// PC GAMER — GAMING
Ace Combat 8 Steam reviewers are steaming mad about its pre-order bonus not being a standalone app
The fine print for freebie Ace Combat Zero changed before launch.
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Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve is technically out on Thursday, but as is commonplace now folks who pre-order the $90 deluxe edition get to hop into the cockpit a few days early. Anyone who pre-orders the $70 standard edition, meanwhile, gets a pretty sweet bonus: Ace Combat Zero, a 2006 entry in the series that has never been on PC before now. But how Bandai Namco has packaged Zero is now threatening to drag the new game's Steam review average down into Mixed territory.
Of the nearly 1,000 negative reviews as of this writing, there's a spread of complaints—performance, multiplayer connectivity, weightier flight physics, lacking HOTAS support—but one of the most common refrains is that the Zero bonus has been something of a bait-and-switch. As summarized by reviewer Akion:
"Before I bought the game the description said this about the Belkan War DLC Half the reason I got the game was because that is my all time fav. The integrity of this should matter to you.
"'*ACE COMBAT ZERO: THE BELKAN WAR is a standalone application separate from the ACE COMBAT 8: WINGS OF THEVE full game.'
"*ACE COMBAT ZERO: THE BELKAN WAR (Steam Version) is available as a DLC executable launched separately from the base game."
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As another reviewer points out, "You need to install 140gb of data to play a 3gb 20 years old game." That's not an exaggeration: Ace Combat 8 is currently using up 140.24 gigs on my SSD, with the Zero DLC making up only 3.2GB of that total.
There's also a clear strain of dissatisfaction with the fact that on consoles, Zero comes along with its own achievements/trophies list, which is absent for the Steam version. Since it's tied to AC8, Zero also lacks separate cloud saves, something that would be pretty nice for playing it on the Steam Deck, where it should run very well given its age.