007: First Light

[mfnick]

This rules! It basically is Hitman mixed with Uncharted style set pieces.
 

Don’t worry if you don’t like Hitman that much like myself though. It still has the impressive open areas but it’s a more authored experience and it leads you a lot more meaning a lot less time being overwhelmed, getting lost and caught constantly. For those of you who want to do your own thing though it does seem like these areas do let you tackle them in a non linear fashion too. 
 

Mixed with these parts are proper action set piece parts. & these are just expertly done. It’s all set up to make you feel and look cool constantly. There’s big red explosive containers everywhere and the hand to hand fighting is so satisfying. It’s really context sensitive, you have a grab and throw and can the fighting sections are set out for you to be able to throw dumb bad guys into or off of stuff constantly. It’s so much fun. 

 

The environment has so many great little options for you to take out or mess with bad guys from a distance too. It’s all just so well designed to be as fun and cool as possible. It’s made me laugh out loud a couple of times with just how OTT some of the things it’s let me do have been. 
 

Love all the characters as well. I’ve said before how much I didn’t like the Bond actor from trailers, but now I’ve played it, he’s perfect. 
 

Great game so far. 

[regemond]

On board with everything you've said here, @mfnick. I'm chipping away at it bit-by-bit and having a whale of a time.

 

As well as everything you've said re combat, the little incidental lines are incredible, too. Throwing a teacup/mug at someone and hearing Bond pipe up with "one lump or two" is just fantastic. I THINK I'm still early doors or maybe around half way, having done a level with Bawma and now infiltrating a gala of some sort.

 

I'm just having tons of fun playing as a rough version of Bond, and the fact he ends up in so many fistfights makes sense because he's not a seasoned, well-trained spy yet. You are, quite literally, as the story says "earning the numbers".

 

Music is so cool too. It's just nice the way it flows in, amps up through fights, then rounds out beautifully when you finish off a dust-up. I've never really played the newer Hitman game(s), and I know they're a lot more stealth-based than physical fighting, but it really makes me want to try Agent 47's adventures.

[Maf]

I’m hoping this game gets better for me, but I’ve had trouble getting in to it. The stealth and how Bond can interact with the map is unpredictable to me and I either walk in circles deciding the best entry point (or equivalent) or chaos ensues. I’ve only played a couple hours or less, so maybe I get better as I play. Or on repeat playthroughs and foreknowledge of the maps and goals will help me prepare better. But so far my Bond is just wandering around like “What does this do? Oh, it alerts the guards. I see”

 

This part was purely my fault but made me tired and turn it off.
 

There’s a bit where Bond returns to Q lab to talk to someone, but one of the NPC’s is Gemma Chan and I wanted to talk to her, except she introduces the game’s challenge mode. However, because this is still within the training/tutorial arc I thought that’s what I was meant to do. So I’m doing these challenge modes over and over like ‘when will the game let me go and get back to the story’, without realising the game had removed me from the story mode entirely and I was now in the challenge mode of the game. Like I had to back out to the main menu to realise I had exited the story mode.

 

I was getting annoyed, realised, felt dumb and turned it off. 
 

One thing where the game is clicking for me is Bond is really cool. It’s nice to play a character and be in a world that isn’t magic or aliens or cyborgs or zombies or whatever.
 

You’re playing a normal guy, in a normal world, and he’s simply cool AF. Shoots bad guys, beds women, laughs when insulted and quips when threatened. It’s a tradtional form of cool that video games really don’t do enough. And Bond acts in a way most male game characters are just not allowed to or built for. He’s not brooding, stoic, tragic or a sad dad tunnel visioned on revenge. 
 

Speaking of traditional heroes, I like that he’s basically fighting against an AI future and quantum computers. I guess it is a bit 60’s adventurer romanticised and sci-fi. But I like the message and the theme. Bond is written how I want him to be and is embodying the kind of old school adventurer type, facing him off against AI might be a bit on the nose, but I like it a lot. 
 

Right from the off when it’s like “you have a 1% chance of success”, Bond pulls it off and later says “Guess your AI was wrong” and MI6 is like “It wasn’t wrong, you just had 1% chance. And you beat the odds” how James Bond is that? I love it 

[Maf]

My Bond is officially the worst Bond there has ever been.

 

I can’t do anything right in this game, and I find it so slow paced I’ve kind of given up. Every time it’s a stealth section I just walk right in to guards and start punching instead of trying to do anything smart. And as soon as the game gives me a gun it’s headshot city. 
 

I just finished the Perch level and what a disaster. 
 

It could be a cool game but I can’t help but ruin it. I finished a level and got a trophy like No Time to Die or whatever. Definitely story based and not skill based because I died 4 times trying to get out of there. I’m really not achieving the vibe the game wants to give at all. 

 

As it’s a Bond game my mind tells me you can run through the bullets and it’ll be fine. Sometimes that has worked. But the game sometimes wants you to Gears of War it out and the more I resign to the reality of the game vs my wish fulfilment the more disappointed I become. I thought as the guy on the radio is telling me to run, there’s a countdown timer on screen, and it’s a Bond game I would do a death defying run to the exit

 

But no the game wants you to sit behind cover and head shot dudes while firing a missile from the watch every time it refills 

 

He doesn’t do that in the movies, though 

 

I also think their cover system needs a bit of work. Trying to snap to cover is so delayed. I press the button twice and Bond quickly attaches and then detaches from cover. But it takes so long to register the first button press I’m not sure if the input was read. It has got me killed lots of times where he just won’t duck 

[regemond]

I didn't use cover, and honestly, I barely used the guns when I had the option. I was most likely to run straight into a crowd and R1+Square to shoulder barge them. That gives a few i-frames. Then beat them down until I had the finisher prompt. By the time you run and shoulder barge the next guy, you get more i-frames and time to recover from the previous damage.

 

Anyway, I finished it yesterday, and I absolutely didn't play it how the game wanted me to, but I completely found my own fun within the systems. I think if I'd played it as intended it'd have been boring. There's no part of me that wants to be a ghost in the shadows (and honestly, that's probably why I won't end up downloading Hitman).

 

It gave me a little bit of - and this is possibly the first time I've used the term non-ironically, and in context - ludonarrative dissonance, in that the cut-scenes depicted Bond as this cool, suave guy who could charm the knickers off a nun, but then it dropped back and I was awkward and hoped for the best. But at the same time, this was Bond "earning the numbers", so there's going to be trial and error in his approach.

 

Anyway, I fucking loved Greenway in this. And there was a section in the closing hour with an Aston Martin that was fantastic.

 

Yeah, if they go back to this well, I'll be all in on a sequel. So much bloody fun.

[Maf]

I think I’ll find my fun with the game but on a 2nd playthrough. The idea is they want you to improvise like Bond. But Bond doesn’t improvise, the movies are scripted. When I go back through and have knowledge of the map, options, how things work, what are the best gadgets to take on a mission, where exactly things are headed, I think I have more fun with it. 
 

Greenway is cool but I’m sure he plays the multiplayer voice announcer in the Destiny games and it’s taking me out of the story a little bit. It’s funny to have the same guy tell Bond he sucks ass to be the same voice telling my PvP Destiny character that they also suck ass. 

[regemond]

He also played Morgan in The Walking Dead, so that threw me off at first, too.

[mfnick]

Completed & got the Platinum a couple of days ago. Yea I loved this & im not even a Bond fan. If you love Bond this is essential. 
 

I haven’t got much to add from my original & other posts (apart from Maf’s but we know he sucks at games so doesn’t count). But it kept the quality high all the way until the end. The Hitman like areas were really well done & the set-pieces were always fun as hell & visually stunning. Some of these locations are just fucking beautiful too. Vietnam being a standout for me.

 

Highly recommended.

[Maf]

Being bad at the game aside, I do think this game is missing the mark on the Bond fantasy a little bit

 

It sounds cliche in reviews for superhero games like “It makes you feel like Batman”. But if it didn’t, then what are we doing with a game called Batman? 
 

007 has moments of feeling Bond-like when things line up smoothly but generally I don’t get that from this game. And it’s not a skill issue because it’s hard to lose. In fact it’s easier to die in an Arkham game.
 

But the Arkham series still achieves what I think is the primary objective whereas First Light doesn’t reliably bring the game and the idea together enough to achieve “it makes you feel like Bond”. At least not reliably. Bond is competency and effortless. This game does not feel like that. I would not use those words to describe First Light.
 

Granted, Bond is a much harder character to replicate authentically in a game than a caped superhero because a lot of what makes him work is personality, not just shootouts and car chases. And things like the Bluff mechanic are neat and circle the idea. But it still mostly devolves into basic stealth sections and, at least in my experience, Arkham style punching dudes. 

 

If anything this game makes me think about that Indiana Jones games from a couple of years ago, which I think failed in a similar way. It’s more like the IP has been shoehorned into what the studio specialises in rather than actively being ‘true’ to what the character is\

There’s 2 measures. One of them is this is a really fun game and I like it a lot. But the other is how much does “it make me feel like Bond”. Almost never, in terms of gameplay and fantasy, even if it succeeds in presentation. 
 

Bond should be smooth and games should have friction which is a tough square to circle, but that is still the game’s job to do which it doesn’t quite manage and, I really like First Light, but am a bit underwhelmed and wish it hit the “it makes you feel like Bond” point a bit better and easier 

[regemond]

I think the whole point is that Bond isn't supposed to feel smooth at this point. The story of the game is that he's earning the numbers. He's not got the skills to be the suave, debonair master spy just yet. He's still learning. And I think that translates to the game incredibly well, too.

 

Some people will go in, find everything, sneak through every level and barely get into a fistfight, whereas others (like me) will be a bull in a china shop, shoulder barging my way through scores of enemies. 

 

For me, it made me feel like a Bond who's still learning the ropes. You've got all the Q gadgets, you've got the Q watch, 

Spoiler

at one point you escape a slowly descending chainsaw - what's more Bond than that??

 

In some cases he does the sneaky sneaky stuff really, really well. In others it all goes tits up because me as Bond, I'm about as subtle as a sledgehammer. I think if they follow this game up and you're supposed to be a more seasoned Bond who's been at it for a couple years and is supposed to know what he's doing, then everything you've said would be valid. But as a new recruit who was thrown into the training program last minute, he's essentially learning on the job.

 

I do appreciate your deconstruction of the game loop. Simple stealth sections and Arkham-inspired fights, but isn't that the majority of Bond movies anyway? He drives a nice car through some picturesque vista, schmoozes his way through a party, dicks down his latest victim, sneaks about where he's not meant to be, then ends up in a punch-up with some basic grunts.

[Maf]

But the story never frames Bond as anything other than traditional Bond. The very first mission he is given a 1% chance, told to stop, disobeys and wins anyway. The whole reason he is picked up by MI6 is because here is this supremely capable guy, that doesn’t follow the rules and somehow still wins. 
 

That’s why in the story and character I really like this game but the gameplay doesn’t translate into that 

 

Games like Metal Gear also fall into this trap where Snake is a legendary super soldier yet when I play the game he gets seen by everybody. When I play Snake he seems extremely sociable. 
 

But it’s different because Snake is baked into video games, that’s how we know him so the illusion doesn’t break. Where with First Light we know exactly who Bond is, and constantly eyeing guard patterns, hiding behind waist high walls, throwing cups at people and standing around eaves dropping while circling the map for 40mins isn’t really ‘it’ 

 

And it’s not a bad game. Based on its own merits, mechanics, production, design, etc it’s really cool. 
 

But for me I just don’t really feel like Pierce Brosnan or Daniel Craig. Which I guess is the simplest way to put my expectation and where I’m underwhelmed 

[regemond]

For what its worth, I don't disagree with your criticisms at all. I appreciate your logic and fully get where you're coming from. I think maybe I just have a bit of a different take on it.

 

And it could also be the fact I've never been a huge Bond fan in the past, so I can look past the aspects you're mentioning and find ways to bridge the gaps in my head, making it more 'complete' in a way. It doesn't mean I'm right for having created my own justification in my head. 

 

Snake I fully agree with you, though. Same with Sam Fisher. And going back to what I said in the last post, if there's a sequel to this then I'll be fully on your side with what you're saying. It's only for this story I'm like 'meh, he's still just learning'.

[Maf]

And I’m not trying to put anyone off the game. For most I would recommend it, it’s a good stealth game and a fun adventure. I was just really excited about a specific layer of the game which isn’t coming together for me or I’m not finding.

 

Part of that disappointment is that the game is very good. But the overall game direction is not gelling with what I was looking forward to. 
 

I still plan to get the platinum, play it a couple of times and buy a sequel if they made one lol. Me saying “Man, if only it were cooler” is not me saying “throw it in the bin”

[DisturbedSwan]

Wish I had more TV time to play this, I put about 7 hours into it when it came out and got up to the Mauritanian auction. 
 

Recently managed to squeeze a couple of hours in thanks to the Wife getting day drunk and falling asleep on the couch and it has just reminded how fantastic this game is. 
 

Managed to finish the Ship graveyard mission and the plot so far has kept me guessing throughout, it’s super intriguing where the story is at the moment and I really want to get back to it and find out more but will have to wait for my next opportunity lol.