Ace Combat Zero Gets Its Own Steam Release, Freeing It from the 136 GB Ace Combat 8 Install
Biggest Complaint Over Game's Pre-Order Bonus Resolved with a Happy Ending
The biggest complaint about the pre-order bonus game is the happy ending.
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Ace Combat 8 rocks. PC Gamer's reviewer gave it a 92% rating, and I enjoyed the campaign knowing that it might be years before we get an epic flight sim melodrama of its kind. Although I do have one more Ace Combat to play: Ace Combat Zero, which was included as a free pre-order bonus with AC8 and was subsequently responsible for most of the negative launch day reviews for the new game.
Not because Zero is bad - it's a fan favorite - but because Bandai Namco inexplicably included it in the AC8 launcher, meaning you can't download this 3.2GB port of a 2006 PS2 game without 136GB of Wings of Theve. This decision was not welcomed.
But now there's a happy ending: Bandai Namco announced in a Steam page update on Tuesday that Ace Combat Zero "will be available as a standalone app on Steam." That doesn't mean it will be available for purchase: Zero was a pre-order bonus, so only those who bought Ace Combat 8 before launch will have it in their Steam libraries. There is no change there. If you already own it, you can just download and run it independently. It is currently going through "final quality assurance and compatibility testing" before distribution.
The biggest benefit of this change (aside from potentially freeing up 136GB of valuable SSD space) is that Zero now supports Steam Cloud saves. Judging by the nearly 400 comments on the post in less than 24 hours, the news has gone down pretty well - although there have been many requests for a standalone Zero to include the achievements that were part of the console's launch.
No release date has been set for Zero, but it probably won't be too far off.
Ace Combat 8 Steam reviewers are angry that its pre-order bonus isn't a standalone app.
Sick: Ace Combat 8 has online airbase lobbies that you can enter as your own custom pilot.
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Wes has been covering games and hardware for over 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014.
When he's not obsessively tweaking and re-optimizing the conveyor belt in Satisfying (it's really become a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or an opaque ski. Focusing on feature writing and editing, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its specific communities. 50% of pizza volume (specifically deep dish).
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