Like the man himself, a James Bond game should ooze style and swagger. There’s no point in a timid tie-in with neither the balls nor ability to bring the Bond fantasy to life, and I’ve never particularly wanted one that simply gaffer tapes all the loudest bits of Call of Duty together and stuffs them into a tuxedo. What I’ve wanted is a Bond game that’s confident and charismatic; one that both ebbs patiently and peaks violently as it segues between social stealth, dangerous infiltrations, gadget-driven shenanigans, and destructive, never-tell-me-the-odds action. What I’ve wanted is a Bond game like 007 First Light – and what we got is the best Bond game I’ve ever played.
First Light’s greatest success is just how impressively developer IO Interactive has executed on its mission to create something it can call its own within a very established universe. What we get is something that’s unmistakably Bond – and respectfully adjacent to everything that has come before it – but confidently occupies its own space as a uniquely separate take.
That is, it never seems like a situation akin to 2001’s 007: Agent Under Fire – which felt like the series was in a holding pattern before EA cut another cheque for Pierce Brosnan. No, this is a fastidiously assembled world of its very own – inspired in all the key ways by the work of creator Ian Fleming and the expectations bred by the films, but tailored for IO’s take on the series like a bespoke suit. First Light has its own M, its own Q, and its own Bond – and, after playing it, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
First Light doesn’t rush this world building, patiently moving through Bond’s first encounter with MI6 as a Royal Navy aircrewman in the wrong place at the right time, to his initial double-0 training, and onto his transformative first field mission that sets up the core story to come. In another developer’s hands all of this may have been smooshed into a single opening tutorial, or partially handwaved off in a cutscene. Not so in First Light, which unfolds much more like a prestige TV series than a film. While I’ll stress vehemently that this is absolutely the last thing I’d want from current screen rights owner Amazon when it comes to Bond’s live-action future, for First Light’s purposes it works splendidly. It feels perfectly suited to sit back and play, say, a chapter at a time. There are 17 overall, and it took me around 18 hours to reach the end without rushing too much. The writing is excellent, blending a world of serious consequences with a steady supply of on-brand one-liners. The music is impeccable, too; a masterclass of restraint that sensibly limits the use of Bond’s iconic musical stinger to major moments, meaning I got chills each time it occurred.
The chapters are lengthy and rich with peripheral detail to explore, and this significantly bolsters First Light’s ability to build a world I can feel properly immersed in. The pace of both the action and the story is excellent, crescendoing brilliantly in its final act as the stakes explode (along with everything else) and IO takes a moment to fulfill one last Bond fantasy I’d feared it may have forgotten.
While I always felt properly propelled along, I have enjoyed the fact that – beyond a few time sensitive sequences and chases – First Light is more than happy to let you linger and absorb the detail. This is great as, since the world around Bond has been so thoughtfully and convincingly fleshed out, I found it largely impossible to blitz through. Whether it’s Bond’s London apartment, or the bustling MI6 headquarters packed with staffers, the iconic secret agent is seated in a believable world that doesn’t fall to pieces the second you try to scrutinize it. As a Bond fan, it’s delightfully immersive, and Easter eggs abound. You try moving through Q-Lab without pressing every button. Q’s helpless lackeys aren’t going to temporarily blind themselves, after all.
Perhaps above everything, I just adore the attention to detail – from the big-picture consideration of giving Bond the long, vertical scar on his right cheek the character boasted in his literary origins, to tiny embellishments like the scratched rims and ziptied trim on the busted-up, 2006 Aston Martin that acts as a test mule at MI6’s Malta-based training camp. If you don’t walk around and ogle it like I did, this car only spends about a minute or two on screen during the chapter. Yet the fact that IO saw fit to weather, damage, and field repair it like a teenager’s taped-up, track-day drift toy speaks volumes about where the studio set the bar for the level of authenticity it wanted to capture here – and I love that. Aston Martin is here with multiple models, as is Jaguar, Land Rover, and Triumph, and that’s meaningful. It doesn’t feel cynical; Bond is a British institution, and First Light surrounds him with others.
First Light is in rare air in this regard; it’s a licensed game built with an obsessive desire to faithfully bring an existing property to life. As its own take, it’s on a slightly different track to famously brilliant movie tie-ins like Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, The Warriors, or even RoboCop: Rogue City – but IO’s commitment is the same. There are too many seamlessly embedded references to moments from various Bond films to argue that the movies aren’t at the bedrock of what the studio has built here.
First Light’s pace also allows us to marinate with these new riffs on the characters for a lot longer, which helps immensely. There’s no doubt that coming out of the gate with such a young version of Bond was a risk. Irish actor Patrick Gibson’s portrayal of a Bond in his late 20s – and brand new to the world of international espionage – is not initially the one we know. He’s an archetypal hotshot, cocky and inexperienced. He’s a successfully suave ladies man already, but encumbered with a little too much misplaced confidence elsewhere. However, this gives Gibson’s Bond room to grow as he becomes a product of all the new role models he’s suddenly found himself surrounded by.
These include Q (whose patient and more fatherly attitude makes sense in this context, because it now leaves room for him to potentially become a little more hilariously exasperated as Bond continues to break or lose everything he ever gives him) and Bond’s training mentor John Greenway (ably portrayed by British actor Lennie James in a similarly strong performance). The upshot here is that the Bond we get by the end is the patriotic, heroic, and appropriately horny man of mystery we’re very familiar with, but watching him get there was something we’d never seen before.
With IO Interactive being the home of the Hitman series since its inception way back in the year 2000, First Light admittedly shares some very obvious DNA with its bald-and-barcoded stablemate. Running on the studio’s in-house engine, the look and feel are immediately familiar to me as a veteran player of the Hitman series. For the most part, this is a strength; Bond feels weighty and grounded as he smoothly moves, climbs, and vaults around, and First Light typically looks quite fabulous, from its crowded clubs to its wide-open natural spaces. Playing on a standard PS5, there were occasions where I found myself staring at a texture that seemed far murkier than it ought to be at such close proximity, but it’s otherwise sharp and packed with fine, granular detail.
The sandbox nature of Hitman’s level design is also here to a certain extent, albeit in the more managed fashion of 2012’s Hitman: Absolution. That is, First Light stitches together open areas that have multiple approaches with linear sequences you need to play the way the developers dictate.
There are levels here with large, crowded areas akin to those like the Paris fashion show in 2016’s Hitman, or the German nightclub in 2021’s Hitman 3, while other sections are a little more adjacent to something like the Uncharted series. The latter sequences are occasionally guilty of limitations that look a little silly in practice – like Bond’s inability to clamber up a small, rocky slope or duck under a waist-high booby-trap string. However, this is the kind of seam you can typically pick at in even the best third-person shooters in the business.
First Light also repurposes a lot of Hitman’s distraction-based sneaking. For instance, you can still turn on loud items and such to lure guards from their posts – only in this case it’s something Bond can do from afar thanks to the embrace of gadgets. Gadgets are obviously a core component of the 007 fantasy, and First Light features an array of them (my favourites are the laser and the missile pen). The only thing that gives me pause is IO’s solution to restrain their use. Gadgets are a consumable, so there’s a requirement to shuffle around and gather up battery power from loose phones, and replenish your chemical supply by scooping up gobs of hand sanitizer. The fact that there’s always so much of this stuff laying around means gathering it is just an arbitrary task, which arguably could’ve been easily replaced by a cooldown timer.
At any rate, I should note that this isn’t simply Agent 47 by way of His Majesty’s Secret Service, and there are a bunch of bespoke tweaks here that imbue First Light with its own, very distinctly Bond-branded flourishes. His abilities as a brawler put 47’s to shame, and there’s a layered system of dodges, counters, and satisfyingly devastating environment attacks. Melee combat is perhaps a little clunky at times, particularly when Bond finds himself swarmed, but it is nonetheless a major distinction from the Hitman series.
First Light is also far more suited for run-and-gun shooting. I initially found the shooting a little clumsy – and did find myself wondering about the worth of a mechanic that allows Bond to toss an empty gun right at the face of the nearest goon. Eventually, however, I almost started to relish running out of ammo, hurling an SMG like an oversized shuriken into some hapless bloke’s head and snatching his own weapon. The times I got it right, which increased the more accustomed to the action I got, were incredibly satisfying.
For clarity, there are also parts of the Hitman formula that haven’t crossed over into First Light’s universe. Disguises, for instance, are limited to only when they’re scripted necessities for the story, and Bond can’t hide or drag the bodies of guards he’s knocked out – which does leave the stealth feeling a little archaic in 2026. I’ll certainly concede that the idea of James Bond collecting a big pile of corpses doesn’t pass the sniff test, but it would’ve been nice to be able to at least yank a knocked-out bad guy behind cover in order to allow me to remain undetected a little longer.