After a nearly 15-year absence, James Bond video games have returned with the release of 007 First Light, the first official Bond game since 2012’s lacklustre 007 Legends.
Best known for the Hitman series, IO Interactive seemed like a surprising choice when it was handed the James Bond game licence. However, they were the perfect choice for this assignment. 007 First Light captures the essence of being Bond better than any game before it, fusing stealth, shooting and driving.
Licence to thrill
Helping plug the long gap between the James Bond films, 007 First Light tells an origin story featuring a younger Bond training to become a 00 agent at MI6.
The story is well-executed. There’s an obligatory title sequence with an original song by Lana Del Rey, some surprise twists and turns and a superb voice cast. Patrick Gibson does a commendable job portraying a younger version of Bond who is charismatic and never short of a witty one-liner, yet has a vulnerable side. Lennie James is another highlight as Bond’s wise mentor, John Greenway.
Most missions emphasise stealth. Taking cues from Uncharted, there are the usual tropes of hiding from enemies in tall grass, climbing on cliff edges with conveniently coloured rocks and squeezing through narrow passageways disguising the loading screens.
But when you’re blending with impressively large crowds of NPCs or bluffing your way past guards into no-access areas, you feel like Bond.
Fortunately, if everything goes wrong and the enemies spot you, you can usually punch or shoot your way out of a situation. Combat is satisfying, with the ability to parry and throw enemies into destructible objects.
Shootouts, meanwhile, are suitably scrappy. Ammo is scarce, forcing you to keep moving and swap weapons. In a nice touch, you can even throw your gun at enemies in desperate situations. Fittingly, you can only shoot and kill enemies if they are a direct threat to you, which grants you a licence to kill.
Aiding the combat is an arsenal of gadgets, from your trusty Q watch to a missile pen. There’s plenty of fan service as you explore an interactive Q Branch before each mission, where you can mess around with gadgets being tested, including a Triumph motorcycle with a flamethrower.
Chasing cars
Driving missions are a staple of James Bond games, particularly during the EA era, with titles like Agent Under Fire, Nightfire and Everything or Nothing. There was even a dedicated Bond driving game with the PlayStation’s 007 Racing – but the less said about that, the better.
007 First Light continues this tradition, but the vehicular missions are its weakest aspect.
Early in the game, you complete a series of training missions in Malta, seamlessly switching between missions in a film-style montage.
One mission has you setting a lap time around a training course in a sleek Aston Martin DBS. There’s even a reference to Casino Royale, as supporting character Cressida reveals it’s a 2006 model that has “seen some real-life action back in her day.”
Sadly, this is the only time you get to drive the supercar in the campaign, with the sequence lasting only a couple of minutes. This is a recurring theme. It was never going to be the primary focus, but the driving segments are all too brief.
A few missions later, the main driving set piece puts you behind the wheel of another Aston Martin in a high-speed chase. Except it’s not the DB5. That would be too predictable.
Instead, 007 First Light’s star car is a 1970s Aston Martin DBS. Bond aficionados will recognise it as the car from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, but with a mustard paint job paying homage to Roger Moore’s car in The Pretenders.
First seen in Sony’s State of Play presentation last year, the action-packed scene sees Bond chasing down rogue agent 009 escaping in a Jaguar XK on cobbled streets and winding roads in Slovakia.
Driving is new territory for developer IO Interactive, which perhaps explains why the car handling feels serviceable at best. They may be licensed cars, but they don’t drive realistically.
Controlling the DBS feels floaty, and while it’s easy to slide the rear out, the excessive grip means it’s virtually impossible to spin out. It’s too forgiving, but it makes you feel like Bond behind the wheel, which is the point.
The DBS takes a lot of punishment, from driving down stairs and smashing through fruit carts to jumping on a conveniently placed truck ramp. It’s an enjoyable sequence overall, even if it doesn’t reach the heights of Uncharted 4’s outstanding Jeep chase in Madagascar.
Ultimately, it’s a small part of a multi-part pursuit sequence. The car chase lasts roughly five minutes before the scene escalates into a fight on top of a moving cargo plane, culminating in a jaw-dropping free-fall sequence. It’s easily the standout set piece in the game.
No time to drive
Teased in the pre-launch marketing, the Aston Martin Valhalla also makes a brief but memorable appearance. If you were hoping to drive the mid-engine supercar in a high-speed chase to redeem its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo in No Time to Die, prepare to be disappointed.
Earlier in the game, the Valhalla is displayed under covers at Q Branch, restricted to 00 agents only. After a lot of build up, the Valhalla is accessed towards the end of the final mission, but you can only drive it in a restricted area while blasting enemies with its mounted machine guns and missiles.
It handles like a tank, with a short turning circle that lets you effortlessly do doughnuts while shooting enemies, like in the opening scene of No Time to Die. Coupled with the theme kicking in, it’s a pure Bond moment.
This fits the narrative during a pivotal moment in the story and Bond’s character arc. And yet not including an action-packed driving sequence with the Valhalla feels like a missed opportunity. It also means there are no car chases with gadget-laden cars in 007 First Light, which is a staple of Bond.
Thankfully, IO Interactive has confirmed the supercar will feature in an upcoming Valhalla Protocol TacSim training mission, so there’s hope yet that we’ll get to drive the Aston Martin’s hybrid supercar.
Looks like a Jaguar
Beyond the Aston Martin scenes, there are a handful of short, slower-paced driving sections featuring Jaguar Land-Rover vehicles, another brand associated with Bond, throughout the campaign.
The Aston Martin DBS chase mission opens with Bond infiltrating a hotel hosting a chess tournament as a chauffeur driving a Jaguar XJ. The luxury saloon is playable and accurately modelled, but you can only drive it on a linear path.
This lack of freedom is particularly noticeable in a mission where you drive a Range Rover Sport SVR through traffic-clogged London streets, with the game automatically correcting your steering if you stray off the path.
Previewing what a new-generation XJ could look like, the Jaguar Type 00 also makes a surprise cameo as a background car in another mission.
This isn’t the only example of gratuitous car product placement. Another mission has you driving a Land Rover Defender and a classic Series II across an African desert. Helpfully, Greenway always refers to them as “the Land Rover” to remind us about the brand.
Curiously, vehicles handle more convincingly in these slower driving scenes. While driving up steep inclines and across off-road terrain, the SUVs have a tangible sense of weight and suspension.
Elsewhere, a more action-packed driving sequence sees Bond improvise, stealing a bin lorry to escape an ambush and smashing through a London shopping centre.
Ultimately, the driving missions are short but sweet. Nevertheless, 007 First Light is a strong return to form, harkening back to the golden era of James Bond games. Hopefully, this won’t be IO Interactive’s last Bond game, because nobody does it better now.
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