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So, it turns out I suck at Ace Combat: Wings of Thieve Junker One is down. [__] JOKER ONE'S BEEN TAKEN OUT. CAN ANYONE confirm Joker one's bailout? Jer one is down. Now, that doesn't mean I didn't have a good time. In fact, I had a lot of fun. But let's start at the beginning. All right, so I'm on my way to LA to be one of the first people to play Ace Combat 8. The thing is, until a few days ago, I had never played an Ace Combat game before. Come on, we got a plane to catch. So, you're probably wondering why they didn't send an Ace Combat X. Well, the thing is we don't actually have one.
Normally, when we do previews, we send the person who is best equipped for that job. Someone who's played thousands of hours of a series, and they know every little detail. Ace Combat is a blind spot. Here's the thing, though. I love Top Gun, especially Top Gun Maverick. I've seen that movie at least a dozen times. I watch it two to three times a year. It is amazing. And when I saw the trailer for Ace Combat 8, something inside me was roaring. I knew I needed to get into Ace Combat. So, I decided to do a little bit of research before this trip. Wait, hold on. Air Combat. We'll get to the name change later. For now, I'll just say that Air Combat did not age well. It is rough.
Maybe not. Instead, I gave Ace Combat 7 a try. My conclusion is that it's a beautiful game with a bonkers story. The production value is in the skies and certainly not in between missions. Ace Combat 8, based on what I've seen so far, looks to change that. Anyway, let's get back to Los Angeles. Stu, what's your favorite Ace Combat game? Um, considering I've only played seven, I'm going to say seven. You know, the first game was called Air Combat, not Ace Combat. I did not. That's probably why I don't have it, cuz I have Ace Combat 2 and a couple of the other ones. But why was it called Air Combat? You know, don't know. It's probably the part in
the video where I will explain that. There we go. Nice. Turns out the first game was based on a 1993 arcade game of the same name. Air Combat for the PlayStation was supposed to be a port of the arcade game, but the original PlayStation just wasn't powerful enough. So, Bandai Namco, then Namco created a new game called Ace Combat. In the US, it was localized to Air Combat, but for Ace Combat 2, Namco decided to rebrand the franchise to Ace Combat Globally, and it's been the same ever since. After Stu and I had breakfast, it was off to the event. Unfortunately, I wasn't really allowed to film in the space itself, so we're going to head back to the GameSpot studio in San Francisco to give you my thoughts.
All right. So, what exactly did I see of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Thief? Well, I got to play around six or seven missions. I got to play the first four and then three additional missions after that. So, there's four key things that I took away from this preview. The first one being that this game looks incredible. This really lives up to the fantasy of being an Ace Combat pilot. And look, I know that there's been many Ace Combat games, and I'm sure plenty of people felt the same about Ace Combat 7. Playing Ace Combat 7 for the first time, I definitely felt that, but I feel like Ace Combat 8 really steps it up. Part of this is with the gameplay and the visuals. The clouds look insane. A lot
has been made of the clouds. The developers have talked a lot about the cloud tech that goes into it. I actually talked to the brand manager during an interview and asked him specifically about the clouds and how they are not only designed to look pretty, but they are also used in order to give you an idea of what your elevation is. The bigger, fluffier clouds that hold rain, that means you're at a lower elevation, while the thinner, more consistent clouds, that means you're higher up. All this sort of visual information is used in order to give the player a good idea of where they are. And all that's cool, don't get me wrong. I think it's real cool. But I think what's the coolest is
just how it looks. Specifically, what it's like to fly through these clouds as you gain altitude or as you drop altitude and fly through them. Of course, there's this really cool effect that whenever you break through the clouds, your windshield, your cockpit windshield gets water on it. According to the brand director, that doesn't actually happen. Apparently, they interviewed actual pilots and the pilots are like, "No, that doesn't happen." But they left it in because it's cool. And you know what? He's right. It is freaking cool. But it's not just the clouds. Just that first person perspective in the cockpit. You see the reflections on the glass. When you switch to third person and you see everything around you, the environment,
the ground, it all looks incredibly detailed. And all of that adds to just this fantasy of being a pilot flying at high speeds over all these different locations. And for what it's worth, every mission I played, the environment looked vastly different. It didn't feel like there were any repeats. There was one in a snowy mountain. There was one in a tropical archipelago. There was one in a big city. It seems like there's a lot of diversity on display here. But the fantasy of being an Ace Combat pilot doesn't end in the sky. And I think that was probably one of my biggest maybe not issues, but one glaring thing I noticed playing Ace Combat 7 is that everything in the skies, the actual gameplay was
sick. And that is the important part, right? That is the mo that is the bread and butter of an Ace Combat game. However, with Ace Combat 8, they've put a lot of effort into the cutscenes in between missions. And you know, cut scenes are cutcenes. But the specific thing about these cutscenes is that they all take place in the first person. And there's a little bit of interactivity in that. So, you can press left trigger to zoom in like Kajjima style. I think in like Metal Gear Solid 4, you could zoom in on specific things, but also there's like light decisions you can make. People will come up to you and ask you questions, and you've got different responses you can give. I don't know if
any of this affects the story. In fact, I don't really think it does, but it just gives you more agency and puts you in the shoes or helmet of a Ace Combat pilot. However, I think what's probably most effective about these cutscenes, though, is that they are all in first person. You are looking your wingmates directly in the eye, and I think that is really cool. I think that builds a bond with your wingmates that you may have not felt in previous games. But to me, it feels very effective. In one segment, I was just in the mess enjoying a meal with some other characters, zooming in on hamburgers, ketchup bottles, whatever it might be, as they I actually don't remember what they were talking about. I
think I was too focused on the ketchup bottles, but it was still cool. So, speaking on the first person perspective, I think the other thing worth talking about is the story. Now, one thing I learned playing Ace Combat 7 and by doing a little research, these stories are a little nuts. They are ridiculous. They are exaggerated. And I think that's great and I think it adds a lot of charm. However, I'm really curious to see what people think about this story. So, it starts off with the ace combat leader gets in a plane crash and dies. Uh, you survive. You're his co-pilot and you have to take over his role. The thing is that even though he's dead, he's still talking to you throughout the entire game. And I think
he knows he's dead or he doesn't really understand what's going on. It's really giving like a uh Joker from uh Arkham Knight sort of vibe where he's kind of haunting you but also kind of giving you information and he keeps telling you about numbers and when he kept saying numbers all I could think of was the numbers Mason from Black Ops. It seems pretty out there. It seems pretty out there in a way that I think Ace Combat fans probably want. For me, I'm definitely interested. Uh, I hope it develops into something cool or I hope there's some sort of spin to it or some sort of twist that really makes it memorable. Uh, because right now I was a little lost. I think I was way more invested in the moment to moment boots
on the ground stuff. I said boots on the ground. Cut that. I got to cut that. I was more invested in the perspective itself and just being able to take in this aircraft carrier as different characters were talking to me and I was seeing different sides of the base. That is kind of what I'm looking forward to. The story, I don't know. We'll see. Like I said, it seems out there, might be interesting, might fall flat. Either way, I think people will really admire all the detail that has gone into these settings. That makes our jobs easier, right? Oh, hey, I didn't see you there. So, at this point, you're probably wondering what a Top Gun Maverick fan thinks of Ace Combat 8: Wings of Thief.
And you know what? I think it's great. I absolutely cannot wait to play more of this game. The combat is great. I don't know about the story, but I think the way it's presented is super interesting, and I'm excited to see how deep that actually goes. But above all, I think it's just really cool, and hearing the sound of those jets fly around is just there's just not many games like that. And it's why Ace Combat 8: Wings of Thief is so compelling to me. Anyway, I'm going to watch Top Gun Maverick again until uh October 2nd. You're a mercenary pilot being paid to retake a nation controlled by terrorists. The mission success, not to mention your
