007 First Light review: something borrowed, something Bond, and utterly brilliant

Never judge a book by its cover, or a AAA narrative adventure by its first four hours. For a while, I wondered what IO Interactive was doing with its James Bond reboot, 007 First Light, as it nearly fell into the modern Star Wars trap of explaining everything – a level dedicated to revealing how Bond gets his scar, plus he has a knowledge of every Bond theme song and he’s not afraid to drop them into conversations, almost fourth-wall winking at the game-camera as he does so. There’s even a three-hour training mission-cum-spy-school montage where Bond gets a Scooby-gang and, well… I wondered.

But then First Light opens up, takes its time to peel back its version of James Bond, and he manages to overcome the weight of the franchise and all those references and nods it's too easy to rest on. That Scooby-gang? Stuff happens. Those self-referential moments? Wound back and used meaningfully. This Bond’s modern smirking spy-lad persona? The edges are sanded off, and over the course of First Light’s 18-hour story arc, he becomes, slowly, the real James Bond – hard-edged, lonely, rougher, colder and less polished. IO’s Bond, eventually, sits somewhere between Daniel Craig and Timothy Dalton; he’s Fleming-acurate in many ways, and we get to see him grow over the course of the game, with some excellent writing on show when it escapes the need to namecheck We All The Time in the World, again.

This is still IO Interactive, though, so underneath all the Bond dressing you can feel the Hitman DNA straight away, in the grand and busy systems-based spaces, the people-as-routines, that sense that every room is waiting for you to learn how it works and exploit it, but rather than lock you into precision assassination puzzles, the dev has loosened everything up and handed it to Bond’s personality instead.

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No time to die

So you get Q Vision, for espionage improvisation – hacking cameras, burning circuits, cutting power, manipulating doors and traps – and even interfering with people’s behaviour just enough to push them where you want them, and it all feeds into a much more fluid stealth style where getting spotted doesn’t instantly mean you’ve failed. While the same loop happens in each large-scale mission – there's a door or guard to get past, so you'll need to find a creative way to get there, whether that's pretending to be a late journalist to a launch party or a scientist having a panic attack. There's a simple joy to blending in, messing with people, and creatively working your way through a crowd undiscovered.

The dev even has some fun with its gadget setup, too, whether it's eavesdropping on office gossip for a lead or a moment when you need to hack an opponent's bidding computing in a high-stakes pirate auction for weapons tech, a small fleeting scene, but one that shows First Light has more playful systems than expected.

Unlike Hitman, where discovery often means the whole plan unravels, here you can bluff your way through lower-level guards and scientists, talk your way back on mission and keep momentum going. It makes everything feel less like solving a moving puzzle where there’s a purist route to the mission goal, and instead, things are easier to interpret and act upon, and you can never really mess up, which is exactly where Bond should live when he’s at his best.

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The Bourne-Bond returns

Then there’s combat, which is probably where IO has made the biggest tonal shift, because it takes those same systems, scanning and room analysis and turns it all into combat encounters that feel improvised and fluid. There’s a real joy in how the environment becomes part of the fight, too, as shelves can be shoved onto enemies, steam pipes burst to obscure sightlines, vents and rafters become secret routes for quiet takedowns, and soon you’re constantly scanning for ways to turn a space into a weapon that’s very Batman: Arkham in spirit, but less polished and more opportunistic in execution.

Even when things go wrong, and they will, you’re not just falling back on shooting, you’re still able to use Q tools mid-fight to blind someone with a watch laser, then steal their weapon and immediately flipping the situation, or just grabbing whatever’s nearby – mugs, telephones and office knick-knacks – and throwing it to daze an enemy and finish by throwing them through a glass door. The close combat itself is a simple mix of counters, punches, and grapples identified by a coloured glow, nothing truly original, but it works because everything around it is reactive, so you end up smashing someone’s head into a computer terminal or a desk or a wall-mounted bit of MI6 furniture, and it keeps fights feeling scrappy and physical rather than cinematic in a pre-scripted way. At this point, First Light has dropped the Arkham flow for something raw and clearly in-keeping with post-Bourne Conspiracy chaos.

Bond can also slow time – Bond time? – in moments of 'concentration' to focus shots, so you can shoot enemies in their legs to stumble them, hit their hands to drop weapons into Bond's lap, or just pop headshots with Bond-like precision. While at first you'll do the obvious – headshots – later it becomes apparent it's more economical to target environmental traps, such as shooting lighting rigs to bury encamped snipers. And IO again has fun with its combat setup, with some moments being cinematic spectacles and others being pared-back atmospheric struggles – a quarry fight has Bond unarmed and helpless, relying on mentor John Greenway to help him escape, but you can use smoke and debris to get the upper hand.

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007 fights back

Between these moments of social stealth and action are short Uncharted-like traversal sections that are almost deliberately restrained, with climbing sequences that stick to clearly readable routes mapped by yellow pipes and obvious ledges. There’s nothing too acrobatic or showy, and so can feel functional rather than escapist fun, but it works because it gives the game breathing space, room to tell its story, let characters interact and the world a chance to show its cinematic scenery; and then every so often you get a car sequence or a short driving beat, not many, and when they appear they feel like palate cleansers rather than a shift in genre, which is probably the right call, this never tries to be Forza Horizon with a tuxedo, thankfully.

The driving sequences, in particular, are here to enable this Bond to play off against the game’s supporting cast, such as a desert driving sequence in which he and mentor Greenway develop a begrudging friendship. It’s pure AAA cinematic spectacle that pulls all the levers: controlled vistas, the engine noise rolling under a swelling score and the tease of character development, and it’s in moments like this that you remember what IO is actually aiming for here, which isn’t just well-made stealth systems and shootouts tied to a license, but it’s that push and pull between elegance and violence that Bond is all about.

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While these cinematic moments may slow things up and upset pacing at times – there's a scene where you need to tie Bond's bow-tie – it does mean the version of Bond at the centre of all this actually changes in a way that feels earned. Patrick Gibson’s Bond begins as a cocky, somewhat smug hero, and slowly Fleming’s character emerges, driven by events, and confidence replaces swagger, loud and obvious youthful flirting becomes more observational and playful. He still carries that analogue attitude in a modern, tech-obsessed MI6 world, and in fact, it's core to the game’s story, because the game’s tech-obsessed villain is a mirror to Bond’s instinct-driven chaos. The third wheel in the story is ‘Bond Girl’ Isola Roth, a mystery who flirts in and out of events, who’s just unpredictable enough to stay compelling and always leave you guessing.

Bringing this balance of stealth, combat and character-driven setpieces is a visual masterclass in balance and excess – IO’s world is beautifully Bond-like and, in fact, the studio’s own house style of modern noir, coupled with glossy, shiny and opulent design, perfectly fits modern Bond. The game takes in grand stately homes, a Vietnam island paradise and the kind of hypertechnology that IO has become renowned for, its villain’s compounds in London and the Arctic are geometrically composed elegance, filled with reflective surfaces, marble, glass, stone, steel, and designer lighting; First Light’s London nightclubs, museums and streets are populated by crowds behaving in systemic ways and feature the studio’s love of harsh artificial lighting and sterile interiors.

IO isn't afraid to tear its world apart either, in the name of cinematic bombast, and much of it feels very on-brand for Bond, from escaping a sniper across a crashing crane Casino Royale style or a quarry chase where you smash it all up. Behind the excess, there are equally Bond-like moments, from the branding department's love of Omega watches and Jaguar Land Rover to cameos from stars like Lenny Kravitz as a golden desert pirate king, eating scenery as he dangles Bond over a crocodile pit, as you do. I had to smile too, as someone at Amazon Game Studios took all this a little too far by including the infamous Jaguar Type 00 concept car – a car so outrageous it somewhat breaks the realism, despite being a real thing.

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More than its inspirations

Once you finish the story, IO continues the world-building by introducing the Q simulator, letting you play new, short missions, push stealth routes, experiment with gadgets, and unlock suits, weapons, and gadgets, letting you toy around in First Light’s mix of improvised gameplay, distilled into bite-sized challenges. It’s the kind of add-on that means the game can dodge the criticism that narrative adventures lack the value of online games, as here these ever-more-difficult challenges have me hooked, partly because IO has brought its Hitman knowledge to designing tight encounter maps, but also because the foundations of First Light's combat and stealth are perfectly playable, even when unhooked from its cinematic story, the Arkham-meets-Hitman mashup shines.

There are issues, of course, you can feel the lineage in everything, whether it's Hitman in the systems, Arkham in the combat, Uncharted in the pacing, and occasionally it shows at the seams. But when the credits roll and the message “James Bond will return” pops up, all of those influences have combined into something new and unique to First Light. Because by the end, IO has managed to build a version of the character out of its own systems and with maturity, in a wonderfully glossy and realised world ripe for further exploration, and the end result is something that feels recognisably Bond and nuanced without ever needing to constantly remind you that it is, no matter the urge to name-check more well-loved theme songs.

Once it stops trying to introduce itself and just lets you play, 007 First Light becomes something more assured than I expected, a stealth-action Bond game that understands espionage and cinematic spectacle, and IO, for all the baggage that comes with expectations like this, has actually managed to make something that feels like it could grow into a proper Bond series rather than just a one-off experiment. Will James Bond return? I can’t wait, because IO Interactive has earned the right to take Bond wherever it wants to go.