Heading into Summer Game Fest, one of the games I was most excited to check out was Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. I have been a fan of the series since it first appeared in arcades and later made the jump to PlayStation, and between this and Sega’s After Burner, I got to live out my fantasy of being a hotshot ace ruling the skies.
It has been over a decade since Ace Combat 7, and for a while, I honestly thought the series had met the same fate as Ridge Racer. Thankfully, that was not the case. With Ace Combat 8, I can fully appreciate the time Bandai Namco has taken to get us back into the cockpit, because from what I played, it already feels worth the wait.
My time with the game was limited to about an hour at Summer Game Fest, and with several cutscenes to skip through in the interest of getting to the action, I did not get the full story setup. From what I could gather, your character is a replacement pilot joining an established team, and not everyone is thrilled about it. There is tension as you slowly start earning your place with the squad, and honestly, even that brief glimpse made me want to see where it goes.
Once I was airborne, though, I did not want to come down.
The first mission shook off the rust fast. Thrown immediately into combat against incoming enemy jets, it did not take long before everything started coming back to me: barrel rolls, loops, flying dangerously close to the water, testing what my jet could do while firing off as many missiles as possible. The second mission had me defending allied radar dishes from a horde of incoming aircraft before escalating into a bomber takedown sequence that was an absolute rush. I was supposed to get through three missions total, but ran out of time just as the final one was starting. I would have been happy to sit there all day.
Visually, Ace Combat 8 is the best the series has ever looked. I cannot tell you what hardware the game was running on but given that it was a DualSense controller that I used, I’m going to assume it was a PlayStation 5. The framerate held steady throughout, and the visual effects were a genuine step up: cloud streaks trailing behind your jet as it tears through the sky, dense and detailed cloudbanks, sharp plane models, and water beading across the windshield when you fly through rain. If you thought Ace Combat 7 looked impressive back in 2019, this pushes everything further.
The audio keeps pace. The soundtrack is tremendous, somehow managing to match or even surpass Ace Combat 7‘s score, which is no small feat. Team chatter fills in the gaps between engagements, shifting from playful to tense depending on what is unfolding around you, and it goes a long way toward making the squad feel real. Oh, and the enemies are chatterboxes as well. Layered over that are the sounds of jets screaming past, missiles launching, and the percussive thud of explosions when they connect. Together, it all pulls you into the chaos in a way that is hard to step away from.
Worth noting for longtime fans: the ability to command your squad and respond to questions during missions is back. It was a feature in earlier entries that was quietly cut from Ace Combat 7, and its return here is a welcome one. It is a small thing, but it deepens your connection to the team and adds weight to decisions made mid-flight. Telling your team what to do, or even go help someone else adds depth to the game.
So, how is the combat? Saying fantastic doesn’t do the game justice, but I don’t have another way to explain it, at least not yet. So, let’s go with that. I was grinning from takeoff, still grinning when the demo ended, and immediately frustrated that I could not keep going. While it was a small slice of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, it was enough to remind me exactly why I fell in love with this series. It is good to have it back.
I said to myself I was going to go back and play Ace Combat 7, but after playing this, I’m just going to wait until this drops.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve releases October 2, 2026, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
