// KOTAKU — GAMING
The First Ace Combat Game In Seven Years Is Playing For Keeps
Ace Combat 8: Wings of TheveFall Preview 2026Flight Sim
“The idea of flying freely through these vast skies. I think that’s a universal desire. It doesn’t matter what country or culture you come from. I think it’s an itch that everyone around the world wants to scratch.”
When I got to ask Kazutoki Kono, the brand director of Ace Combat, about the series’ enduring appeal, that was his answer. And it’s one that certainly resonates with me after some hands-on time with his team’s latest, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, ahead of its launch on October 2. After all, games are often exercises in wish fulfillment, as well as the packaging and delivery of exuberant fantasies.
For as much as this space often bandies about the word “immersive” in our assessment of games, few titles actually go all-in on that promise. I’m talking about games that transcend the borders of my screen and become a full-body experience that I feel in my bones. Maybe even my stomach. Something that quickens my heart rate and even forces me to sweat a little. Something that takes my breath away.
I can perhaps count on one hand the number of games that have given me even a taste of that level of immersion, and I guess I now have to throw Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve near the top of that remarkably short list.
In about an hour, I went from an Ace Combat novice—one who’s always known of the series but never engaged with or played it—to a high-flying maverick of the skies. An inheritor of the clouds and guardian of the heavens to my friends, as well as a deliverer of death from above (or behind) to my many foes. “Like Tom Cruise,” even, according to the developers who were on hand to walk me through my first few sorties.
It started with the clouds. Ace Combat 8’s clouds are the real deal. Take any commercial flight through inclement weather and you can get a preview of how simultaneously terrifying and thrilling it is to look out the glass and see nothing. To see droplets of water appear from nowhere and streak across the surface of your window pane. Imagine that from a cockpit. Anything can be on the other side of that cloud, even if nine times out of ten, you know to expect nothing.
In Ace Combat though, there’s seemingly always the promise of exhilarating dogfights and a battle for air supremacy. At least, that’s what awaited me once I’d done Wings of Theve’s brief and breezy opening, plunged into an intimidating cloud formation, and emerged from the other side. What followed was about what I expect Ace Combat veterans have come to know and love of the vaunted series: a harried game of catch-up as I pursued my target, the familiar bleats of a lock-on system homing in on my quarry, and finally the triumphant feeling of downing another fighter jet and living to fight another skirmish.
That next skirmish came mere minutes later as I was dropped into Wings of Theve’s fourth mission, and what the developers dubbed the game’s first “real” mission. The first three levels of the game’s single-player campaign make up a long-form tutorial that Manabu Shimomoto, producer on the game, admits is a conscious effort to make Ace Combat 8 the most accessible the series has ever felt. Embracing the first-person perspective that shows off the gorgeously detailed cockpit of my jet, I put myself in the head of Ace Combat 8’s protagonist, who steps into the shoes of a famous pilot and folk hero who has been killed in action, and set about earning my wings.
This mission had it all. An extensive briefing made clear that Ace Combat is two games: a dogfighting sim and a wartime tactics game. Producer Manabu Shimomoto, who served as my co-pilot and guide, explained how these openings are meant to provide an opportunity for players to plan tactical approaches, which then bleeds into the customization options at the level’s start. Everything from jets to weapons, and even those of your squadmates, can be handpicked if the player wants to take it that far. For the purposes of my demo,