007 First Light PC review — Strange déjà vu

While playing 007 First Light, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of familiarity. The game definitely has impressive production values and is undoubtedly put together well, but you can recognise the components it’s made up of with relative ease. The infiltrations include Hitman, the cover-based third-person shooting, and fisticuffs that you can often choose to play. This, paired with simple stealth highly akin to Uncharted 4, and the gadget usage to hack objects and interact with various things, is extremely reminiscent of Ubisoft games such as Watch Dogs and even Star Wars: Outlaws. The result is still an enjoyable game, but it very much feels like a greatest hits collection made up of other games.

For starters, this is a linear game that focuses on its story first and foremost. Thankfully, its story is one of its strongest aspects, with a pretty decent plot that I appreciated for being not only openly anti-AI, but also anti-AI companies as well. Bond is mostly likable, as is his instructor Greenway. The ball is dropped on building up some of the supporting cast (characters who we get a bit attached to are side-lined and vanish from the story quickly), and the narrative is often a bit too familiar (the general plot is a bit too much like The World is Not Enough), but everything works well enough.

As for the individual gameplay components, 007 First Light tends to drop you into environments and task you with walking around looking for interaction prompts. You’ll highlight these with your special watch, and it functions much like detective vision in any other game. You can get intel by eavesdropping, you can pickpocket items, find entry points, and more. These are improved by the fact that you have a few different ways of accomplishing various tasks, but it’s all mostly pretty basic. The highlight of these sections is when Bond has to make a bunch of money to get into an arms dealer’s auction.

There are two major options to make money, but you can also pickpocket a few grand or take part in a shooting gallery, sleight of hand game, or bet on fights. You can’t do all of this in one go, so there is a bit of replay value. Still, these sections are a far cry from the similar ones in Hitman, which were a lot more open and varied. When you’re not going about these, you’ll often be sneaking. The stealth here is quite dated, though. It works well enough, but it’s nothing that won’t be incredibly familiar, as it’s not much different from games that have been coming out since the early 2010s.

While sneaking, you’ll be able to hack to create distractions or use gadgets, such as a dart that makes whoever gets hit by it feel ill. You can even use smoke grenades and other such items, which you can choose prior to certain missions. If the situation goes awry, you can punch your way out, too. The combat is pretty simple, albeit satisfying, especially because it lets you use the environment as you see fit. You can throw enemies over surfaces and railings, and initiating a grab near a wall, and whatnot, will allow Bond to slam their heads into it until they go night-night.

Combat uses a parry system similar to the Arkham games, but you can also make use of Bond’s gadgets (also similar-ish to the Arkham games), although the relative simplicity of the fighting definitely does feel more akin to Uncharted 4, as I said, which isn’t necessarily a knock against this game, as that one is the best in its series in my opinion. Unlike that game, you can’t go guns blazing whenever you feel like it, as Bond can only pull his firearm when enemies display an intent to kill, so getting caught will often mean just fist-fighting.

There are shooting sections, too, of course. It’s perfectly competent cover-based third-person shooting. It feels good and is quite satisfying, but it’s not all that different from the many games inspired by Gears of War. The guns feel powerful and are fun to use, but this is very much a game about switching back and forth between gameplay styles, as there’s simply not enough depth to any one discipline to warrant any sort of focus. There are simulator missions you can choose to undertake that allow a bit more leeway, but most of these are unlocked by completing the game.

There’s even some driving here and there, which is all well and good, although these sections do feel very on-rails. They’re exciting and play well enough, but they’re also rather infrequent and more used so that characters can have a conversation while you drive or as part of a big set-piece section. There are fewer of these than I thought, and most of them didn’t blow me away, save for one early on with an airplane that was very, very much like something out of a Bond movie. If anything, I wish there were more of these.

The game takes about a dozen hours or so, and you do unlock most of the simulator missions upon completion, so there’s a good bit more to do, plus there are collectibles to find here and there. The game runs very well on PC, too, which surprised me given how high-quality its presentation is. 007 First Light likely won’t blow many people away, but it’s an enjoyable way to spend a dozen or so hours. It just isn’t particularly ambitious or unique in most ways.

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