IOI’s Hitman roots are clear from the very beginning of First Light, but they become even more apparent once you reach the end of spy school. First you have to infiltrate a crowded night club to track down a suspect, which hearkens back to a handful of classic Hitman levels. The game’s scale becomes truly apparent in the second mission, where you’re looking for a former MI:6 agent in a boutique hotel (which also happens to be holding a chess tournament). The hotel itself is massive, immaculately designed and filled with dozens of guests and attendees, many of which are involved in scripted routines or conversations. This one portion of First Light’s clockwork pocket universe feels more alive than many soulless open world games.
It’s not quite an immersive sim like the Dishonored games, but in true Hitman fashion, you can accomplish your objectives in multiple ways. Just don’t expect to go in guns blazing. In most scenarios, First Light‘s “License to Kill” feature prohibits you from firing on enemies unless they pull their guns first. It’s really just a reminder that you’re not playing a cold-blooded assassin, and it encourages you to spend your time stealthily moving around environments and taking down enemies silently.
The game is thankfully more forgiving than Hitman if you blow your cover, where doing so could alert the entire map and force you to re-load a save. If an enemy spots Bond, you can just beat them down or slam them into nearby surfaces. Things get more complicated if multiple enemies see you, but you can still proceed with your mission once you take care of them.
While First Light remains relatively grounded most of the time, it wouldn’t be a Bond game without a few elaborate set pieces. You’ll find yourself parkouring through London skylines (a nod to Casino Royale’s opening), having fist fights where you’re crashing through multiple floors and plowing through cars in a garbage truck. There are also a handful of shootouts where you’ll have to mow down dozens of enemies, which offer visceral thrills but also quickly feel repetitive.
IOI has clearly spent more time thinking about stealth than large-scale action, and it’s sometimes tough to tell where you need to go when 20 people are shooting at you. I replayed the first major shootout, which took place in an airport, around 10 times before I found a survivable pathway. (For the easily frustrated, you can also reduce your difficulty level on the fly.)
Perhaps it was just a result of flying through the game for this review, but it was hard to ignore pacing issues throughout First Light. As the action and nefarious conspiracy escalates, the game gets bogged down by extended stealth sequences, fetch quests and half-hearted boss fights. They don’t ruin First Light’s overall experience, but it definitely feels like it could use some narrative tightening.
