007 First Light Could Be The Best Bond Game Since 'GoldenEye', We Played It
After over three hours in 007 First Light’s preview build, I’ve come away even more excited for the full release.
The three-and-a-half hour preview took us through three missions from the full game: the opening prologue in Iceland, an MI6 training section in Malta which acts as the game’s tutorial, and a larger mission set in Kensington blending open-ended sandbox design with linear action and stealth segments.
Kicking off with Iceland, intended as the game’s “pre-title sequence” that nearly all James Bond movies begin with, Bond is presented as an air crewman whose plane comes under fire and is downed off the coast of Iceland.
Narrowly escaping capture and death, Bond’s comms are intercepted by an MI6 handler, and he is thrown into a mission to gather intel that will help MI6 identify the enemy faction that attacked him. It’s also here that he must free some hostages being held in a camp, presenting you with a miniature version of the sandbox gameplay you’ll come to expect in later missions.
Advert
It’s pretty clear from the get-go that despite not being a 00 agent yet, this is the Bond that we’ll come to know and love. He’s got charm, intelligence, and enough reckless abandon to throw himself into a situation against impossible odds. In just 25 minutes, IO Interactive perfectly establishes his character with all the familiar traits of his book and film counterparts.
Bond As An Origin Story
Following the end of the prologue comes the opening title sequence, featuring an original song, ‘First Light’, performed by Lana Del Rey that was released a couple of weeks ago. I must admit, I wasn’t as impressed by this song when I heard it in isolation, but after experiencing it in-game following a rather enjoyable action set-piece and seeing the title sequence in full, it’s definitely growing on me.
After this, we’re sent to Malta where Bond is in training to become an MI6 00 agent. It’s clear that his actions in Iceland left a huge impression on the higher-ups, and he’s selected to be fast-tracked through training so he can enter active duty.
The Malta sequence acts as more of an extended tutorial, but it doesn’t waste time in hitting you with prompt after prompt to teach you the basics. Instead, you can take what you picked up in the earlier Iceland prologue and apply it to a fast-paced obstacle course where you’re given several routes and options in order to reach a flag. You’re being timed while you do this, and it’s recommended you play this sequence a few times to get to grips with the various systems and mechanics that’ll crop up in the later levels.
Finally, the third mission took me through Kensington, a level that takes place a little while later in the story, and features a variety of set pieces that are a mix of short, linear sections and more open, sandbox-type levels which give you multiple routes to play through.
Although I can’t spoil too much about what happens in this mission, it opens with Bond being attacked in his home flat, before moving to a glamorous social event at a museum in the heart of Kensington, and ending with a daring escape from the mission’s antagonist that culminates in Bond commandeering a bin lorry and driving it through the streets of London in a set piece not too far divorced from the famous tank scene in GoldenEye.
IO Interactive Has Learned From Its Long History Of Making Hitman
Bond has gone to the museum tracking down an individual he believes is involved in the attack, and when security proves to be rather unhelpful, you must resort to sneaking behind the scenes to find CCTV footage of the perpetrator. Hitman fans will be immediately familiar with the gameplay loop here. Bond has to reach a specific location, but the building is large enough to offer multiple routes of entry.
In my session, I elected to sneak through the back rooms of the building and crawl through a big vent to make it upstairs. Instead of pinching a keycard to get access to the camera room, I decided to climb up around the outside and make my way over to the skylight located above the area I needed to be at.
Read More: Why 007 First Light's Bond Might Be The Best One
Following this, I had to make my way into the basement, and I ended up being caught by one guard who was patrolling the area. Luckily, Bond’s a charmer, and the quick-witted bluff mechanic came in handy here where I was able to trick the guard by saying I was here to fix the broken-down coffee machine, a piece of intel I’d picked up while eavesdropping earlier. This mechanic uses a consumable system which you can recharge by collecting intel, so you can’t just abuse it to fly through trespassing areas, but it is incredibly useful if you find yourself in a bind and need to talk your way out of a situation.
In the full game, Bond will have access to many different gadgets from Q-Branch, but the selection was a little smaller in the preview build I played. Using these gadgets, Bond can mess with different electronic devices, such as disabling a camera or activating various machines to distract enemies.
He also has a built-in dart weapon which can temporarily stun enemy guards so they don’t see you perform an illegal action. It also has a feature which makes them sick, which works very similarly to the emetic poison system of Hitman: World of Assassination where affected NPCs will leave their post to find a bin or toilet to throw up in. Incredibly useful for isolating guards who have a key item you need to collect, such as a keycard or piece of intel.
Much later in the Kensington level, Bond’s cover is blown and security was called in to deal with me. At this point, guards are patrolling each area, and I had to keep to the shadows and sneak my way around to escape. Guards became harder to bluff, and it was more a case of utilising Q’s gadgets to take advantage of the situation.
These sections were a lot more linear than previously, but still offered me a great deal of freedom in how to tackle each space. If I had to compare it to something IO Interactive had done earlier, I’d liken these sections to Hitman: Absolution’s action sequences (like the “Run For Your Life” and “Hunter And Hunted” sections from that game), where you adopt either a stealthy approach or put up fisticuffs. If you can get ahold of a firearm, you can even use it if the enemy has decided to shoot to kill, where you’ll be alerted by a “Licence to Kill” prompt that you can now engage in armed combat.
Licence To Thrill
Speaking of combat, I’m extremely impressed by how well IO Interactive has implemented action into 007 First Light. With Hitman, it felt like hand-to-hand combat and shooting was more of an afterthought. A way to play the game, but not necessarily a fun way to do it. The controls felt a little off and enemy AI wasn’t necessarily built with ranged combat in mind.
But for Bond, it’s clear that he’s more of a man of action than Agent 47, so IO has had to revitalise this to feel more fluid and responsive to your actions. In melee, Bond can punch, block, and dodge incoming attacks. He throws bad guys around the room and can even throw nearby heavy objects to stun them. It’s chaotic, but pulling off a series of combos feels incredibly satisfying. The animations are fluid, and your actions between each combo flow really nicely to make it feel exciting and cinematic, but not overly-dramatised.
IO Interactive didn’t confirm to me how many levels are in the full game, nor how long 007 First Light would take to beat. But looking at context clues I found in the game’s menus, I reckon there are about 15 missions overall. But considering missions vary between around 30 minutes to over two hours to complete, I'd say we’re probably looking at somewhere in the ballpark of 20–30 hours to complete the story.
But that’s also not factoring in replayability, something that IO Interactive embraced incredibly well with Hitman. The amount of bonus content in the Hitman games stretched a 30-hour campaign out into several hundred hours, and it’s possible the same could occur here.
Each mission has multiple routes, using a spycraft system very close to IO Interactive’s trademark open-ended sandbox design approach. This is where you pickpocket key items, eavesdrop on crucial information, or bluff your way through restricted areas in order to reach your objective. It’s incredibly similar to Hitman’s Mission Stories, where these alternate routes give you a reason to replay missions using new tactics.
In addition to that, modifiers can also be applied to each mission which shake things up with new mission parameters, additional objectives, or more enemies located throughout the space. It’ll give you a reason to check out the missions at least a few more times, allowing you to play through familiar environments in fresh ways.
As someone with over 3,000 hours in the Hitman games, and also hugely into the Bond movies, I never assumed that IO Interactive would fumble the licence. But I never realised just how much I'm up for a new James Bond game, so long after the last one was released. I even think this may be the best one since GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64.
I’m already excited to jump in and play some more to see if the rest of the game matches what I’ve played so far, and it’s reassuring to know that at least I won’t have to wait long to do that.
007 First Light releases on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S on 27 May, 2026. A Nintendo Switch 2 version is also planned for later in the year.
Topics: James Bond, PlayStation 5, Features, Preview, PC, Xbox