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007 First Light - Official Bond game from IO Interactive

M76 said:
Oh, you poor little snowflake, it must be so difficult to hear opinions you do not approve of.

Is it a crusade to point out writing inconsistencies and flaws? You can call it what you want, it won't change anything. I'll happily lead the crusade for better writing and more faithful adaptations.


They only wanted the name recognition, and didn't give a damn about actually capturing the essence of the character.


How about you don't try to misrepresent things? No, my criticism wasn't "meany woman yelling at a man", it was berating him where it makes zero narrative sense in context of the game and the story it's trying to tell. You might not care about consistent and meaningful story and writing, but some of us do. You clearly don't even play the game, and don't even pay attention to the topic. So why do you feel the urge to butt in?

Oh, you liked that? Not enough to read it properly, I guess. Otherwise you'd have realized that I was pointing out how utterly stereotypical it is, not that nobody collects shoes.

I guess it's easy to get offended when both of you read what you want to hear, instead of what's actually there.
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I hope a woman isn't mean to you today.
Anyway, I got a long weekend so I plan on starting it up tomorrow.
 
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Hershy said:
From reading other forums I’m seeing a lot of guys saying the game is slow to begin with, but that the pacing and action pick up dramatically in the second half.

One guy said the first half for him was a disappointing 6, but that the second half was a surprising 9.

I’ll keep this in mind when I start the game this weekend.
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I prefer WOA and wish this was more like that TBH, but I know more people generally prefer the story and linear sections. My hope is that follow on games get more open in design. This game has plenty of different ways to complete objectives, but it’s not WOA levels of complexity. I also like to just drop into the missions of WOA without all the baggage of the linear sections like first light.
 
Given the conversation here and the lackluster reviews, this game is a bargain bin only purchase for me... If I even bother with it. Doesn't look like there's much story to give a damn about. I see the usual suspects are up to the same old antics. Bond is supposed to be a babe magnet, even as a young agent he's supposed to be a head turner with natural charm and magnetism. From what I've seen, this game is a very poor representation of the character. Looks like a cheap, more linear, hitman game.
 
Blade-Runner said:
And we get that you love, defend and champion trash games on behalf of billion dollar companies that couldn't give two fucks about you white knighting for them. I am glad we understand each other.


Cue the soy boys who delusionally think that defending these trash games is going to make them profitable.
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If you don't like it, then don't buy it. Crying here won't help you.
 
It seems to have a rather positive reception from what I've seen. Even guys like Asmongold seem to think it's decent. 5000 user reviews on steam with a very positive 91% rating. The game had a 200 million budget and it sold 1.5 million copies in the first 24 hours. It will be making a profit in a couple weeks if I had to guess. I think that's great. I like to see indie developers making it on their own. M76 seems to be the only one in here being critical of it while actually owning the game and even he said he would give it a 7 and he's not done with it yet. The game is supposed to get better as you progress through it. I get that some people wanted a 1960's bond in a 2026 game but it was obviously a modern reboot origin story from the publicly available pre release information so nobody should feel deceived here.

My main concern based on what I have seen is that it has too many cutscenes and not enough gameplay. It doesn't shock me given that it's a movie IP but that is why I usually don't care about movie IP's in gaming. The original 007 on N64 proves that it can be done without going in the direction that IOI went and I have to question if they made the right choice on this game's presentation. Also, Hitman has always had a shit storyline and I have heard mixed thoughts on this game's story. All things considered, I'm still interested in giving it a try once they support path tracing later on this summer.
 
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Mchart said:
I prefer WOA and wish this was more like that TBH, but I know more people generally prefer the story and linear sections. My hope is that follow on games get more open in design. This game has plenty of different ways to complete objectives, but it’s not WOA levels of complexity. I also like to just drop into the missions of WOA without all the baggage of the linear sections like first light.
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I very much agree. WOA is a niche stealth game and has much more complex and intelligent gameplay and almost no cutscenes at all. I already knew that this would not be on that level because of the bond IP attracting a different kind of audience but I am looking forward to seeing IOI's next Hitman game now that they are in control of their own vision and have the resources to produce whatever they want within reason.
 
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Of all the product placement options they chose to go with this:

007FirstLight_2026_05_29_22_30_08_758.jpg
 
the_sextein said:
My main concern based on what I have seen is that it has too many cutscenes and not enough gameplay
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It took about 6 hours to finally get to part with a decent chunk of continuos gameplay, anything before was too short or too easy to reach its full potential. Basically everything before Mauritania feels like a tutorial.

Also a hint to those actually playing the game, so you don't make the same mistake I did and take the game at face value. At the end of the Mauritania chapter I was trying to make every shot count conserving ammo, and so I kept dying, because enemies just keep spawning out of nowhere and if you take long enough they start spawning at places where they can shoot behind your cover too. It turns out, what you have to do here is spend all your ammo and that triggers the cutscene. You can basically shoot at nothing, just have to spend all the ammo, doesn't matter how many enemies you take out. Pretty immersion breaking once you realize that trying to play to win was pointless.
 
I like how you can straight up murder MI6 personnel on the training island. I tossed a guy in the water thinking he would just swim back to safety but he just laid there floating face down before sinking into the abyss shortly after. Whoops.
 
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TwistedMetalGear said:
I like how you can straight up murder MI6 personnel on the training island. I tossed a guy in the water thinking he would just swim back to safety but he just laid there floating face down before sinking into the abyss shortly after. Whoops.
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He was just that committed to play along :D

But seriously, I chalk this up to laziness on part of the devs. They didn't want to do a set of extra animations, which I'd understand if the training was one 5 minute mission, but it goes on forever. It's at least a quarter of the game.
 
Schleprock said:
It's OBVIOUSLY Horrible, so don't play it.
What else is there?
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Sarcasm noted. But seriously…

The Metacritic scores are 8.7 for reviewers and 8.8 for users, which are virtually identical scores.

The Steam user reviews have settled to 91%.

So the public has spoken. Reviewers and gamers alike are really enjoying the game.

Who’s not enjoying the game? The same guys who hate every game, of course.
 
Hershy said:
Sarcasm noted. But seriously…

The Metacritic scores are 8.7 for reviewers and 8.8 for users, which are virtually identical scores.

The Steam user reviews have settled to 91%.

So the public has spoken. Reviewers and gamers alike are really enjoying the game.

Who’s not enjoying the game? The same guys who hate every game, of course.
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As far as I was aware M76 was still playing the game. So, not sure about the hate. However, he clearly has some pretty decent criticisms and those are reflected by the majority of the people that have been critical of the game. Some of the narrative design and functional chapter choices (like dumping all your ammo) seem like incredibly lazy design choices. The hand holding the game does is not great and it's pretty linear.

For an origin story it's meh to ok.

Bond is (should be) a charismatic, magnetic, womanizer that embodies the babe magnet trope. Call him toxic, toxic masculine, whatever. However, if they did this one right, almost no one would have complained. It could have been a runaway smash hit. I think what we will see is a fun romp and everyone forgets about it in less than six months.

We (all) need a return of classic characters written the way their creators intended. Not some "edgy" reinterpretation of the character that absolutely NO ONE ASKED FOR.

You can all like it the way it is, but that 9% of the audience is the portion of the fanbase that would have bought every DLC, every piece of merchandise and been clamoring for the title to do well and expand well into the future. They are the kind of people that would have bought multiple copies of the game just to give to their friends, so happy to see a game that properly paid homage and respect to a decades old IP that has seen better days.

You don't get it. Telling 9% of your fan base to eff off is a really bad marketing strategy and it's the same old crap that sees a potential smash hit fading away into the background as an enjoyable but not noteworthy experience.
 
Hershy said:
Sarcasm noted. But seriously…

The Metacritic scores are 8.7 for reviewers and 8.8 for users, which are virtually identical scores.

The Steam user reviews have settled to 91%.

So the public has spoken. Reviewers and gamers alike are really enjoying the game.

Who’s not enjoying the game? The same guys who hate every game, of course.
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It is wild that it is beyond some people's reasoning that just because you are critical of some things in a game that doesn't mean you hate it.
This framing that criticism = hate is so detrimental to discussion. So now we are only allowed to say positive things about games?
Do we have to wait for the metacritic score to settle before forming our own opinion? Not that it could be called an opinion if it is decided by other people now is it?

I've stated it twice already that I think the game is a 7, with a chance to end up an 8 if it hits the landing. You'd have to be a raving lunatic to consider a 7-8/10 review hate. Then what's a 5/10? Mind you there are games that I scored as 4/10 that I still liked. It's called being objective. If I don't like a game I stop playing it. I criticize it, because I Care, I give a damn, and I wish it was even better.
 
Hershy said:
The Metacritic scores are 8.7 for reviewers and 8.8 for users, which are virtually identical scores.

The Steam user reviews have settled to 91%.

So the public has spoken. Reviewers and gamers alike are really enjoying the game.

Who’s not enjoying the game? The same guys who hate every game, of course.
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We live in an age where if a game is not a magnum opus defining game of our generation, then it's trash. There is no in between.
 
M76 said:
LOL, no. We live in an age where you can't be critical of any kind of media without being called a hater.
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Sure you can be critical. But for somebody to say the reviews are lackluster when it's 2 points shy of a 90 is straight up denial of reality. That's what I'm critiquing. The people who immediately jump to "trash game", "DOA", etc when it doesn't score a 9+.
 
M76 said:
LOL, no. We live in an age where you can't be critical of any kind of media without being called a hater.
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When a game averages 9 out of 10 from reviewers AND users, then whether or not any individual likes or dislikes the game is pretty much irrelevant: the game has received universal acclaim.

No one’s saying people can’t be critical of any one game, but if a person has a history of hating virtually every contemporary game, even games that receive universal acclaim, then that person has to accept the consequences of being branded a hater.
 
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Hershy said:
When a game averages 9 out of 10 from reviewers AND users, then whether or not any individual likes or dislikes the game is pretty much irrelevant: the game has received universal acclaim.

No one’s saying people can’t be critical of any one game, but if a person has a history of hating virtually every contemporary game, even games that receive universal acclaim, then that person has to accept the consequences of being branded a hater.
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Feeling that because some people have reviewed something positively, then the people disliking it should have no merit, is just silly.

There are currently less than 14 500 positive reviews on steam, yet the game has sold more than 1.5m copies. That means that the steam positive reviews represent less than 1% of the buyers.

Even fewer bother to review something on a site like metacritic as that has 655 user reviews, which is less than 0.044% of copies sold in the first 24h and who knows if all of those own the game and have played it on top of that.

A lot of people never write a review on steam regardless of whether they like it or not. I see some games that a lot of people liked, where some of my friends' playtime is very low, yet they never bothered to write a review, even if it is clear that they hated it.

Universal acclaim would mean every review has a great score, but there are several 7/10 and even a 6.5/10 on metacritic. Does universal acclaim actually mean universal or do only the scores you like count? Do you feel the 9% of steam reviews that are negative shouldn't count? Yet you are talking about less than 1% of the copies sold who were willing to make a thumbs up are the universal truth?
 
evhvis said:
Universal acclaim would mean every review has a great score, but there are several 7/10 and even a 6.5/10 on metacritic.
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That's not what universal acclaim means. Even the highest rated games of all time on Metacritic will have some outlier 6's and 7's.

If we're talking Metacritic specifically, they consider universal acclaim to be a metascore of 90 and above. First Light doesn't quite meet that criteria, but it's extremely close.
 
I like that M79 is being critical about it to be honest. I do hope IOI does well because I'm a big Hitman fan but I won't lie, the modernized story and characters do kind of bring it down for me even though I'm not a big Bond fan. I'm an older guy that doesn't jive too well with modernizing old IP's. That being said, anyone who buys this should know about it going in so I think some of the complaining on the internet is just for the sake of it. I also hear that it's about 15 hours long and I've seen a lot of cutscenes in the parts of the game that I watched. I also don't like that the path tracing wasn't completed on time and will probably either be an afterthought or it will run like ass.

I haven't played it but I can kinda tell that this won't be a 9 or 10 game for me personally. Games like Cyberpunk offer much more graphically and gameplay wise. First Light looks like it's very linear and won't have a lot of replay ability. It's not pushing any boundaries graphically and the game isn't taking any risks or doing anything new. It's probably going to be the equivalent of a cheap popcorn flick for me. I'm just glad they didn't lose their ass on this game and considering the state of the Bond IP these days, I can't say I'm shocked with how it ended up and I don't really blame IOI for taking the safe route, it certainly could have been worse if an EA or UBI had done it.
 
Just started playing a few hours ago. Stopped for the night while visiting Q's lab for the first time. Definitely seems like a console game that decided to be a PC game at the last minute by upper management. It's a reboot, much like Daniel Craig's Bond. It's not the 60's anymore, heck it's been 64 years since the first James Bond movie. Any true Bond fan would probably be in their 80's. Only really met M and Moneypenny so far, and it's your usual pretend it's DEI, but not DEI. Main character is still a white guy, while everyone else that's a side character that used to be white, gets to be diverse.

It plays fine on native 2K Ultra settings with a RX 9070 XT. FPS whenever I check seems to be in the 120's. It's not a beautiful game, but decent graphics quality that reminds me of some 2010's decade type graphics. Even at max horizontal and vertical scrolling, I have to move my mouse a lot to look around. Some of the controls and camera angles can make it a bit wonky, but it's not too annoying. You don't feel like you're missing anything, it's more of a, enjoy the ride type of game. You get the 007 theme coming through at times when playing, and it feels pretty cool. It's not immersive, but gets close to it where you enjoy the vibe.

The story is okay so far. Bond is just a regular Aircrewman that did something impossible without training, and goes through spy boot camp after impressing M. The main character is a raw Bond, before seeing him become suave and sophisticated. Think of it as a prequel to Daniel Craig's Bond. While I only watched a couple of Bond movies here and there, I've at least seen every version of Bond, and the last Bond movie I saw was Skyfall. I never thought the franchise was very good, it just had a lot of memorable moments here and there. As a Gen X'er, I thought Bond just became a very clichéd character (like Bond girls). I thought the first movie, and the latter half of the Mission Impossible franchise, did a better job of the spy genre as a whole.

I'll most likely keep playing the game until completed. The first 2 hours of the game was just okay, but the spy training montage was well done and enjoyable.

Update:
I met Q, and it feels like a straightforward adaptation or tribute to Desmond Llewelyn's version of Q. Got to the apartment, the 2nd training montage, the "field exam", and am back at Q's lab for the 2nd time. Trying to sprint somewhere only got me to run straight at a guard, and that got me killed twice, lol. So far it's still been enjoyable, even though it's been a pretty linear game.
 
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evhvis said:
Universal acclaim would mean every review has a great score, but there are several 7/10 and even a 6.5/10 on metacritic. Does universal acclaim actually mean universal or do only the scores you like count? Do you feel the 9% of steam reviews that are negative shouldn't count? Yet you are talking about less than 1% of the copies sold who were willing to make a thumbs up are the universal truth?
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But it has universal acclaim......
aff3dabd991af439209a43bf0a5cf499.jpg

Are you telling me you don't trust liberal bastions like Newsweek, The Guardian and Vice for honest and authentic gaming reviews?!?
 
evhvis said:
Feeling that because some people have reviewed something positively, then the people disliking it should have no merit, is just silly.
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Wanting the review aggregates to be the end of all discussion is really silly to me as well. This is a discussion forum, and I'm here to discuss every aspect of the game.

They refuse to engage with any of my concrete critiques and just scream HATER, mostly because they haven't even played the game. So this is not about the game to them, it is something else. They feel like their ideology is under attack when I criticize aspects of the game that is attributable to that very ideology.
evhvis said:
There are currently less than 14 500 positive reviews on steam, yet the game has sold more than 1.5m copies. That means that the steam positive reviews represent less than 1% of the buyers.
Even fewer bother to review something on a site like metacritic as that has 655 user reviews, which is less than 0.044% of copies sold in the first 24h and who knows if all of those own the game and have played it on top of that.
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I think aggregate scores are useless to determine the quality of a game, it can be an indicator of popularity, but even for that SteamDB player numbers are much better.

Who goes through the trouble to write an user review on metacritic? People who are emotionally invested. Meaning the outliers, people who are in love with the game and upsell it, and people who have a bone to pick, who will score it lower than it probably deserves. So really when you tout around metacritic scores as the be all and end all, you are relying on sycophants and haters.
evhvis said:
A lot of people never write a review on steam regardless of whether they like it or not. I see some games that a lot of people liked, where some of my friends' playtime is very low, yet they never bothered to write a review, even if it is clear that they hated it.
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And even if people diligently wrote reviews for every game they own on steam there is no granularity to it I'd give a thumbs up to everything from a 5/10 to a 10/10, sometimes even for 4/10 games. Steam reviews being mostly positive is not indicative of anything beyond that the game is not broken with serious widespread problems that affect the majority of the players. It is an useful tool to avoid trash, that's it.
evhvis said:
Universal acclaim would mean every review has a great score, but there are several 7/10 and even a 6.5/10 on metacritic. Does universal acclaim actually mean universal or do only the scores you like count? Do you feel the 9% of steam reviews that are negative shouldn't count? Yet you are talking about less than 1% of the copies sold who were willing to make a thumbs up are the universal truth?
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Regardless of what is the definition of universal acclaim, what if something has universal acclaim? You're no longer allowed to speak of flaws in it?
So if we take the opposite, if something has mixed or mostly negative score on steam then you are not allowed to like it? sounds even more ridiculous if we flip it around, doesn't it?
 
evhvis said:
There are currently less than 14 500 positive reviews on steam, yet the game has sold more than 1.5m copies. That means that the steam positive reviews represent less than 1% of the buyers.
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You’ve obviously never taken an introductory course on probability and statistics at a university or college.

How large does a sample size have to be to represent a population? Legitimate sample sizes are typically minuscule. If there are, say, 200 million citizens in a country, then to predict the outcome of an election you really only need to poll a few thousand people. If you were to poll more people, then mathematically you wouldn’t actually increase the accuracy of your poll at all.

14,500 reviews is more than enough to represent the population.

If you’re interested, this might surprise you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination

This Wikipedia entry would really open your eyes and it would be a fun read at a coffee shop.
 
Hershy said:
You’ve obviously never taken an introductory course on probability and statistics at a university or college.

How large does a sample size have to be to represent a population? Legitimate sample sizes are typically minuscule. If there are, say, 200 million citizens in a country, then to predict the outcome of an election you really only need to poll a few thousand people. If you were to poll more people, then mathematically you wouldn’t actually increase the accuracy of your poll at all.

14,500 reviews is more than enough to represent the population.

If you’re interested, this might surprise you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sample_size_determination

This Wikipedia entry would really open your eyes and it would be a fun read at a coffee shop.
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Funny as I actually had to take a course on probability and statistics when I went to university. Feel free to keep inventing facts though.

You are making the assumption that the sample size of reviewers is actually representative of the player population and that the review method gives an accurate representation how good a game is. Why would someone spend an extra 10-30 minutes writing a review of a game they dislike? It could very well be that a lot of people that find it mediocre or bad feel they have spent enough time with it already and don't want to waste more time with the game. I am more likely to want to share with others on steam if I had a good experience, than waste time on writing a negative review for something I didn't like. It being black and white, recommend or not recommended also skews the results. Put a 1-5 star scale and results would probably look a lot different.

When someone makes a poll, they will do their best to reach a broad and diverse group of people. You wouldn't ask a group of people at a comics if they liked anime and comics and then say that applies to everyone. You have no way of knowing if the selection of people who have reviewed them are representative of the entire player base. It could well be that the people who liked the game the most played like crazy and posted their reviews right after, trying to convince everyone that the game is the greatest ever. Do you feel a game getting review bombed also is representative of a games quality? They games getting review bombed generally have way more than 15k reviews.
 
evhvis said:
Funny as I actually had to take a course on probability and statistics when I went to university. Feel free to keep inventing facts though.

You are making the assumption that the sample size of reviewers is actually representative of the player population and that the review method gives an accurate representation how good a game is. Why would someone spend an extra 10-30 minutes writing a review of a game they dislike? It could very well be that a lot of people that find it mediocre or bad feel they have spent enough time with it already and don't want to waste more time with the game. I am more likely to want to share with others on steam if I had a good experience, than waste time on writing a negative review for something I didn't like. It being black and white, recommend or not recommended also skews the results. Put a 1-5 star scale and results would probably look a lot different.

When someone makes a poll, they will do their best to reach a broad and diverse group of people. You wouldn't ask a group of people at a comics if they liked anime and comics and then say that applies to everyone. You have no way of knowing if the selection of people who have reviewed them are representative of the entire player base. It could well be that the people who liked the game the most played like crazy and posted their reviews right after, trying to convince everyone that the game is the greatest ever. Do you feel a game getting review bombed also is representative of a games quality? They games getting review bombed generally have way more than 15k reviews.
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Agreed.

Still, it’s obvious that this game has been really well received by critics and players alike.

And yes it’s one thing to be critical of a game, but again if someone is critical of every game…
 
So anyways. what's [H]'s verdict? Worth the $69.99 or wait for a sale?

I don't really read those online reviews from game reviewers that get paid $.
 
VF31Tomcatters said:
So anyways. what's [H]'s verdict? Worth the $69.99 or wait for a sale?

I don't really read those online reviews from game reviewers that get paid $.
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It’s $60 from GMG. I think it’s been worth it for me personally even though I wish it were more like WOA. It may end up that way with the tacsim updates soon anyways, but it’ll likely be $40 by the fall regardless. I don’t think it’s worth waiting for path tracing, given the scale of the levels and smooth performance I think the graphics are fine. Path tracing will inevitably tank performance and won’t be worth it.

Of course, I’d suggest Hitman WOA over this if you never played WOA before, and that can be had for a very cheap price with hundreds of hours of gameplay.
 
VF31Tomcatters said:
So anyways. what's [H]'s verdict? Worth the $69.99 or wait for a sale?

I don't really read those online reviews from game reviewers that get paid $.
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Go ahead and get it, it's a fun game. However if you are hoping for 60's era nostalgia Bond than you will be disappointed. It's a origin story so things start slow and Bond is trying to prove his value.
 
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