007 First Light comes from IO Interactive, the studio behind the Hitman games, and you feel their fingerprints all over it. The difference is the lens. Hitman made you a methodical assassin with a sandbox full of ways to take a target down. First Light makes you a spy, so it leans harder into action than pure stealth. The depth isn't quite at Hitman levels, but the options are still there, and the game opens up the further you get into it. You're Bond, not Agent 47, and the game knows it.
The story is what carried me. It takes a lot to make me want to finish a game these days. I'll pick something up, enjoy it for a bit, then get pulled away by the next release. First Light was different. I wanted to see how it ended, and it never felt like a slog getting there. That's high praise from someone with four kids and a backlog as long as my arm.
It plays great, too. The action, the gunplay and the hand-to-hand combat are all a lot of fun, and the game looks fantastic while you're doing it. The little details are where it really shines. Shooting a weapon clean out of someone's hand, grabbing a cup off a table and lobbing it to stagger an enemy, using whatever the environment gives you. Those touches make the fights feel like Bond rather than a generic shooter.
It's not perfect. My biggest gripe was the online side. You can play offline, which is fine, but I kept losing connection at random moments, often in the middle of a mission, and then I'd have to sign back in. It was only about fifteen seconds of reloading each time, but it pulled me out of the moment, especially during the bigger story beats. I went through every setting and couldn't fix it, and it never happened with any other game, so I can't tell you if it's a known issue or just me. The driving is the other one. It's not bad, it just felt a touch weak next to everything else on offer.
For a parent, though, this is a great one. It's an easy pick-up-and-play that you can pause at any moment. I lost count of how many times I stopped mid-mission to see to the kids, dropped the PS5 into sleep mode, and came back later to carry on exactly where I left off. No drama, no lost progress. When your gaming happens in short windows between everything else, that flexibility counts for a lot.
There are some lovely throwbacks and Easter eggs for long-time 007 fans, the acting performance is strong, and it's a really good Bond story. There's more story on the way, so this is a world you'll be able to jump back into rather than a one-and-done. I played the whole thing on a PS5 Pro and it ran beautifully. A couple of small annoyances aside, this is a fantastic game and an easy recommend. Jump in.