007 First Light review: a playable but flawed Bond movie
007 First Light, developed by IO Interactive the studio behind the Hitman World of Assassination trilogy tries to do something genuinely ambitious: turn James Bond into an interactive film. Not a game with cutscenes. A playable film. That’s a different ask, and the results are mixed.
The story follows a young Bond being recruited into MI6’s rebooted 00 program, with the return of former agent 009 a mole whose actions ended the program years earlier — forcing everything into crisis. The cutscenes are long. The gaps between them involve a rotating cast of gameplay styles.
Gameplay: pick a genre, any genre
First Light cycles through four distinct modes: an adventure game where Bond moves through open environments gathering clues and working social puzzles; stealth sections that feel like a stripped-down Metal Gear V; hand-to-hand brawling that starts frustratingly shallow and only opens up once you have the full toolkit; and improvised third-person gunfights where ammo is scarce and gadgets are single-use.
When these elements come together, the combat genuinely clicks. Bond is always in motion, using whatever is available in the next five seconds. Getting there requires suffering through the early hours, which are rough.
The bow tie scene
The game’s best moment happens mid-level. After Bond has shot approximately seven thousand people and charmed the world’s wealthiest women, he has to tie his very first bow tie. Q written here as a “Distinguished Gentleman Dandy,” which is a genuinely great choice walks him through a 20-step QTE that just keeps going.
It’s the version of Bond that First Light is clearly reaching for: Shenmue meets Heavy Rain, where the action beats sit alongside Bond sipping his martini and flicking a lighter. Those moments land. There just aren’t enough of them.
Where it loses the thread
The game’s core problem is tonal whiplash. The dialogue lives squarely in the post-Daniel Craig era — weary spies, two-faced politicians, the meaninglessness of patriotic sacrifice. Then it pivots to Roger Moore territory where logic is optional and things just happen. The main plot runs about fifteen hours and stretches past its natural ending. Characters escape a skyscraper in a helicopter chase and immediately hold a somber conversation about spycraft in a Central London park, next to the helicopter they just casually landed there.
The villain is forgettable. The Bond Girl barely registers as a character. These are classic Bond problems, so your mileage may vary.
What works
The buddy cop dynamic between young Bond and his hostile instructor John Greenway is the emotional core, and it’s exactly what it says on the box. You can predict every beat of their arc from the character description alone. The game knows that and doesn’t try to subvert it. It’s the hits, delivered straight.
The post-game TacSim VR missions are where IO’s strengths as systemic sandbox designers finally get room to breathe. If the whole game felt like that, it would be something special.
Score: 7/10
First Light is too expensive for what it delivers, smarter than it should be in places, and dumber than you want it to be in others. IO pushed their strengths to the margins to chase the prestige cinematic format, and you can feel the compromise throughout. But the individual pieces work. It’s a fun weekend with Bond just not the systemic playground they’re actually good at building.