‘007 First Light’ Review: A Frustratingly Linear and Frictionless James Bond Adventure

Every generation, James Bond is reborn, each time reflecting the zeitgeist of the times. Our last 007, Daniel Craig, began his run in Casino Royale, a film that was just as much about reinventing the character for a post-Batman Begins era of grounded and gritty pop-culture fixtures as it was a reflection of post-9/11 single-minded, revenge-minded masculinity.

So, it’s pretty apt that our new 007 comes to us courtesy of a mega-budget AAA video game, a smart-ass Zoomer Bond whose debut comes complete with a slinky Lana Del Rey theme song. Beginning his journey in 007 First Light with none of the advantages of his predecessors, the young British airman is on his way to an asset retrieval operation at a mercenary base in Iceland when his helicopter gets shot down. Cold, alone, and surrounded by armed thugs, he’s still grimly determined to save the people held hostage at base camp before even sparing a single thought for the top-secret asset that MI6 would rather he didn’t destroy in the process.

To the extent that First Light acts as a new-media proving ground for the younger Bond, Patrick Gibson earns his 007 status in no time. More than even Craig, Gibson plays the spy as a fleet-footed smooth operator who has no time for strict adherence to procedure and how it’s colored by Brit stodginess. He’s perfectly happy to jettison any parts of the process of his new line of work that he knows amount of procedural busywork to get to what truly matters.

The game built around Gibson is designed with similar purpose in mind. As much time as First Light spends during the Iceland prologue getting players acclimated to Bond and easing them into the stealth-action mechanics, most of Bond’s training is handled in a no-nonsense interactive montage, with players forced to switch from gunplay, to close-quarters combat, to defensive driving with a breakneck pace that puts the average WarioWare title to shame.

After First Light’s first serious—and pretty exciting—recon mission at a chess tournament in a Slovakian hotel goes horribly awry, Gibson’s Bond is saddled with a heavy case of survivor’s guilt. Forced to turn all his hate and depression into a sense of justice, he matures and smartens up about what the job will eventually do to him in record time, and finds himself turning his sneering contempt for his enemies into shrewd, unbreakable determination.

One of the more stressful but smartly executed tasks in the game involves the player having to balance Bond’s health so he can survive a grade-A ass-kicking from a villain, all just to keep a target close enough for Moneypenny (Kiera Lester) to hack a target’s phone. All the while, Bond’s gift for biting taunts and spitting venom gets put to good use.

Pity, then, that First Light largely waters down all of the complexity that IOI Interactive has come to be known for through Hitman, and with cinematic action redolent of Uncharted. That’s an obvious, even acceptable creative choice on paper. Hitman’s mechanics translate well to a James Bond experience, goosed up with a few out-there devices from Q Branch, but there’s a clear separation out in the field between the game signposting when you’re meant to be sneaky, when you’re meant to be punchy, and when you’re supposed to run for your life.

The enemies during the more spy-focused stretches of the game are programmed to be just dumb enough to not discourage a punchy solution to many of Bond’s problems. That leads to dissonance. The plot leads Bond into situations where staying under the radar is of paramount importance, but there are no consequences to Bond getting in full-blown fistfights with enemies 10 feet away. Unless you’re in plain sight, Bond’s enemies never flinch, keeping what can be generously understood as a British stiff upper lip as their friends get absolutely bodied.

When players have full control, Bond’s brain rarely feels as effective as his fists and his guns. While that makes the game much more accessible for players to bumble their way through the campaign, it turns Bond into a blunt instrument when, most of the time, the setup during cutscenes for his missions emphasize the demand for a surgical tool. When it doesn’t, the stutter-start approach to problems that require spycraft is awkward.

There’s a stretch of the game set in a heavily guarded shipyard that feels like a deliberate riff on a level from Uncharted 3. In that game, the shipyard’s eeriness gives way to chaotic bursts of explosions and violence. By contrast, First Light’s proceeds from beginning to end at a snail’s pace, with Bond bluffing his way past guards who don’t seem prone to further investigation when a colleague starts screaming about taking a laser to his corneas.

The level’s energy briefly kicks into overdrive when mercenaries show up in the next room, only to slow down to a crawl once Bond passes through a door into another room. Where films tend to fill quiet moments with character revelations, in this game where sound unrealistically doesn’t travel very far, we tend to get climbing puzzles, and they can feel like a slog.

There’s an argument to be made that, as an interactive introduction to the man who could be Bond on the big screen going forward, making his first adventure as frictionless as possible can only help his chances of winning over hearts and minds early. But being a highly trained super-spy should feel more intricate than being Nathan Drake does, and every time that First Light tries to be that, it feels half-hearted. It particularly pales in comparison to what challenges we’ve seen IOI Interactive design for Agent 47. It makes First Light into a collection of mechanical ingredients that shake and stir but never truly mix the way they should.

This game was reviewed with a code provided by fortyseven communications.