloated Story

TechRadar calls Ace Combat 8 a phenomenal arcade flight sim with strong combat, varied missions and best-in-class clouds, but an overlong story and weak ending.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-26 00:21

According to the review, the game succeeds most when players are in the air. Dodging an enemy missile or taking down a rival ace makes the player feel like Maverick, and the combat is described as fun, varied, and razor-sharp. Missions are suitably tough, and the game is breathtakingly beautiful at times, with what the review calls the best clouds in gaming. The review's main criticisms are overly long cutscenes and an anticlimactic ending.

The review notes that Ace Combat 8 is the first game in the series where cutscenes are entirely from a first-person perspective. Players step into the shoes of Rex, a pilot in the navy of the Federation of Central Usea (FCU). Sotoa, a nation of former nomads, has conquest in mind, emulating the Mongols, and the FCU is already almost completely subjugated at the start of the game. Events begin on a life raft after the helicopter the player was in went down.

Soon, the player is back in the sky as a navigator for Jan "Rex" Cope, the original Rex and the mythical Wings of Theve of the game's subtitle. The review says this strongly evokes the Ghost of Kyiv, a mythical pilot heavily propagandized early in the Russo-Ukrainian War. Cope is killed soon after, forcing the player to take over his role. A huge part of the narrative concerns propaganda and the role social media plays in modern warfare. Wings, as a pilot, cannot be allowed to die, so the player must fill in and lead his Joker Flight unit. The former Rex does not disappear; his spirit serves as a near-omniscient narrator for the rest of the game.

The game is significantly longer than Ace Combat 7, with the reviewer's playthrough clocking in at around 18 hours to complete all 30 missions. Over that time, players do almost everything expected of a pilot, including dogfights, close air support, and attacks on enemy ships. Joker Flight accompanies the player through most of it. The review says every member has a well-fleshed-out personality, naming Ellington "Professor" Baxter, an easy-going and ever-professional former university lecturer; Tasha Severskaya, an ex-stunt pilot; and William "Noise" Coster, a taciturn musician who provides soundtracks to some battles. These three are at the player's side for the vast majority of the game, and the review says they make the squadron feel cohesive and the stakes feel real when one of them gets in trouble. The same cannot be said for the wider crew of the Carrier Endurance, the player's home away from home. The review describes the commander and D.D., a propaganda officer of the shadowy Enso Order corporation, as broadly cliched and tedious to spend time with.

The review criticizes the amount of time spent watching rather than flying. Players sit through a series of lengthy cutscenes before actually flying a plane, and the prologue mission is effectively another cutscene as the player escapes the aim of The Shadows, Sotoa's elite pilots. There is occasionally mild participation, such as standing at attention or shaking someone's hand by pressing a button. The review says it is genuinely somewhat surprised the series is bold enough to give players QTEs again, after the infamous "press triangle to fist pump" moment in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon. Scattered throughout the game are cutscenes that go on for far too long and rarely give a payoff worth the time, making it feel at several points like an Ace Combat game co-developed by Hideo Kojima. For all that opera, the ending feels remarkably flat. Without spoiling anything, the review says the game spends hours building up a foe who then crumbles within a few minutes of dogfighting, and then does it again, making the stakes feel wasted.

None of that matters, the review says, when the player throttles up, breaks the sound barrier, and punches through the clouds in pursuit of an enemy, or dives shrieking toward a tank. The clouds in particular are listed among the game's strengths as the best in gaming, and the review describes the game as breathtakingly beautiful at times.