I will always remember the Christmas when our parents got my older brother and me our Nintendo 64 with GoldenEye, or the countless hours my friend Erik and I spent sniping bots on Skyrail in Nightfire. It’s been a minute since we got a Bond game, especially a good one, and from the moment IO Interactive revealed 007 First Light, I took notice. It seemed like a no-brainer that the studio that gave us the best assassin simulator would be the perfect fit for a spy game. Now having snuck, fought, and blasted my way through this newest adventure, I can say unequivocally that that faith was well placed, and has delivered perhaps the most fun I have had with a game so far this year.
007 First Light is a departure from what’s come before as it tells the untold story of Bond, before he became “Bond, James Bond”, the gentleman super spy with a license to kill. Opening when James is simply an incredibly lucky member of the British Royal Navy, rescuing some hostages, over the course of the 15-ish hour adventure, will see the man earn his signature 00 moniker. This is a young Bond, where his retorts are quick, his fashion sense flashy, and his wit is sharp. More bravado than suave, more bombastic than subtle. All of those little mannerisms fans of the books and movies associate with the legendary figure are here, just in their infancy, and are rough around the edges, and pulled off spectacularly by the Irish actor Patrick Gibson, who plays him in First Light.
The familiar Bond elements don’t stop at the character himself. Every sort of staple of the franchise is here, and I mean that in the best possible way. Nifty gadgets? Check. Beautiful ladies? Check. Driving awesome cars that shoot missiles and an evil villain’s Arctic lair? Check and check. And of course, beloved characters like Q, Moneypenny, and M have all received modern updates with their respective actors also bringing a wonderful new yet familiar take on the memorable characters that I came to love.
The story itself strangely feels a bit more grounded than what you find in the books or films. There’s no super satellite poised to rain destruction down if demands aren’t met, or an army of ninjas for James to fight against, or a blimp equipped with a laser gun. Instead, First Light is more a tale of what happens when you put too much trust in an AI (wow, how topical!). While there are some robots you fight, this isn’t an “AI going rogue” situation.
One of my biggest head scratchers with First Light was with Lenny Kravitz’s Bawma. More specifically, how little of the character is actually in the story. Prior to launch, the team seemed to hype up Lenny Kravitz’s character, having him get his own reveal trailer, Lenny doing interviews, and even appearing at the Game Awards. He played a very small and, in the scheme of things, rather insignificant part, where I only interacted with the character for 10-15 minutes, tops?
Aside from feeling a bit like a bait-and-switch, it’s too bad that Bond and crew don’t get more time with Bawma or his pirate haven of Aleph, nestled away in an abandoned ship graveyard among the sands of Mauritania. There is so much mystery and allure surrounding this character that the story does nothing but tease at, such as his missing sister, whom he has been searching for for years, and MI6 has been tracking. You find this out in a short 30-second sequence, and it isn’t touched again. IO Interactive has already teased a new mission coming that will require our favorite spy to assist Bawma again, but for how much IOI pushed Bawma leading up to the release, it threw me for a loop just how little he showed up or impacted Bond’s mission.
Playing First Light is a clever mix of pulse-pounding action set pieces, exploring your surroundings, making a plan, and devising a backup plan when everything goes to hell. In typical IOI fashion, the levels themselves provide you with options and avenues to try and tackle each mission and goal how you want. It’s in this way that the team has leaned heaviest on their experience gained from their years of work on the Hitman series, but outside of simply being given options, I never felt like First Light was just Hitman with a Bond skin plastered on top.
While sneaking around and trying to blend in may have felt familiar, our 00-in-training shot better (seriously, I felt like I was picking off people from across the map with a simple pistol) and is a beast when I had to slug it out up close. It’s made clear pretty quickly that Bond is a younger and nimbler individual than Agent 47. I was sliding over crates, kicking guns out of enemies’ hands before tackling another, only to chuck my empty pistol at the face of another oncoming guard. The seamless integration with Q’s gadgets also led to some wonderful moments, like dropping chandeliers on enemies with my watch laser, making a nearby guard sick with a dart so I could sneak by, or just blowing folks up with my pen missile.
Fighting is just one option you can take, however, sneaking is just as viable a choice – outside of the boss encounters. Being a spy and all, James is great at sneaking around, darting between cover, and silently knocking out enemies. I found this method to be almost an intricate puzzle, requiring me to utilize the environment and learn patterns to find the more hidden routes to the various objectives. Hacking gizmos with my watch or lighting a garbage pail on fire to cause a distraction, allowing me to grab a key I needed from an unsuspecting nearby partygoer, all made the gorgeous and varied levels feel even more exciting.
Perhaps the best part of sneaking around comes from First Light’s brilliant use of Bond’s charm as a resource, letting me bluff my way past possible trouble. The truly outlandish things Bond would say when using the Bluff ability led to some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, such as claiming I was just looking for the gift shop when I stumbled across a guard in a heavily protected area. Sneaking past enemies without drawing any attention feels just as, if not more, satisfying than going in with guns and fists raised.
As much fun as I had being James Bond, some of my favorite moments were the quieter, more personal ones that gave us a look underneath the calm demeanor of the young agent. A particular moment was when James was preparing for a party and was frustrated and at a loss because he didn’t know how to tie a bowtie, so he called Q, who serves as a sort of surrogate father figure for James in First Light. This is the person who, by this point, had seen friends die, survived numerous assassination attempts, and even been dangled above hungry alligators – among many other things. It was an intimate moment and really showed that here was a man who wasn’t yet the legend he would be, and was in some ways still just a boy. It made James feel human. I loved how he was worried that he would do it wrong or that it would fall off during the party. Moments like this gave First Light heart and complexity to a game that otherwise would have just been a neat action game.
While the story itself can be completed in a couple of weekends, there is a whole Q Labs worth of content to do besides that. Few game studios support their single-player games to the same level and quality as IO Interactive. Similar to Hitman’s World of Assassination, which basically makes the games infinitely replayable with new targets to take out, First Light has TacSim. This mode pits you against various challenges with punishing restrictions, such as having stronger enemies lurking about or restricting you to only having the guns you bring with you to use.
I have managed to sink a few hours into TacSim so far, and I appreciate how well the challenges and tasks force me to approach levels differently or make me be more deliberate in what I do. Things like “don’t get detected” or “don’t use guns” are fun and all, but I’ve been enjoying challenges like “vault and disarm X enemies”, “Shoot X guards in the leg to disarm them”, or “eliminate X guards by crushing them” the most. Forcing me to plan my routes, as there are limited numbers of enemies on each map, so each action really counts.
That being said, I do feel that the initial offerings are a bit scarce. It’s also hard not to compare it to World of Assassination (despite being completely unfair to First Light), even though that has had years to grow and expand. IOI has already promised their full support behind TacSim, and I’m eager to see what gets added. My hope is they will include classic locations or missions from the films for this latest Bond to tackle. Let me fight 006 on the cradle, and please, for all that is good in this world, let us fight Oddjob!
There was one moment during one of the earlier levels where I was chasing after a rogue agent in a vintage Aston Martin and I heard my wife chuckling next to me. Looking over she just tells me she was just looking at the big smile I had on my face during, and all I could respond with was “This game is just so cool!” That sums up my time with 007 First Light pretty perfectly. This is just such an enjoyable game to play, and I can’t remember the last time a game gave me such a pure sense of fun. It recaptured those cherished memories I have of GoldenEye and Nightfire, and now, 007 First Light has given me all-new memories to smile about in the years to come. Like an awkward Bond, learning how to tie his first bowtie.
We were supplied a PlayStation 5 review code for this review.
