I’m still pretty early into 007 First Light, and I’m digging what I’ve played thus far. It’s been a decade since Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, so it’s about time I got around to another big, prestige playable action movie with stealth elements and a dashing protagonist. First Light’s opening drops you right into the action as the young James Bond, and while it tutorializes a few things like climbing around on cliffs and scrambling for cover as you avoid armed guards, there’s a lot more to First Light than running and ducking. As a result, First Light has a lot more to teach you after you get through the first level, and it does so in a spectacular way that makes what could have been a fairly boring tutorial into a really great introduction to how the game attempts to emulate the movies that inspired it.
First Light is an origin story for James Bond, and its opening hour shows the spy-to-be going against direct orders so he can save a group of researchers. His heroism and scrappy “get it done at any cost” demeanor is enough to get the attention of MI6, where he is recruited as the seventh candidate for the 00 program. To earn the 007 title and his license to kill, he’ll have to pass a series of exams showcasing his hand-to-hand combat and driving skills, and prove he knows his way around a firearm.
In a less interesting game, this would be where the developers hold your hand for a series of pop-ups telling you what all the buttons on your controllers do and maybe have you run through a bland training course in some nondescript facility. But First Light harkens to its action movie roots with something a little different: a playable training montage.
Bond is put through the wringer by Cressida and Monroe, fellow 00 recruits who have been tasked with making sure he passes his exams, lest they also get docks on their own scores. At first, their training is pretty straightforward. Bond has to drive around tight corridors to prove that he knows his way around a steering wheel, and after you get through that awkward and insufferable driving segment, First Light immediately drops you into something new. There’s an obstacle course you have to run and jump through, target practice to make sure you can point and shoot, hand-to-hand sparring that teaches you how to parry, throw, and charge into your opponents, and then yes, the game makes sure you haven’t forgotten how to drive its hydroplaning car in the few minutes since you last did.
Each of these segments comes in rapid succession, all gradually escalating in challenge and complexity as you quickly move back and forth between bite-sized tutorials without so much as a cut to black. The game manages to teach you all its little nuances so quickly that it never feels bogged down by the same menu-heavy tutorializing that plagues so many other games. By the time I was wrapping up the final challenge, I was still learning cool tricks Bond could do, like disarming an enemy by shooting the gun out of their hands, or throwing an empty firearm at foes to stun them when I was out of ammo.
I haven’t gotten much further in First Light, but my mind already races thinking of the kinds of scenarios IO Interactive could conjure for me to use all these tools in, and how, once I get out of these scripted events, the game might react to me changing up my approach at any given moment. By emulating classic training montages from action films without so much as taking a breath, First Light tosses you into the deep end and tells you to sink or swim with style.