Warning: This review contains light story spoilers for 007 First Light.
Before I get into the details of 007 First Light, I want to clarify that I am a James Bond fan. I’ve seen all the movies more than once, played as many of the games as I’ve been able to get my hands on, read one or two of Ian Flemyng’s novels years back. I like the character, is what I’m saying, warts and problematic personality and all. But most of all I really like the universe, where spies have scifi gadgets and invisible cars and watches that can do literally anything the plot demands. If you’re like me, and you’re here for that stuff, First Light will be everything you want it to be and then some.
If, however, you’re not big on Bond, find the character in general to be a misanthropic, womanising cad, and feel that the world he inhabits spins too often on the wrong side of ridiculous, well… I mean there’s still a bloody good action adventure here, but maybe you won’t love it quite so unequivocally. First Light, from Hitman maestros Io Interactive, is positioned as a prequel-cum-reboot, and even makes jokes about the 00 Program needing a reboot itself. Whereas there are former 00 Agents, and Q Branch has been operating for long enough that Q is a dapper-dressed Burt Bacharach-alike in his sixties, First Light centres on the rebirth of the 00 Program and a sextet of hot young recruits, including a particularly intelligent and rebellious aircrewman named Bond, James Bond.
The first two hours focus on the mission that gets Bond noticed by MI6, followed by the gruelling elimination process which he joins six months later than the other recruits. He also makes an immediate enemy of Lennie James’s John Greenway, a gruff former 00 who now trains the recruits in Malta. First Light does absolutely nothing new with the Bond formula really, despite his youth and pre-00 status, and yet it hits every note with such flourish and verve that I didn’t care. I grinned when I heard lines from the films (I smirked quite widely at a point when Greenway angrily tells the hot-headed Bond to “stop touching your earpiece”), and the smile rarely left my face through either the high-octane action scenes or the slick, well-produced cutscenes. Any doubts I had vanished completely during a mission where I had to skydive through falling cargo to steal someone’s parachute mid-plummet. While I’m certain I’ve done similar I’m games before, it was presented with such joy and momentum that I simply didn’t mind. It’s that sort of game.
Io Interactive are in their stride here. Missions are large, sprawling affairs filled with NPCs and hidden interactive elements, with multiple routes to both success and failure. It lacks the sometimes bottomless depth of Hitman’s labyrinthine mission design, but First Light still manages to pepper every area with secret challenges and collectibles that reward exploration and experimentation. Rich sound design (including that legendary score) adds to the atmosphere conjured by the gorgeous visuals and cinematic direction. Every mission in this game, bar none, is an exceptional slice of hot-blooded action.
There are elements that evoke Uncharted and the most recent Tomb Raider trilogy, as Bond climbs, shimmies, and slides around environments, or engages in high-speed chases and cover-based shootouts. Melee combat, too, borrows from elsewhere, with a timed-parry system and environmental interaction reminiscent of Naughty Dog’s work. Smashing heads off table-tops is incredibly cathartic, and it ensures that it’s just as much fun when things to wrong as when they’re going right.
Alongside your service pistol and whatever guns you can scavenge from enemies, Bond also has a suite of gizmos unlocked throughout the story by visiting Q. Amongst other things, these include a watch that lets you use what is effectively Detective Vision, a lighter that doubles a smoke bomb, a phone that can induce sickness in a target, and earbuds that are actually small remote mines. You can only pick two of these per mission, and it is possible to have something that’s of little use, necessitating some creative thinking. Making a guard sick so he wanders off is usually preferable to a camera that blasts him through a wall, but everything has its uses.
While you can refill your battery and fluids to keep your gadgets topped up, and pick up ammo and guns to take out your enemies, First Light is on slightly shakier ground during some of the cinematic sections. There are several set-pieces that require some trial and error to get through, which can stall progress a little when you have to keep waiting for the long respawn loading screen, and then re-watch unskippable dialogue scenes while your enemies posture and chew the scenery. It’s not game-breaking, but it can trip up the otherwise stellar pacing.
Outside of missions you can use the AR training suite in Q Branch where Selina (played by Gemma Chan) will load up simulated versions of both previous and specially-made missions and let you take in a selection of weapons, gadgets and outfits to complete them with extra challenges sewn in. It’s a neat way of letting you revisit previous areas or exercise your action chops with Bond’s full arsenal at your disposal (once you’ve unlocked it using earned Intel, of course).
Bond himself, played by Patrick Gibson, is pitch-perfect as a cocky, womanising, over-confident Gary Sue. The fact that he’s good at everything is kind of baked into the Bond archetype, but this version has limitations that stem from being inexperienced and far too impulsive. He is, to all intents and purposes, a younger version of Daniel Craig’s Bond, before the weight of the job has crushed his soul and the constant brushes with death have left him with more rough edges than smooth. It’s a better fit for a videogame protagonist, because he can be led by others while still constantly going off book. His “unpredictable” actions are perfectly predictable to anyone familiar with the character (to whit, he’s always going to do what he’s explicitly told not to do) but it’s all part of the charm and fun of this world.
007 First Light is a superb adventure game, doing for Bond what the Great Circle did for Indiana Jones, and bringing it to modern audiences without compromising a sliver of what makes the character and universe tick. Besides the occasional patch of rough performance (some dropped frames here and there) and some accidentally amusing ragdoll stuff, it runs beautifully on PS5. The campaign is just long enough to satisfy all the requirements, while a raft of extra challenge missions unlock when the story is done to keep you playing long after you’ve rolled credits.
Fans of the character will love 007 First Light, while even those who don’t know their Xenia Onatopp from their Pussy Galore will find a slick, thrilling, and supremely well-put-together action game that does so much more than simply coast on the popularity of its franchise.
