007 First Light

I'm not really a Bond person. I've seen some of the films, and that's about it. I picked up 007 First Light because IO Interactive made it (the studio behind the modern Hitman trilogy, which I enjoyed) and because the gameplay reveal at Sony's State of Play sold me on the spot.

007 First Light is a third-person action-adventure from IO Interactive. It catches Bond before he becomes 007. Here, he's a 26-year-old Royal Navy air crewman recruited into MI6's newly revived 00 programme, with the campaign following the events that eventually earn him the number. He's sharp, resourceful and already dangerous. What he's still learning is restraint, and who to trust. The story around him is cleverly written, full of sharp one-liners, and carried by a strong cast. I stayed engaged the whole way through, which doesn't always happen.

You don't need to know much about Bond going in. This is as much an introduction to the character as it is an origin story.

The easiest way to describe how the game plays is Hitman meets Uncharted. That comparison gets thrown around a lot in reviews.

The Hitman influence shows itself whenever First Light gives you a larger space to work through. You enter, take stock of the environment and slowly work out how to reach wherever Bond needs to be. There are usually several routes forward, and often more than one way to deal with whatever is standing in your path. Anyone familiar with IO Interactive's World of Assassination trilogy will settle into the rhythm quickly. First Light even carries over some of the arcade-like silliness that made those games so much fun to mess around with. Its characters may take the situation seriously, but the systems are still happy to let things become slightly ridiculous.

It's much more directed than Hitman, though. You're given room to explore, but rarely enough to completely lose yourself in a location. The game is always pulling you towards its next story beat. First Light is trying to tell a continuous Bond story anyway.

The one odd omission for Hitman players: there's no body-hiding mechanic.

It doesn't break the stealth, but it feels strange when so much else is built on the same foundation. Taking down a guard quietly and then having no choice but to leave him sprawled across the floor never stopped feeling a little wrong.

The action side is where First Light steps away from Hitman entirely. The World of Assassination games never really asked you to fight. In First Light, combat is a proper system, and it's good. It's more layered than anything in the recent games. You're chaining punches, dodging, grabbing, throwing enemies into walls and furniture, and using environmental objects mid-fight.

Gunplay sits alongside all that. You can slow time to line up headshots, grab a guard's weapon and use it in the same motion, or throw an empty gun at someone's head and close the distance for a melee finisher.

First Light also knows when to go big. Some sequences lean fully into blockbuster spectacle, throwing Bond through the kind of escalating, tightly controlled chaos associated with the Uncharted games. They're paced well within the campaign and they give the game its sense of scale.

Visually, First Light is a clear step up from the World of Assassination trilogy. Character models, environments, and lighting have all improved noticeably. It doesn't quite reach the very top tier of what's out there in 2026, but it's a good-looking game, and the locations are varied and well-realised. There were some technical rough spots, like texture pop-in and a few bugs at launch that have since been patched. But nothing that pulled me out of the experience for long.

From what I understand, this is the first Bond game to try an origin story. That's not a small thing to attempt with a character who has been fully formed for over sixty years, and whose whole appeal rests on being the most capable person in the room. Handing players a version who's still earning that could easily have felt like a lesser Bond. The gamble paid off. The response has been positive from both new and longtime fans, with an 87 on Metacritic at the time of writing and almost no negative reviews.

I came to First Light because of IO Interactive and left curious about Bond. That's a strange thing for a licensed game to manage. If someone were to ask me where to start with the character, I just might point them to this before the films.

‍

PC Optimized Settings

Digital Foundry recommends starting with the console-equivalent quality settings and adjusting from there. For the full breakdown, see Digital Foundry's PC review and optimised settings guide.