When IO Interactive was first announced as developing a James Bond game, people connected the obvious dots: James Bond inspired Hitman, the series IO is best known for, so the studio seemed like a great fit to take on a proper 007 game. But it's where those two experiences would need to be different that had me most intrigued. A 007 game can't just be a Hitman game with different hair. Thankfully, IO's first foray into the James Bond world proves the team knows this and leans into it, delivering a thrilling Bond experience worthy of the character, while also applying lessons learned from the studio's own international man of mystery.
Though it isn't the first to tell an original story, 007 First Light is IO's very own take on Ian Fleming's iconic spy himself. With a new leading man in Patrick Gibson, and a story that takes Bond back to the age of 26, when he's still serving in the military sans any ties to MI6, it's a natural on-ramp for people who may not be familiar with Bond or who have been waiting since 2021's No Time to Die for the next reboot. This is a fresh start, and the team makes it their own.
In First Light, the Bond we meet is younger than ever, and this invites a more stubborn, mistake-prone version of the character, whom I quickly found myself interested in. Recruited to MI6's soon-to-be-rebooted 00 program, Bond can't catch a break, making enemies of his fellow recruits and his irritable supervisor, John Greenway, played by The Walking Dead's Lennie James, who shines in his newfound role in the Bond universe.
In the movies, I loved how Daniel Craig's take on the hero often saw him receive his fair share of beatings. I strongly prefer that to an untouchable good guy who can do no wrong. That aspect of Bond feels ramped up even more in First Light, with a version of the spy who is hardly out of the figurative cradle at the intelligence agency. James Bond is a headstrong young man, and his tendency to ask for forgiveness rather than permission is both his best and worst attribute in the eyes of his superiors.
Before long, Bond is on assignment, using his tricks of social engineering and stealth to infiltrate a lavish hotel, where the agency believes a disgruntled ex-00 agent is plotting something. While this plot thread initially sounds a bit too much like Skyfall, it quickly finds its own path forward, eventually erasing my concerns that the 20-hour story would lean too much on things I've already seen. It's also during this early mission that First Light starts to reveal its familial ties to Hitman, so to speak. Like IO's flagship game, you'll be dropped into a massive gala full of NPCs, some of whom are guardians of certain areas of the hotel. And like IO's bald assassin, Bond will need to trick, sneak past, or otherwise dispatch the security to get where he needs to be.
While the game rightly doesn't have the same level of dark humor as Hitman, many of the ways you'll move about the world feel plucked right out of it. You can distract guards, then sneak from cover to cover when they look away, shimmy across hand-holds and pipes outside the building, eavesdrop on conversations to get crucial information, and lie to people to get what you need--be it a keycard, the whereabouts of a particular person, or for them to simply step aside and let you pass, which First Light gamifies as the Bluff mechanic. It won't work on everyone, but some enemies will simply take you at your word, as Bond is a charming young man good at acting like he belongs somewhere he doesn't. Once in a while, you'll even don a disguise. In these moments, First Light and Hitman share a lot in common.
When things break down--maybe your cover has been blown, or you were spotted by enemies who don't fall for your charms--the game's very best attribute kicks into high gear. Combat in First Light is incredibly fun, especially the melee combat. Some of its systems are tried and true, like enemy attacks that must be blocked or dodged with good timing, but the things First Light does best are those that feel the most Bond-like.
For example, you can slide over surfaces to stagger enemies, kicking their guns from their hands, catching them, then shooting your foe in the leg to cause them to kneel for a quick finisher. Alternatively, you can rush them and toss them into a computer desk, where things like a monitor and keyboard fly into the air as you buy some time with a handful of other armed villains behind you. Environments are awesomely reactive. If you throw a guy into a railing, you can then toss him over it. If you throw him into an electrical board, you'll see him get zapped and take heavy damage. Weaving in and out of combos against a group of enemies looks and feels awesome, whether you're perfectly nailing every hit and dodging every attack or you're just scraping by in fist fights that feel like trying to win an eye-gouging contest.
Gunplay is fun too, and though I preferred to use my fists because I felt it fit the character better at times, I love how First Light's guns never have much ammo in them, demanding you frequently change what you're armed with by taking them off defeated enemies--you can even chuck your gun at their heads when it's out of ammo. Combined with a slow-motion focus-aim mechanic, enemies who effectively flank you, and lots of destructibility, the end result makes for frenetic shootouts of precision headshots and creative explosions every time you've been given the license to kill. The exciting setpieces, once starring Connery, Brosnan, Craig, and the others, are faithfully captured in First Light, but what makes them even better is how often these moments aren't scripted. They're a result of my own improvisational input, navigating a complex battlefield and using every tool at my disposal to capture the specific biorhythms of a Bond movie.
Speaking of tools, it's funny how well a Bond story maps onto video games. Not only do you trot around the globe in a way that suits distinct missions, but Bond is always aided by Q and his Q-Lab spy gadgets. With his nearly ever-present Q-Watch, Bond can scan an area for enemies and interaction points, even through walls, using the sort of "detective vision" mechanic that Arkham Asylum popularized in 2009. Bond can also hack electronics with that same watch; he can make people feel queasy and move them off their spot using a fake phone that shoots poison darts, and he can blow stuff up with a fake pen, among several other gadgets at his disposal.
On many missions, you'll pick which two or more of these you want, leaving you with many answers to the same question: how to get from A to B when the space between is littered with villains. I found it hard to pick which gadgets I wanted on any mission because they all had their uses. It was very common for me to get into a mission, thankful I had a particular gadget but also longing for another I had left behind, depending on the situation. A few late-game changes to how gadgets are used also shake up this system in two distinctly different but enjoyable ways.
These gadgets ensure the spirit of the Bond character is alive, and the game is rich with other true-to-form touches, like a well-rounded cast of characters, such as MI6 boss M, workplace ally Moneypenny, and a memorable villain whose quest is an interesting dark reflection of Bond himself. He's also the type of bad guy who feels plucked right out of the headlines. A Bond story is essentially a superhero story, but the best of them ground themselves in reality by speaking to the social and political context in which they've arrived, and First Light shines in this regard.
Watching the Bond movies recently for the first time, my wife jokingly wondered if the "Bond Girl" is always going to betray him, given how often it happens. I was glad to see First Light toy with this expectation a lot during its runtime. As for 007 himself, Patrick Gibson did so well to become the hero in my mind that, while I used to think of him as the actor who plays the title role on Dexter: First Blood, by the end of the game, he'd become James Bond first and foremost. It's hard to see him any other way.
Of all the boxes IO had to check to make First Light feel authentic, the only area where the team noticeably falters is driving sections. It's not really a Bond story without some car chases, and though First Light uses several different vehicles in several different ways, most of them feel like you're rather rigidly barreling down something close to a straight line. Nearly feeling on-rails, these flashy scenes of Aston Martins and speedboats still look and sound cool, but they're best for moving Bond from one shootout to another, while the driving sections themselves don't add much.
Another issue that stems from telling a 20-hour Bond story is that you, perhaps necessarily, lose some of the supreme pacing the best of the movies have to offer. I enjoyed seeing Bond in his MI6-provided apartment with other recruits. That felt like the sort of downtime a movie wouldn't allow for, which managed to add layers to these new versions of old characters. But there are a couple of other sections later where you're meant to solve puzzles, usually involving locked doors, and in these sections, the pacing can grind to a halt, pulling me out of the otherwise-exciting story.
That's a hard problem to solve, given how a game necessarily differs from a movie. One area in which the pacing doesn't suffer is First Light's secondary mode, TacSim (short for Tactical Simulation). The in-universe excuse for this challenge mode is that it's Bond's way of staying frosty, beating up virtual bad guys in virtual kitchens, villas, and military installments. What this amounts to for you is a highly replayable mode that gets right down to the game's best bits: its combat. Across many levels, you can attempt to complete dozens of challenges, which is something this studio has designed very well before.
I like this mode out of the gate, though the rewards feel lacking for now, with some lukewarm weapon skins and outfits on offer. IO plans to support TacSim with updates, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves. But for those who wondered if this could be the equivalent of Hitman's incredible Freelancer mode, it's far from that as of now.
In the end, IO's take on James Bond was actually more like Hitman than I expected, but that's not to say it's simply Hitman by another name. As someone who has loved that series for nearly 25 years, it's fascinating to see IO apply everything it's learned. 007: First Light wisely repurposes what works in both universes but isn't afraid to reimagine or ditch those parts that don't. Though some aspects of the game do hinder the pacing, so much else feels authentic and riveting. As Hollywood seems uncertain about where to take Bond next, IO Interactive's debut effort is supremely confident. "James Bond will return," the movies always like to say. If and when IO's Bond returns, it'll have a great first act to follow.
