007 First Light is an emotional rollercoaster—and hopefully the prologue of a fantastic trilogy
When I first heard of 007 First Light, I didn’t know what to expect. Time went on, and we started seeing clips of Bond bluffing, sneaking, or blowing up his way through levels, with the game promising versatility and limitless, emergent gameplay just waiting for you around every corner. And boy, did all of that come true.
The game took me some 15 hours to complete, so much longer than I anticipated. A game like this, prioritizing cinematic movie-like action sequences and flashy scenes, usually doesn’t cross the 10-hour mark for a full playthrough. But James Bond’s latest foray into video games doesn’t leave too soon and invites you to join him on adventures of both professional and personal types.
There’s everything you expect from James Bond: cars, explosions, fancy gadgets, sexy women in distress, sexier women causing distress to the protagonist, evil masterminds, and political commentary. Emotions run high, the stakes are absolute. The game asks you to invest yourself and delivers a complete rollercoaster of a story, but not one without catharsis. Every investment pays off in the end, whether at the closure of an individual chapter or at the game’s very last moment.
You, as the player, must embody a young James Bond, still inexperienced in many ways and learning the ropes of international spycraft, where even the smallest mistake can cost him his life and probably that of many innocent civilians. Emergent gameplay in 007 takes liberal inspiration from IOI’s previous Hitman games, allowing you to experiment and figure out unique ways of approaching each situation.
You can either venture out looking for solutions alone or drop in on conversations uninvited to see what information you can extract. Then, you do with that info whatever you want. Ignore it? Perfectly fine. Or follow the thread, and it’ll take you perhaps into another potential solution, letting you pivot and abandon the first one.
It’s an incredible game in this regard. Things can just suddenly happen, and the game will ask you to solve them or involve yourself with them to the extent you wish. There is some repetitiveness to the story and the gameplay, but with just how many options you get with each assignment, it truly lets you roleplay as a spy inconspicuously gathering intel and working it into your current mission.
There are also plenty of dialogue choices within cutscenes that’ll lead to somewhat different outcomes, but this is no RPG, so don’t expect butterfly effects to echo down the line. That would’ve been awesome, though, but alas, this is an action-adventure game and not the new Baldur’s Gate 3.
One thing I would love to see 007 First Light do is take the Hitman: World of Assassination approach and start getting standalone missions or one-off assignments that’ll let us take control of Bond once again. There’s TacSim, but it’s not as exciting as proper narrative assignments would be, though with IOI’s previous track record with updates, I remain stoked to see what’ll come to 007 in the future.
Some of you reading this would think this is a review. It’s not. We didn’t get a code for the game, unfortunately, and we weren’t the only ones. But it would’ve been a shame not to say a word or two about this amazing title, because I wholeheartedly believe everyone should play through it at least once.
It’s just that good.
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