007 First Light converts Hitman into a summer blockbuster

When developers Io Interactive obtained the rights to make a James Bond game, it’s like a tiny cog in the machine of the universe fell into place. Io’s flagship product is the Hitman series and the titular hitman, Agent 47, is basically James Bond without the sex drive. He’s a snappy dresser that attends cocktail parties and infiltrates military bases. He meets all sorts of interesting people… and then kills them. However, Hitman fell into a bit of a rut. On the other hand, the James Bond franchise has multiple games under its belt, but those were mostly straight-up shooters. Apparently, the Broccoli family, the historical owners of the James Bond IP, were wary of allowing violent games to be made with the licence. That’s weird, but I get the point. Bond is not just a guy that shoots people. Where’s the spycraft? The gadgets? The suave party chatter? All of this happens to be Io’s strong suit.

Io and James Bond are a match made in heaven. So how did they do? I’m a bit anxious… Okay, deep breath, let’s do this.

The tutorial is a mission of its own, albeit extremely linear. 007 First Light is the kind of game that explains to you how to walk and makes you go down a corridor for 15 minutes to prove you understood the concept. After that, the Bond theme song kicks in. Shadowy naked ladies gesticulate while vaguely symbolic things are happening around our hero.

So far, so James Bond.

Bond then goes on to various office meetings with M, Q and Moneypenny. He’s sent to spy school and you get the usual movie training montage. Except here you get to actually live the training montage: you quickly go from CQC, to shooting, to driving, to sneaking. It’s terrible at actually training you, but it does look great! In between training sessions, Bond slams the receptionist against a wall and they both wake up in the same bed. That’s how babies are made, right? I guess that’s the sex part out of the way.

After what seems like an interminable amount of prologue, the first real mission happens. That’s when I came to realize that I would have to contend with the “C” word. No, not that one, the other one.

Cinematic.

Of course a James Bond game is going to be cinematic. You know the drill. There’s going to be multiple exotic locales. Bond snogs at least two women. Someone is a traitor. Someone is not going to make it. The intrigue revolves around a topical subject. Everyone is appropriately witty and British. On top of that, it’s also an origin story, so that’s an extra dose of dialogue and foreshadowing.

The story and setting are great, if a bit overdone, but once the action starts, it’s very much scripted as well. You go from party scene, to fistfight, to shootout, to parkour section, to explosion, to car chase. Repeat the routine at the next location. It’s one big rollercoaster ride.

You’re probably thinking: “So what? I love explosions. I’m a big Michael Bay fan, me!” I mean, sure, I love it when things go kabloey too. My point is that you very rarely get to choose your approach. This is not a game where you plan each mission and choose equipment based on the situation (cough, cough, Hitman). To be fair, no one does palaces, swanky hotels, and lavish galas like Io. It’s just that 007 First Light is actually a series of discrete rooms pretending to be large open areas.

Driving is done in a single direction only. Parkour and vent crawling are just here to pad the overall play time. There’s a strict “no violence” policy in social areas. At best, those offer you two or three options to move on to the next area. Then there are stealth sections. If you do poorly enough, those devolve into a fistfight, so I suppose that’s almost freedom of choice. Heck, the game controls your running speed according to the situation. You’re not even allowed to pull out your gun unless the game tells you to. “Licence to Kill” the game calls this coyly. How very British. Oi, you got a loicence for that killing, mate?

If you’re inside an open room full of chest-high walls, you know you’re in the designated shootout area. Afterwards, Bond usually drops his gun at the first sign of disapproval as if it was his anime DVD collection that he’s embarrassed to own. Don’t get too attached to your guns, is what I’m saying.

I do love what they’ve done with some of the mechanics. Support weapons like flash grenades and lockpicks have been streamlined into a series of “gadgets” like exploding earphones and a shockwave-emitting camera. Very James Bond. If spotted, James can “bluff” guards provided you have enough “instinct”. Bond will then bullshit something along the lines of “Sven asked me to go get the left-handed screwdriver”. This will convince the nearby guards to stand down for a few seconds. This is perhaps the single best mechanic in the game. There’s usually very little in a stealth game that separates perfection from utter failure. Bluffing allows you to correct one or two mistakes without breaking the entire flow of stealth sections.

Then there’s the actual combat. CQC is surprisingly technical with combos, grabs, thrown objects, attacks that you need to block, and attacks that you need to dodge. Where this actually shines is during shootouts, where everything is added into the mix. Shoot one dude in the leg and knock him out with a punch. Shoot at the second guy’s rifle to have it fly into your hands. Throw your empty gun at the third guy to stun him. It’s such a varied system that it’s strange that you’re so rarely allowed to just use everything at your disposal. However, in practice, combat is finicky. You can soak up an indeterminate amount of damage. Sticking in and out of cover can be a crapshoot. I once died because Bond decided he could vault over this crate, but not that one.

This sort of mixed combat system has been better realized in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and SUPERHOT (yes, that’s actually how you’re supposed to write it). Another point in Indiana Jones’ favor is that you’re the one who decides if it’s time to start shooting, and the Nazis will follow your lead (they’re very considerate Nazis). In 007 First Light, it’s the game that decides if it’s time for a shootout, not the likes of you. Now that I think about it, Indiana Jones also gave you much more space to roam in general. When it comes to games that let you portray a roguish action movie hero, James Bond has stiff competition.

As a James Bond movie, 007 First Light is perfectly serviceable. While it is probably a bit too long for its own good at a dozen hours, it moves you seamlessly from glamorous locales to exciting set pieces at a quick pace. As an origin story, it’s thin gruel. Young James is already cocky, insubordinate, and improbably good at everything. He doesn’t change one iota by the end of the story. If anything, it’s everybody else that learns to accept that he’s the main character.

In conclusion… oh, who am I kidding, I’ve been thinking about Hitman this entire time. Just look at me. I’m like the person that rants about the flaws of their ex during a date… Hitman has awful combat, all-or-nothing stealth, and it stopped innovating in terms of mechanics five years ago. Its progression system has lost the plot for even longer. It’s filled to the brim with crappy paid DLCs that make you pay for recolors of items you can’t even see in-game. I’ve reached the point of leaving one of those reviews, you know the kind: “*600 hours played on record* This game is awful, thumbs down.”

What can I say? You either die a fanboi, or play long enough to become a hater.

But Hitman is still Hitman, you know?

Hitman is for a specific kind of weirdo. I am that weirdo, the kind that wants a large open-ended area and needs to control every element of the situation. And by God, we’ll try again and again until everything happens just the way we want to. And then do the same thing in a slightly different way. Freud would have some choice words about us.

Io turned a rare niche product that was still somehow very successful commercially into the video game equivalent of a summer blockbuster. 007 First Light is for everybody, i.e., no one in particular.

I’ve been thinking long enough about video games to do a reverse-Roger Ebert: why should movies keep getting their dirty paws on games? Being cinematic is a decent enough ambition for a game, but there is so much more to aspire to than to be like a movie. I mean, are movies even art? Someone should do a think piece on that.

Hitman has the most magnificent, complex, replayable, open-ended levels in the business. Io has turned level design into an art form. They’ve coined terms like “snail house” and “reverse fortress” to explain their approach. They build worlds carefully designed to seem plausible, but that are discreetly waiting to react to the player’s input.

The big cocktail party in Hitman isn’t the same as the big cocktail party in 007 First Light, although they look similar. In order to fit the movie format, the possibility space in 007 First Light had to be scrunched up. Look at that poor thing. Won’t somebody think of the possibility space? You got your explosions and your car chases, but at what cost, you monster?

In my mind’s eye, I can also see a lawyer making certain there’s a clause in the licence contract that says that James Bond cannot under any circumstance shoot a civilian or perform any other act that would tarnish the IP’s image. For his part, Hitman’s Agent 47 is perfectly amoral. There’s nothing stopping the player from acting like a psycho. Total freedom of approach. It’s the incentives that turn you into a clean, efficient assassin, not a heavy-handed unseen movie director that tells you what you’re allowed to do and when.

007 First Light does make some efforts to be more than a once-and-done affair. Story mode offers optional challenges, but since the story is infested with non-interactive sections, you need to cross-reference two different menus to find the checkpoint where the challenge is supposed to be completed. It’s kind of a hassle.

There’s also a separate “Tactical Simulation” (or Tacsim) mode that presents short, remixed areas from the main game. Tacsim has its own progression system and rewards, but it’s so barebones in terms of levels that it’s barely worth the bother. The progression scheme isn’t much to write home about either. Nevertheless, the mode does feature pre-order exclusives, collector’s edition exclusives, Twitch rewards, GeForce exclusives, the whole enchilada. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make an environment where these cosmetics are worth having before handing out all this junk? Priorities!

Oh, are you still here, 007 First Light? You were just a rebound, you know. Hitman and I are going to give this player/video game relationship a second chance. For what it’s worth, 007 First Light, I loved your bluff mechanic, your beautiful levels and the way you mixed fistfights and shootouts. Maybe in a few years, I could have all of those in Hitman!

• 007 First Light

• Rating:

• PC

• A big dumb beautiful summer blockbuster of a game that I’m sure will find someone to love them.