Reviewing 007 First Light

TLDR: If you like the idea of playing as James Bond in a game that mixes stealth and action, in numerous cool environments with a strong forced direction, then you enjoy that game!

Over the last two weeks, I've gone through 007 First Light, which was unexpectedly a ton of fun. I had come across the game by chance and decided to give it a shot without reading up on it.

I only have a Mac, so to play, I purchased a subscription to GeForce Now. For the first time, I tried to connect the computer via HDMI to the TV, and I used an Ethernet cable to minimize latency. The result was incredibly good: 4K at 120 fps with a 13 ms latency.

This setup feels like the future of gaming, with fantastic performance for a super reasonable monthly price.

The game itself ended up having a lot more breadth than I expected. You're playing the start of James Bond's career, and this takes you through a multitude of environments. At the same time, you have different types of gameplay mixing investigation, stealth work, and full-on action with guns and fist fights.

Unsurprisingly, the diversity of the play modes leads to them never feeling absolutely perfect. The gun fights, for example, never really feel very precise, and you're lacking the controls of a more traditional shooter. But this isn't a major problem as you keep alternating between the different types of gameplay and never really get annoyed by some of those limitations.

My favorite aspect of the game by far was all the locations you get to visit and experience. The set pieces are grandiose and interesting. Multiple times I paused just to admire the scenery and all the details.

And it brings me to a realization: Some things can be fantastic in a video game but fail in a movie. Diversity in scenery is one of those things. Some modern movies do this by going around the world for no clear reason other than to show off. It feels lazy. But in a video game, it's not a problem and works quite well.

Being a James Bond game, you get to experience all the usual tropes of 007: the charming arrogance, witty remarks, the gadgets, the James Bond girls, the world-threatening villains, the cool British cars, etc. It reminded me of older movies, and it worked really well. It makes the game quite familiar.

Finally, what surprised me the most was the story [WARNING: HUGE SPOILER AHEAD]. We learn early on that the MI6 has been highly successful thanks to a quantum computer, and of course at that point it's clear that this computer will be critical to the story. I thought that was a bit too obvious and made the first part of the game less interesting as you are just waiting to figure out what the problem will be. However, the second half of the game (after Greenway's death) became very interesting as I wasn't expecting the game to go on. Actually, I thought twice that the game was finished, and it just kept going!

Overall, 007 First Light was a fun and enjoyable experience. I would recommend it!