Ace Combat Zero gets its own standalone app on Steam, freeing it from the 136GB install of Ace Combat 8

Ace Combat 8 rocks. PC Gamer's reviewer scored it a 92%, and I've been savoring the campaign, because I know it could be years until we get another bombastic flight sim melodrama of its kind. Although I do have another Ace Combat lined up to play after: Ace Combat Zero, which was included as a free pre-order bonus with AC8, and subsequently responsible for the majority of the new game's negative launch day reviews.

Not because Zero is bad—it's a series fan-favorite—but because Bandai Namco inexplicably bundled it into the AC8 launcher, meaning you can't download this 3.2GB port of a 2006 PS2 game without the 136 gigabytes of Wings of Theve. This decision was not well received.

But now there's a happy ending: in an update on the Steam page on Tuesday, Bandai Namco announced that Ace Combat Zero "will be made available as a standalone application on Steam." …