‘007: First Light’ Review: From Amazon, With Love

‘007: First Light’ Review: From Amazon, With Love

Plot It’s all on the table for this one. Opens with a literal bang and never lets up. A reboot for the gamers, IO Interactive’s 007: First Light picks up with Bond pre-MI6. The plot doesn’t cover any new ground: a piece of intelligence hardware is up for grabs, and Bond has to chase it down across the globe. What is brand new for a 007 game is picking up with Bond during his shonen training arc. Players get to experience the smooth but tough-as-nails ‘jack of every trade’ that James Bond becomes in the movies. In perfect alignment with its advertising campaign, First Light invites players to #EarnTheNumbers.

Gameplay Somehow, First Light comes across as one of the smoothest third-person games I’ve played in a long time. The feel is a synthesis of every game before it. Scale, scope, and destructive environments of Uncharted. Traversal and map design of Jedi: Survivor. Streamlined ‘hacking’ with the utility of Cyberpunk 2077 and the diversity of Watchdogs. Scaffolded case building of the Hitman series. Combat that is basic but perfected, animation as slick as the Arkham series. Shoutout to Tom Marcham at IO Interactive, who was deeply inspired by Arkham’s ‘freeflow’ combat system. Stealth was very forgiving in ‘intermediate’ mode; I put several guards to sleep in direct line of sight of their homies and got away scot-free. The game feels good; the appropriate weight is applie…