Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is a gripping aerial combat game buoyed by high-flying dogfights

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is as close as you’ll get to a blockbuster Top Gun video game adaptation without striking the ire of Paramount Pictures. It shares a similar approach to exploring the world of aerial defence, focussing on the majesty of soaring through clouds, taking part in intense dogfights and relying on a team of bright-eyed, mischievous pilots to add meaning to every battle.

With an added focus on a deep narrative, there’s also higher stakes to this particular series entry.

Each of your fellow pilots has their own plot and personality to grow alongside you. You’ll also get to know the marketing arm of your wartime forces, in novel asides that reveal more about the stakes of this fictional modern war and what part appearances play in winning.

One of the greatest additions to gameplay, revealed early on, is a touch of magical realism that allows for dramatic moments to land with greater gravitas.

See, while you pilot the iconic Wings of Theve – an aircraft that has become a symbol of resistance through propaganda – you’re actually one of many to fly under that banner. In your quest, you’re also haunted by one of the previous pilots, your diseased companion, Jan Cope.

Artful storytelling twists add meaning and gravitas to Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve

Cope is a fascinating companion. He exists as a ghostly voice in your head and often speaks to the horrors of war, underlining how terrible it can be and what impact it has on the populace.

To describe him in simple terms, if this is Top Gun, he’s Maverick, but if he was Goose. That is to say, he’s a deceased ace pilot who has since become a voice in your head to guide your path. He talks to you with great frequency, appearing in missions to warn of danger and to comment grimly on your circumstances.

To embody the Wings of Theve, you must listen to him and his advice, becoming him in the process. As the chief marketing officer of your team dictates, the Wings of Theve must be infallible, even to others in the airforce. It’s a great secret that the original pilots and the original planes have been destroyed, replaced by replicas to carry on the name.

It’s a tactic that’s both horrific and clever, as Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve explores the nature of war deeply and its knock-on impact – how propaganda can inspire troops, and how close victory can be to a fluke. It’s to the game’s credit that it doesn’t focus solely on the perceived glory of aerial combat, but that it presents a layered narrative with room for anti-war commentary.

Its core crew of pilots isn’t always heroic. New pilot Tasha Severskaya doesn’t understand the full scope of war and while she’s good at aerial tricks, she hasn’t learned to watch her back. Baxter is usually the voice of reason, but is easily frustrated, particularly when the plan goes wrong. There’s also Coster, who forms close ties with his nearest companions, to the point of devastation when tragedy strikes.

They’re all welcome voices in your flights, providing a layer of lightness where your ghostly companion Cope presents more of a dour outlook.

While their growth is largely limited to voice chat conversations over the radio, as cutscenes between missions are brief and more aligned to pushing the plot forward than spending ample time getting to know everyone, you do get to know them and their foibles well as you fly.

It helps to make you feel less alone in skirmishes, knowing you can rely on these companions as you tackle a growing array of challenges and issue orders to guide their aerial response. Their presence also adds weight to every decision you make, as chatter over the radio tells you where you need to help, and what impact your decisions have on every part of your team.

A layered narrative means that missions feel tense, with a weight of expectation on your shoulders. It makes it all the more satisfying when you finally achieve your mission, particularly after failures, knowing that you’re there for your companions and that your actions have impact.

It’s also a strong choice to root this game’s world in fiction. It allows the narrative to explore the nature of war in abstracted fashion, with enemy pilots of vague origin and typically belonging to multiple nations. This is a universal war, explored in a story that revolves around the hideous nature of conflict and how it sweeps everyone into its tide.

The structure of each mission is layered and complex

With a strong story setup, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve paves the way for its many intense aerial battles, buoyed by those heightened stakes. This is war, and you must perform well to ensure the success of the FCU Endurance, a crew left stranded by the complications of conflict and losing ground on their home turf.

As the Wings of Theve, it’s not only about success, but about becoming the standard for the forces of the FCU. In hints of dialogue, other pilots speak to your glory. They believe the Wings of Theve will always be there to save them.

In combat, this belief proves to be a major challenge and one that defines a high octane, high stress journey across missions that test your skills. Most importantly, how you listen and react.

Each mission has its own goals, usually identified by your plane HUD – but also hiding directly in dialogue that you must analyse and react on. Skirmishes are complex, and you can’t get tunnel vision. Goals that appear on screen aren’t necessarily what you need to focus on, which is a twist that takes some getting used to.

You can fail some missions because you’re too focussed on hitting the directly identified goals in your vision, when you really need to be focussing on the wider map and listening to what each pilot in your vicinity needs. If you hear someone shout for help, or reveal that they’re under attack in the north quadrant, you need to drop everything and head to their aid.

Even across multiple missions, this dual focus took some getting used to, as mission structure isn’t always clear, and you can fail missions arbitrarily if you spend too long focussing on identified targets, rather than correctly identifying the threats that lie ahead. At the very least, dialogue is usually very descriptive – but in some missions, it can be vague enough that your attention is forced into all the wrong places.

It keeps you on your toes and forces you to really lock in. To be tactical in approach, rather than just following along with orders.

Moreish aerial combat elevates the entire experience

Even with these complications, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is wildly encouraging and deeply compelling, thanks to the design of its core mechanics.

Refining the approach to air combat that defined previous franchise entries, Wings of Theve feels like the smoothest and most reactive experience yet. Piloting an array of planes inspired by real-life creations, your role is to fly around and shoot down aerial and ground targets in sequence, paying attention to flight patterns and approach, and which enemies are attacking.

Each plane manoeuvres differently, but most feature tight and intuitive controls that allow you to fly in the open, turn on a dime and even swing wildly around enemies to get the best vantage points for attacks with machine guns or special weaponry.

In hand, your controller becomes a very useful companion, as you twist joysticks and press buttons that aren’t too different from those you’d find in an aircraft. It becomes an extension of yourself as battles inspire a hyper-focus that guides your hand.

Battles really are an eye-opening, intensive experience in this game. Enemy combatants fly at very high speeds and manoeuvre sharply across the skies, so you’ll need to pay close attention as skirmishes begin and continuously strategise on best approach for attacks.

Oftentimes you’ll end up wheeling in circles to find your next opponent, particularly when you’re dealing with high speed planes that can slip off your radar in seconds but with sleek controls, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve does well to keep you in charge of the pilot’s seat, and ready to tackle the next challenge.

The art of war

This is a game buoyed by its many layers, including its rock solid approach to gameplay.

Story choices elevate a thoughtful narrative about the impact of war, who’s driving the machine and how tales of glory are manufactured for audiences internal and external. The diversity of missions and the constant challenges mean you’re on-your-toes with anxiety constantly, head filled with ideas about novel approaches and strategy.

Still, it leaves room for the fantasy of flight as you zoom through stages of varying circumstances, each more dangerous and complex than the last.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is an excellent aerial combat simulator, with its sleekness and high velocity nature lending itself well to eyes-open, entirely gripping gameplay sessions.

A PC code for Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve was provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.

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