IO Interactive spent years making us feel like assassins in the Hitman trilogy. With 007 First Light, they've done something far more difficult — they've made us feel like Bond. And nowhere is that more apparent than in the stealth gameplay, which sits at the beating heart of this remarkable origin story.
The Art of Being Bond
From the moment young James Bond steps into MI6's reactivated Double-0 programme, the game makes one thing abundantly clear: brute force is always the last resort. The stealth system here isn't the rigid, punishment-heavy variety that sends you back to a checkpoint the moment you're spotted. It's fluid, forgiving in the right ways, and — crucially — it feels like Bond. Slipping through a crowded Maltese training compound, reading enemy patrol patterns, and finding the one perfectly timed window to move is deeply satisfying, and IO Interactive frames every successful infiltration like a scene straight out of Casino Royale.
Shadows and Swagger
What separates First Light from other stealth games is its layered approach to going unseen. You're not just hiding in darkness or crouching behind cover — you're bluffing your way past guards, manipulating conversations, and using the environment with genuine creativity. Sneaking through a luxurious hotel feels completely different from navigating a crowded market or a hidden intelligence facility, and each location has been designed with enough verticality and variety to reward patient, observant players. The game constantly whispers possibilities at you — a fire exit here, a disguise there, an air duct you almost missed — and it trusts you to put them together.
The social stealth elements deserve special recognition. Bond isn't a silent ghost; he talks, he charms, he bluffs under pressure. Certain sequences let you talk your way through security rather than sneak past it, and these moments are some of the most memorable in the game. It's the closest any Bond game has come to capturing that cocktail-party-as-battlefield energy the films do so well.
Improvisation Is Everything
First Light never lets stealth feel like a rigid puzzle with one correct solution. When a plan unravels — and it will — Bond adapts, and the game adapts with him. A blown cover doesn't necessarily mean a failed mission; it means a different kind of mission. You might find yourself improvising a window escape, using the environment to create chaos and slip away in the confusion, or pulling a guard into a chokehold before anyone notices. That constant tension between careful planning and on-the-fly improvisation is where First Light truly shines, and it's what makes replaying missions feel worthwhile.
Where It Stumbles
The stealth isn't flawless. Enemy AI, while generally strong, can occasionally behave inconsistently — a guard who spotted you two seconds ago will sometimes lose interest with little explanation, which can deflate tension at key moments. Melee takedowns, while functional, feel slightly clunkier than the rest of the experience and lack the snappy polish you'd hope for. And while the visuals are largely gorgeous, some texture pop-in is hard to ignore, particularly in the more dense, open environments.
The Final Word
These are small complaints in the context of what 007 First Light achieves. IO Interactive has built a stealth-action game that doesn't just borrow Bond's name — it understands his soul. The patience, the improvisation, the style, the danger. Every time you slip through a room undetected, neutralise a threat without a sound, and walk calmly out the other side adjusting your cufflinks, the game earns its licence all over again.
The best Bond game ever made. And it isn't close.
9.5 / 10