007: First Light review: From Denmark with love

Let me be up front: I'm not a huge James Bond fan. I've seen Daniel Craig's good movies, Austin Powers, and essentially nothing else. When 007: First Light was first announced, I was hooked not by the IP attached, but the pedigree of the developer chosen to handle it. Danish developer IO Interactive's Hitman games — specifically its more recent 'World of Assassination' trilogy — are some of my favorite games ever made and my favorite stealth games, full stop.

More than a few moments in those games felt like soft auditions for a full-on Bond experience anyway. Give Agent 47 a wig, and tell me weaving through buildings in sunny seaside Italy or rubbing shoulders with the world's elite at a skyscraper party above the clouds don't instantly become scenes from an imaginary Bond movie. If there was an ideal "formula" for a Bond game, IOI had it nailed long before they were ever handed the keys to the Aston Martin.

Fittingly, then, 007: First Light plays like Hitman given a shot of adrenaline. Sprawling, best-in-class level design and robust social stealth systems to help you maneuver through those levels make it over more or less unchanged. More or less, that is: Agent 47's incredibly improbable disguises are out, but Bond's people skills more than fill the gap. Improved guard AI and a more localized approach to alerts when you inevitably mess something up are also welcome improvements. Bond can fluidly and dynamically go from pickpocketing key cards to sneaking through air ducts to taking on a squad of guards with the game's brilliantly brutal close combat to smooth-talking the reinforcements. He just found them like this, officer. Honest.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Bond game without a set piece or two. All of the death-defying stunts you'd expect from a Bond film are here — and more, since they don't have to put an actual actor in mortal danger. If you've played any of the Hitman games, put that clunky, vestigial combat out of your mind. Mercifully, Bond moves more like Nathan Drake than Agent 47 in a firefight. That said, the pace of combat is even more frenetic than Uncharted. When you are forced to fight, you're often up against dozens of henchmen at once. Limited, destructible cover and Bond's tiny ammo reserves force you to take the offensive, chaining together gadgets, environmental hazards, and stylish, weapon-grabbing takedowns to elevate your destructive potential far beyond what one man should be able to achieve. It took me a few tries to get used to, so don't make my mistake: this is not a cover shooter. If you're not charging headlong into danger, can you truly call yourself a secret agent?

Actually, that's a question Bond concerns himself with quite a bit. First Light bills itself as a James Bond origin story, giving us an even greener take on the character than 2006's Casino Royale. He's not quite the international man of mystery audiences know and love, but the seeds are there throughout. Despite ostensibly taking place in the real world, IOI weren't afraid of including every silly Bond-ism there is. Over the course of the roughly 15-hour story, you'll encounter identical twin hitmen, missile-launching pens, killer robots, and more. Add in a range of extremely strong character performances and a timely cautionary tale about AI, and you have a story worthy of the movies. To say nothing of Bond's repertoire of one-liners.

The comparison I've seen bandied about the most is that "First Light is like Hitman and Uncharted combined." While that's not wholly inaccurate, I'd argue it cooks something new with those ingredients. It's not wholly a stealth game or an action game, and neither of its core pillars could support an entire game on their own, but First Light is at its best when it's treading the line. It lives in that ebb-and-flow of infiltration to action and back again. It's a feat in itself that it feels as seamless as it does.

It's unlikely you'll get more than 25 or so hours of it even if you do decide to go back and complete all the challenges you missed in your initial run. Even so, First Light feels like something vanishingly rare in today's gaming landscape: an extremely solid, obsessively polished singleplayer adventure with absolutely zero extraneous bullshit.

TL;DR, it's an easy recommend. Time to get the title pun quota out of the way now: The world may not be enough, but First Light certainly is. You feel like you're really in Her Majesty's secret service. This game is a gem, and diamonds are forever. I loved this spy right back. IOI has a golden eye for high-level design. And also, um, gold fingers, because they typed the code. I wish I had a view to them absolutely killing it. Dr. Yes, you better play this game! Octopussy.