Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve review: Absurdly fun arcade flight

The missions make good use of that handling too and there is enough variety to make sure you’re never bored from playing them back-to-back.  There are the usual bombing runs and escort sorties, to the more elaborate fights that ask you to blow up giant flying fortresses or fending off a land battleship. There’s even one mission that requires you to hunt aircraft that are difficult to spot on radar. Here, I had to look for their contrails and determine their flight path rather than rely on a lock-on marker. The clouds are also absolutely gorgeous here, but they are also easy to lose your bearings in, especially from the cockpit perspective.

Cloud cover also affects how I approach a dogfight. It can help to break a missile lock but the lack of visibility and turbulence make it a risky place to stay. I also found myself using the clouds as brief cover, then trying to get back into clear air before I lost track of the enemy. It is a great example of how the skies in Wings of Theve offer some form of tactical considerations for players, and not just simply as a open backdrop.

The other welcome change is how the battlefield reacts to damage. Buildings and other infrastructures can collapse, and debris or explosions may set off chain reactions that catch nearby targets. Larger vessels no longer always require you to pick off specific weak points, as you can strafe or fire missiles without a lock-on to damage them.

In one of the highlight missions that involves battling a land battleship as it tears through a city with its railguns, I was blown away by the scale and spectacle of it because of its layered objectives and nail-biting drama and twists. I won’t spoil it for you but suffice to say, your first combat against a land battleship is going to pretty jaw-dropping.

In that sense, Wings of Theve wears its Top Gun influence openly, from close-up shots of pilots in their cockpits to the soaring music and radio chatter. Some of its story beats may feel melodramatic, and a few lines of dialogue are cliche enough to pull me out of the moment. But the animation, performances and camera work truly help carry the drama. It’s true the game can be earnest to the point of silliness, then follow it with a scene that genuinely got to me. I did not expect an arcade flight game to make me care this much about the pilots flying with me.

All in all, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is exactly the sort of arcade flight game I want to spend time with. The dogfights are exciting, the set pieces made me grin, and Joker Flight gave the campaign an emotional pull I wasn’t expecting. The bite-sized missions and straightforward controls also make it easy to pick up for a short session before putting it down. Sure, parts of the campaign could be paced better, and you’ll need to grind for enough currency to buy some of the late-game aircraft. But these are minor distractions, and I was always happy to climb back into the cockpit for one more sortie.

Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.