There is a long and somewhat painful history of James Bond video games. For every GoldenEye 007 — a stone-cold classic that practically invented the console first-person shooter — there are five forgotten tie-in games that feel like they were developed in a beige office by people who had only heard of Bond secondhand. The franchise deserved better. It has finally gotten it. IO Interactive’s 007 First Light launched on May 27 for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2, and it has landed with scores of 88 on OpenCritic and 87 on Metacritic, making it the highest-rated Bond game since GoldenEye itself. That is not a coincidence. That is craft.
Who Is This Young Bond, Exactly?
First Light is not a movie adaptation. IO Interactive had the confidence — and the creative freedom — to build an entirely original story, and the result is one of the best decisions in the game’s development. The Bond here is 26 years old: a Royal Navy aircrewman played with genuine charisma by Patrick Gibson, best known as the star of Dexter: Original Sin. He is reckless, a little rough around the edges, and has not yet earned the tuxedo. After a heroic act during an ambush, he is recruited into a revived Double 0 program and paired with a reluctant mentor named Greenway. When a mission to stop a rogue agent ends in tragedy, Bond must unravel a deep conspiracy that reaches the heart of the British state.
The story is gripping in the way a good Bond film is gripping: globetrotting, full of betrayals, and anchored by a villain you actually find interesting. Lenny Kravitz voices Bawma, a pirate king whose menace is matched by his theatricality. The plot’s central conceit — which touches on modern anxieties around artificial intelligence and who controls it — feels appropriately timely without ever becoming heavy-handed. And in a nice touch, the game traces Bond’s evolution across its runtime: his fashion sense sharpens, his wit develops, his martini preference crystallizes. The game is quite literally showing you how the legend is made, and it earns every beat of it.
Stealth, Action, and the IO Formula
If you played IO Interactive’s Hitman trilogy, you will recognize the DNA immediately. First Light is built around sandbox mission structures that offer multiple paths to each objective: eliminate a target, but you can go in through the service entrance dressed as a waiter, or you can snipe from the roof, or you can bluff your way through the front door using Bond’s charm stat. The infiltration system is described by critics as sophisticated and comprehensive, and the hand-to-hand combat — fluid, brutal, and deeply satisfying — is a genuine step up from what the studio has attempted before.
The gadget system is a particular highlight. Rather than giving you an unlimited supply of spy toys, First Light requires resource management, which adds real tension to puzzle-solving sections. Run out of the wrong thing at the wrong moment and you will need to improvise — which, conveniently, is exactly what Bond would do. The influence of the Hitman series is clear, but IO has not simply reskinned its previous work. The pacing is faster, the set pieces are larger, and the game leans into spectacle in a way that Hitman never needed to.
Where It Falls Short
First Light is not flawless. The vehicle sequences — a staple of Bond that no developer has ever quite cracked — feel underdeveloped compared to the rest of the experience, and PC Gamer noted that some of the game’s more linear stretches draw unfavorable comparisons to titles that do similar things better. The cover system is functional but unremarkable. For players who came expecting the full depth of World of Assassination’s immersive simulation, some compartments of First Light may feel a little small.
A New Era for Bond in Games
What First Light gets definitively right is something harder to quantify than mechanics or scores: it understands what makes James Bond worth caring about. The confidence, the improvisation, the charm, the constant sense that everything can go wrong at any second. IO Interactive has spent years mastering the art of making players feel like the most dangerous person in the room. Applying that philosophy to 007 was always going to produce something special. At roughly 14 hours for the main campaign, it is lean and purposeful, with a TacSim mode offering replayability through mission challenges for those who want to return.
With a sequel strongly implied and Amazon now holding the Bond rights with an eye toward expanding the franchise, the foundation is in place for something lasting. For now, 007 First Light is simply the best Bond game in nearly three decades — and one of the most assured action-adventure titles of 2026.
Score: 9/10
