007 First Light Gameplay and Impressions...

007 First Light. Here it is. Last week, I went to an event in London to get hands-on with the game. I sat and played it for around 3 hours in total, and I was allowed to replay anything that I wanted. It was a PC build of the game. And today, we're going to talk about what the game is like. Is it good, bad, and everything in between with some gameplay footage in the background. Now, I will say that I'm not going to give away any spoilers in terms of the story or cinematics. You know, I'm not going to show any of that stuff. So, if you just want to learn about what this game is, then tune in. Now, if you're a gamer or a James Bond fan in general, you may know that it's been a very long while since we had a James Bond game. The last one that released, I checked this online, was 007 Legends in 2012, published by Activision. It's been a while. This game, 007 First Light, is releasing 27th of May. So, not long to wait at all now. And bear in mind that it was revealed publicly in the year 2020. So, IO Interactive, who you might know from the Hitman games, they're the people making this, have been working on this for 6 years now, maybe a bit more if you think about planning and concept phase. So, they've been cooking with this game. And if you want the too long, didn't watch, I think this game is going to be a massive hit. I think it's really enjoyable. I had an absolute blast playing those 3 hours that I did. And it ticks a lot of boxes if you're into action adventure games, stealth games, and of course, Hitman games. the bond element. That's just the cherry on the top in my opinion. What is it then? Well, 007 First Light is an original story, like I said, developed by IO Interactive, and it focuses on a much younger James Bond, 26 years old, in fact. So, this isn't tied into any of the movies or anything. This is like a new game universe of Bond apparently drawing a lot of stuff from the books, too. I've never read a James Bond book, so I couldn't tell you if that's true or not, but that's what people have been telling me. And before I played it, based on what they showed in the trailers and what I'd seen at Gamescom last year in a live demo, it looked like a mix of Hitman and Uncharted. To me, that's an enticing proposition because I'm a huge Uncharted fan. I have played Hitman games. I'm not like a mega fan. I don't go back and replay them all the time, but casually, I've dipped into them, played a few levels, had a good time there. And I think Hitman meets Uncharted is an apt description of 007 First Light, but it goes beyond that, I think. And in particular, the stealth gameplay in First Light is exceptional, at least on those three levels that I got to experience. It was only really towards the end of the third level that I played that I actually used a gun. This is a very competent stealth game and it gives you so many different options for completing each of the levels in terms of the routes you can take, the things you can do, the mechanics in the game that you can use to your advantage, bluff, lure, manipulate people. You can use your Q lens, I suppose, which is like showing you all of the things in the environment that you can play with and then interact with them with your watch. Of course, it's James Bond. All sorts of gizmos and gadgets. You got a nice little laser watch there. You can beam things with it. You can hack things with it. You can make people sick. You can blind them. Basically, you've got a massive toolbox at your disposal to help you achieve your objectives. So, I thought that I would talk you through some of these missions that I played as an introduction to the game and how they slowly introduce new mechanics to you and unfurl everything that's on offer. So, starting off, the first mission was Iceland. And I think that this is actually the first mission in the game, and it's before your 007. You're playing as James Bond, who's working on a helicopter. the helicopter crashes for a reason and you find yourself in hazardous conditions in Iceland somewhere at nighttime and you've got to work out how to survive and then figure out what's happening with the current situation that you can see. So, it's your typical opening level where it introduces stealth mechanics like crouching in tall grass so the enemy can't see you. There's a bit of jumping here too and shimmying along ledges and stuff. This is that Uncharted style gameplay coming in. And eventually you get in touch with somebody on the radio who explains that there's more going on here than you thought. And you can see a large base in front of you with enemies in it who've taken hostages. So you take it upon yourself to try and save them and release them. Therefore, you've got to sneak into the base. And as you're moving through, the level opens up and there's multiple routes. You have to get into two specific buildings because there's two groups of hostages. And at this point in the game, you don't have any guns or gadgets. So, it's just about you hiding in the shadows, moving from cover to cover, using the environment to distract. So, you can push quad bikes out the way. You can turn engines on and motors to move enemies out of the way. But when I replayed this, I saw about two or three different ways to get into each of these buildings. So, even in the first level, they're throwing a ton of player agency at you, and it doesn't really tell you where to go or what to do, per se. Yes, there's a bit of guidance of course in the level design and the narrative, but you're left up to your own devices in a lot of respects, which I really enjoyed. There's a few takedowns there, too. Eventually, you save both sets of hostages and make your way out. Nice intro level. The graphics were very impressive, too. Like I said, I was playing on PC. I don't know the exact spec of the PC, but I think it was an Nvidia RTX 5080 cuz I had a look in in the case, but when I checked the options menu, everything was maxed out. It had DLSS on. I think it was using 2x frame gen as well, but it ran smooth. It looked incredible. The lighting in particular, I think this is going to have like all the fancy ray tracing, path tracing stuff in it. Performance was good on that rig. Overall, this level, great presentation, very cinematic, nice moody atmosphere. So, that intro level took me about 30 minutes or so to complete. And then we moved on to the second level in the game, which was Malta. And this took me about 25 minutes in total. And this was about training. So based on what happens in the first level, Bond is then invited to take part in some MI6 training as he attempts to get into the double O program. And you're with a group of other recruits in a big training sandbox area. And this starts to give you more options in how to play the game. And it introduces melee combat and ranged combat if you want to do that. And the basic objective here is to get to the top of a tower, the back of the map, and raise a flag to prove that you're good enough to be in this program. In between you, there's a ton of enemies, but a whole different range of ways to take them out. And you can start using the Q lens here, too. So, you can pick that up at any moment in time, scan the environment, and it will show you the things that you can interact with. Hacking things to create distractions, knocking things down that will literally whack enemies in the face. There was one point where there was a wire in front of me and you could hack the switch on the wire so it started sparking and then kick down a container of water, lure the guard over and of course the guard doesn't realize that the water is now electrified because of the switch and he gets fried and you can sneak past. If you bait enemies into certain locations, you can also press buttons that will shut them in there. So, if there's a couple of guys that are clearly in your way and you don't want to be spotted, you could maneuver around, distract them, make some kind of noise in there, lure them in, and then close the door behind them so they can't get out. They're not going to be an issue anymore. This section also taught you about positioning, line of sight, all that stuff. It taught you how to dash into cover. Like, if you're about to get spotted and you're out in the open, you can press a combination of buttons to do a quick dash into cover. So, that's going to help you with not being spotted as easily. Load of takedowns here, too. and an introduction to the close combat, the fisty cuffs. You've got your basic strikes and combos with different timings and stuff like that. You've got parry, you've got a side step, you've got a grab as well. So, there's a lot of things in the environment all around you that you can use as weapons to throw at the enemy and this can stun them and open up for a bigger attack. The combat actually reminds me a bit of the Batman Arkham games where if you're fighting a group of people, they're all attacking you at once and you have to dodge, parry, get the counters in. If there's an enemy that's guarding a lot, you can grab them if you've softened them up a little bit and then kind of push them into a wall, a microwave, a table, whatever's there, cuz there's a load of contextual takedowns in the game, too. Melee combat really fun, and you're going to see a lot more of that in the next level as well. But this level basically went, look, here's most of the mechanics of the game for combat, for gadgets, for stealth, moving around, and you figure out what you want to do with them. I managed to be stealthy, didn't get spotted. Few takedowns, got to the flag, raised it. It was a good feeling seeing all of these gameplay mechanics come together and using them effectively to achieve the goal. Now, moving on to the third mission that I played. This is set in Kensington in London. And they said that it was about midway through the game. So, you've got more options, a couple more gadgets here to play with, too, like the dart and the laser, for example. And it starts off with a very linear section where you're in an apartment and a sniper has got you pinned down. So, your goal therefore is to get out of the apartment, survive, and somehow try and take down the sniper. So, you're moving from cover to cover while you can see the laser of the sniper. It's very Bond, dramatic, over the top. You get onto the rooftops. You use distractions like lights to blind the sniper. Eventually, you have to climb up a crane and use that to jump onto the building where the sniper is. And then you chase them. Very cinematic and completely different to what I've just played previously in that more open sandbox training mission. So, the level starts with this linear cinematic cat and mouse into a chase, more of that Uncharted style gameplay, and then you're dropped into a big gala, a big event, which looks like it was set at the VNA museum or a museum that's very similar to that in London. But this massive museum has been hired. There's people everywhere, security all over the shop. You have to go in there, figure out a few things, and ultimately get into the CCTV room, which is on the top floor. And this level is much more like a Hitman level where there's multiple different options on how you achieve that objective. Ton of NPCs around and you just start exploring. This mission in total, including the first bit that I just talked about, took me about an hour and 45 minutes to complete. So, it's a big mission. But again, you're kind of just left to your own devices to figure out how to do it. So, you explore around. You can eaves drop, pick up hints and tips, and figure out a way to get past the security so you can get upper floor and potentially gain access to the CCTV room that I just mentioned. One way to do it was to chat to a lady at the bar who you eavesdrop and she's waiting for a photographer. She says his name on the phone call. You go over and you say you're that photographer because she has a pass that can get you upstairs, but you have to go and check in. So, you go to check in. The fake name that you give, the guy's already checked in. So, you have to then steal a pass from somebody else and you get access to that point by firing a little dart at them that makes them sick. Steal the car, then you have to go steal a camera, go back to the lady, and she'll take you upstairs. That's one way of doing it. Another way was he was dropping on a couple of gods who were protecting a side corridor which had upstairs access. And it turns out that one of the gods that was supposed to rotate on their shift was late. So you pretend that you're additional security. You go over to them and they don't quite believe you. So you've got to go and get a name for the guard that's late. And you over hear someone say there's actually a tablet behind the counter in the cafe which has got the list of names for the security detail that night. So you go to the cafe, but the baristas won't let you in. You distract one of them. You make the other one sick. Go behind the counter. You look inside a drawer, get a password, and then use that on the tablet to find out the name of this security guard. You go back to them. They believe you. And then that gives you access to the upper floor. There was another way that I know of of getting upstairs that I thought was pretty cool, so I don't want to spoil it in this video, but that was at least three different options of getting upstairs. And when you get upstairs, that entire area is just covered in security. And the CCTV room is not easy to get into. And there's multiple ways of getting in there. Here's where you can start testing out the bluffs as well. So you have bluff points, I suppose. And depending on the current situation, what you're wearing, or how much they trust you, your bluff will work or not work, and they'll react to that. They'll let you in. They won't let you in. They'll be suspicious of you. So, you've got to do things quickly. So, that starts to come into the equation. And the sneaking around here, too. You can play this completely stealthily if you want to. You can distract people. You can lock them indoors. I ended up doing about half of this stealthy. And then I was made when I was upstairs, and I just got into a massive brawl with a load of enemies. I think it was in the room with the pool table actually. and you end up just like throwing pool balls at people and throwing like cups and anything that you can find to throw at the enemy really and gain some kind of an advantage versus five or six people at once trying to get a takedown on them. And they call for backup too which creates more of a problem. They use tasers as well and then eventually that escalates to guns. So you've got to manage the melee combat and also the range combat coming at you. But I thought the melee combat was really good and it made me laugh which was the most important thing. some of the takedowns that you do and a lot of the contextual animations are very slick. But I got into the CCTV room, completed my objective, and it was only at this point that I actually got a license to kill because the enemies started using guns on me. And when they start using guns on you that are lethal, you get the license to kill so you can use them. And the gunplay is actually really good. As soon as I whipped out that pistol, it just felt like John Wick simulator for me. I was just popping heads left, right, center. The guns are very lethal, which is great. So when you use them, they feel impactful. It feels like a big deal. You start with a pistol and you can pick up the enemy's guns, too. So, I found myself picking up like submachine guns. Kind of look like an MP5. And as you're going through the penultimate bit of the level, it just throws a load of bad guys at you. You're leaping over obstacles, kicking things into people, shooting them, using a combination of your gadgets, making people sick, stunning them, blinding them, dropping things on their head, and it all just comes together in this beautiful chaotic fashion. Very satisfying combat in my opinion. So you get through that lock, you make your way through to a much bigger environment. It's kind of like a deathmatch environment, I suppose. And the game starts to throw armored enemies at you then. And again, you can be stealthy here. Try and take them all down without being spotted. Use your watch, but you can just shoot them, too. Of course, because they've got armor on and helmets. They take more shots. You got to get the helmet off first. So, it's a little bit more challenging here. It does give you more hard-hitting weapons in this room, though. So, I picked up an M4 and a shotgun, for example, which were pretty impactful to use. You get through that room and you end up in a little boss fight where you're fighting somebody. Again, no spoilers. It's a 1 v one. They've got a gun. You don't. And this is a claustrophobic environment that's packed full of opportunities. All sorts of different ways to injure this character using your watch or using the environment. So, a bit of cat and mouse again, but in a very enclosed space. It reminded me of the Ellie boss fight in The Last of Us. You know, when you have to fight David in the restaurant. I'm sure if you've played Last of Us, you know what I'm talking about. but similar kind of vibe to that, but James Bond coded. So, you take out that guy, you make it outside, and there's a little bit of a driving section here. And this, to be honest with you, this was like the least enjoyable part of the demo that I played. You end up being shot at by a load of people, and you have to hijack a garbage truck. You get in and it's just a linear section where you're basically driving forward, smashing through a load of stuff through a mall to escape. Sort of a crescendo to the level, but it didn't really hit for me. I don't know if that was because the driving mechanics felt a bit basic, but that was the only part of this level that I didn't enjoy 95% of it. The rest of it was incredible. Had an amazing time. So, yeah, that was the end of my hands-on gameplay session with the game. Those three missions there. Hopefully, I've done a good job of explaining what they were like and the options on the table. Like I said, had a blast with it. Thoroughly enjoyed the mix of stealth, gadgets, action, gunplay, and then seeing that all come together. The level design, I think, is excellent. They've done a great job with that. Obviously, they're flexing a lot of that Hitman muscle here, but perhaps a slightly more accessible version of that for the Bond audience. The story and the writing, I thought was good, too. Bond himself is very quirky, likable, cheeky. You could easily write a young James Bond and he would be insufferable or infuriating to play with for the entirety of the game. But nah, I thought they've done a pretty good job here. From a technical standpoint on this PC that I was playing on, the frame rate felt really good to me. No obvious FPS lag or anything like that and graphically great presentation. The only negative thing I would say about the presentation for some reason, and again it just could be a work in progress thing, some of the animations seemed like they were running at a lower frame rate than the rest of the game. And I'd be interested to see if any of the other people that were there picked up on that or will that even be in the final game? I don't know. But that was the only thing where I was like, "Huh, that's like a markdown." But yeah, I think this is going to turn out to be a great Bond game, a great action game, stealth game. It's going to appeal to a lot of people. I think they're on to a winner. For some people, it might seem a bit safe and predictable. Totally get that. But for me, I just had a blast playing it. It was just really fun, polished, enjoyed it a lot. With that said, let me know your thoughts down in the comments below, guys. How you feeling about this one. Drop me a like if you enjoyed the video. Thank you. Subscribe if you're new here, and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye.