by James Bond enjoyed a long run in gaming, from 1982 to 2012, before nearly vanishing from consoles for over a decade. This year Bond makes his return in 007 First Light, newly interpreted for PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC by Hitman developers IO Interactive. With its decades in experience in sandbox game design, it's not surprising that First Light manages to absolutely deliver on that element - but it is more exciting to see IO ably expand their repertoire to deliver a more fully-fledged and cinematic Bond experience too.
Visually, IO's approach is notably restrained, with modern rendering features deployed selectively - resulting in an image that stands out for its clarity and stability in a landscape often dominated by noisier Unreal Engine presentations. That focus delivers strong fundamentals, with a rock-solid 60fps across multiple consoles and impressively high image quality. While performance looked rocky during earlier showings, those issues have been thoroughly addressed in the final release, with the level of stability extending to base machines as well as the PS5 Pro.
This impressive result is courtesy of IO Interactive's superlative in-house Glacier engine. Fundamentally, First Light's scope is significantly different from a Hitman game, requiring much larger locations to accommodate high-speed driving and more explosive set pieces, while still maintaining granular near field detail. To support this larger scope, the game relies on a new software-based ray-traced global illumination (RTGI) solution, with screen-space elements filling in the granular lighting detail.
The key to the visual presentation is balance, with the hybrid approach delivering most of the benefits of RTGI while sidestepping many of the usual downsides. Light transport, such as sunlight streaming through a window, looks fantastic, bouncing across surfaces and naturally illuminating the scene to unify static and dynamic objects. The lighting solution is performant, stable and largely free from typical RT denoising artefacts. IO also makes the deliberate stylistic choice to lean heavily on bloom, which helps give the game its own identity.
Reflections take a more traditional route, using screen-space reflections layered over cubemaps as the RT solution traces against a lower-quality signed distance fields. This conventional approach is a fast solution, likely key to maintaining a smooth 60fps, although disocclusion artefacts and noise are occasionally visible. However, a standout exception is the smart deployment of planar reflections - a technique first seen in Hitman's second season - for accurate and high-quality reflections on mirrors and large glass surfaces.
Another major inclusion is the new particle system and volumetric effects. The smoke reacts and swirls realistically, adding significant atmosphere and even reacting to and casting shadows, while robust volumetric effects unify scenes with the lighting.
IO Interactive has successfully created large, intricate spaces that are well-lit and beautiful, thanks in part to how they deploy their NPC crowds. The new crowd system includes more reactive behaviours, such as NPCs using inverse kinematics to look at Bond as he walks past. Furthermore, the level of reactivity during combat is a highlight, with brutal melee demanding player attention and weapon fire causing beautiful explosions and dynamic object interactions. These exciting combat sequences can sometimes be bookended by slower-than-expected loading times after death.
While comparisons to technical masterpieces like Uncharted 4 are understandable, given the similar aesthetics and gameplay in some sections, any shortcomings in IO's approach are more attributable to budget, manpower and skill differences, rather than hardware capabilities - and as IO Interactive evolves, we'd expect the studio to continue to develop its cinematic chops.
The game itself also hews a similar path, with players taking on a quickly-progressing Bond as he matures into a respected agent. Despite the linear structure, there's more going on than you expect, with enough freedom within missions to feel real agency, like Hitman. You're expected to think about how to achieve your objectives, and it's not until combat breaks out that moving through the level becomes a bit more signposted. The action is satisfying too, with more advanced melee and weapon-based combat that feels similar to what Remedy was able to achieve with Control.
Ultimately, it's clear that IO Interactive really understood the assignment, and they've crafted a Bond game that stands as one of the series' best.