While it's not my favorite IP, I would consider myself a fairly avid fan of 007 -- I have fond memories of watching "13 days of 007" on TBS, I've actually read the books, and, while the movies are generally up and down, 'You Only Live Twice' is, despite its ridiculousness (or perhaps because of it), one of my favorite movies of all time. As you may have guessed, since I dated myself with the "13 Days of 007" reference, I also grew up playing plenty of Goldeneye on the N64 and even a bit of the PS2/GCN games. So, given my nearly 3 decades of Bond gaming experience, I think the fairest way to sum up First Light is this: It's the best James Bond game, but it's not the best game based on the 007 License.
While I have enjoyed other Bond games more, the common theme with Goldeneye, Agent Under Fire, Everything or Nothing, etc. is that they are all action-forward FPS games. They were a lot of fun, but ultimately you felt like you were playing a Bond-themed shooter and not really a spy game. Thanks in large part to IO's pedigree, First Light does a better job than any previous 007 game at recreating the full Bond experience (beyond smoking 70 cigarettes a day). It just suffers from a few too many of what I call "modern gaming tropes" to be considered an all-time great game like Goldeneye.
Bond talks to himself all the time to tell you what to do. Thanks to a watch, Bond has Batman vision ("just go with it", I guess) that tells him where enemies and objectives are. There are long segments where you just walk around talking to your partner, with some token climbing/door unlocking/knocking over platforms to form bridges thrown in to make it seem like you're still playing a game and not just listening to exposition.
Perhaps the worst example of this is the role of Moneypenny in the game. And, no. I'm not going the direction a lot of people have gone with this criticism. I actually think the changes to her character make complete sense -- Moneypenny was essentially M's secretary, and someone for Bond to flirt with while getting his mission briefing. Secretary jobs aren't nearly as prominent as they were back in the day, so it makes sense you'd find something different for a well-known character to do.
The problem is that Moneypenny epitomizes the "Focus, M" meme more than any video game character I have ever encountered in my life. At one point, you even get high-tech glasses that are basically "Moneypenny Vision", which allows her to see and comment on every single thing you are doing. For a game that was trying to recreate the Bond experience, and largely succeeded, it felt like a very odd narrative decision to have someone in Bond's earpiece telling him what to do the entire time.
Despite the over-abundance of modern gaming tropes, First Light is still a fun game and worth playing for 007 fans. IO did a great job with the combat system, and I can't think of many games where switching between melee and shooting is so fluid. The melee feels almost like Sleeping Dogs in that you can grab enemies and throw them into obstacles, over railings, etc., you can grab an enemy and charge at another enemy using him as a human shield. I even tackled an enemy over a railing and went over with him, using him to break my fall. The shooting is responsive, and the enemies love standing around big red explosive barrels that cause massive, scenery-toppling explosives. As much as I have criticized modern gaming tropes, I can actually overlook the abundance of red barrels because they help bring that blockbuster movie spectacle that you want to see in a James Bond game. If Last Light succeeds at one thing primarily, it's at capturing the full breadth of a Bond movie, from the spycraft to the explosive action scenes.
As a big fan of stealth games, I was a little disappointed that the stealth isn't quite as polished as the Hitman games. Also, unlike Hitman, which outright encouraged frequent manual saving to get all of the challenges, Last Light punishes stealth and experimentation with a painful checkpoint system. My biggest fear for this game was that it would feel like Absolution felt after playing Blood Money and, honestly, there are a lot of parallels - First Light is a far more linear experience that, while offering some player choice, never quite lives up to the freedom of choice found in Hitman. Still, the stealth mechanics are quite competent, and using bluffs, lures, and playing around with the various gadgets to distract enemies is a lot of fun.
Fortunately, Last Light does what it does well enough that I can actually appreciate the fact that it's not just a Bond-themed Hitman game. I know that's what a lot of people wanted, but I'm not sure that would have worked. Bond isn't Agent 47. His cover is usually blown before his mission even begins. His plans frequently fail. He gets captured all the time. A Bond game where you could go silent and unseen the entire time wouldn't make any sense. Whereas Agent 47 is all about meticulous planning and precise execution, Bond is all about pulling crazy solutions out of his ass. And, honestly, combat in Hitman is really fun, so that it's nice to play an IO game where you aren't discouraged from it.
All things considered, I would probably give First Light an 8.5/10. I thought IO ultimately did a great job of adapting the Bond license into a stealth/action game, without just making a Hitman clone. Most of the changes from the Hitman formula, like the increased reliance on combat, are fun and appropriate in the context of a Bond game. There are just a few baffling self-owns, such as a frustrating checkpoint system and an over-reliance on modern gaming tropes, that prevent First Light from reaching its full potential.
