Grade: A–
He may not know how to make a drinkable martini, but James Bond makes a great videogame. GoldenEye on the Nintento 64 was the first; but there’s always been potential there for more. After all, the character has all the stuff that the medium excels at. He has car chases, he fights, he shoots people, he blows things up, and he appeals strongly to adolescent boys.
In 007: First Light, he gets ample opportunity to do all those things, sometimes in very quick succession. Our man here is not yet a wintry Daniel Craig, a suave Sean Connery or a campy Roger Moore: when we first encounter him in the mandatory pre-credits sequence he’s not even a spy. He’s an ordinary airman falling out of a downed plane, and washing up soggy and cold on a beach, where… oh look: sinister mercenaries are on patrol and there’s a McGuffin to be retrieved and a direct order to be heroically disobeyed. What follows is the making-of-a-spy story, with snappy training montages, a recruitment chat with M (‘next objective: take a seat’) and a tour of Q’s laboratory before the rubber of the Aston Martin meets the road.
The bones of the game are sneak-em-up action: crouch in the long grass, hide behind crates, get close enough to take down one guard, then another. A whole panoply of gadgets (poison darts, laser beams, hacking rays, well-aimed half-bricks) help you negotiate the environment. If you’re spotted, which you often are, though, fisticuffs must be swift and decisive. Only if they’re shooting at you can you shoot back (licence to kill in self-defence? Tsk. Woke ruins everything). If all else fails, you can talk your way out of a sticky spot: there’s an actual ‘bluff’ button.
Welcome back, 007.
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