007 First Light

The most-upvoted positive review of 007 First Light, at 1,320 votes, begins: "Way too cinematic for my taste… The gameplay is also far too easy, even on the hardest difficulty."

The most-upvoted negative, at 862 votes, begins: "For games like this, I wish Steam had a 'Mixed' option. As a product, 007 First Light is perfectly fine. I can't honestly call it a bad game. It's gorgeous, technically impressive, and the budget is visible in every aspect."

This is a game the thumbs-up/thumbs-down system serves badly. It is 91.5% positive across 43,190 reviews, and almost nobody seems to feel 91.5% about it.

What's not in doubt

It is a lavish, convincing Bond production. The presentation is film-grade, the score works, and the gadget design is the thing reviewers reach for first — 23 of a hundred negatives mention gadgets, mostly fondly. A 1,191-vote critic summarises the good version well: "IO Interactive effectively transitions their Hitman expertise into a high-velocity espionage adventure. The interplay between quiet infiltration, intel gathering, and combat is well-tuned."

IO have also supported it properly. Patches 1.0.4, 1.0.5 and 1.0.6 through June, a free "Behind Enemy Lines" content update on 24 July, Steam Deck verification in late July, and — notably — Denuvo anti-tamper DRM removed on 24 July, two months after launch. That last one directly answers a complaint in the corpus rather than ignoring it.

The Hitman-shaped hole

Now the pattern, and it's the clearest I've seen in a while. Counting the hundred most-helpful English negatives: Hitman appears in 54 of them. Bond appears in 39. Linear appears in 30.

People are not comparing this to other Bond games. They're comparing it to the studio's own back catalogue, and finding a different design philosophy. A 366-vote review puts the case plainly: "IO Interactive is known for creating huge living and breathing sandbox maps, that have so many interactions and opportunities that it's a borderline simulation. You'd think they would play into their strengths."

Instead First Light is a linear, chapter-based, heavily authored action-adventure. A 265-vote review describes the rhythm at its worst: "Unskippable cutscene, skippable cutscene, skippable cutscene, quick time event, 2 minutes of on-sticks gameplay, unskippable cutscene, quick time event, unskippable cutscene, repeat."

I want to be fair to the design, because "it isn't the other game" is not automatically a criticism. A tightly authored Bond story is a legitimate thing to make, and the story mode reviewers praise the set-pieces. But when a studio's defining strength is systemic level design and 54% of your critics raise its absence, that's a real mismatch between what was made and what was expected.

Length against price

The top negative overall, 1,429 votes from someone who finished it in 14.7 hours: "I cannot really recommend anyone pay 70 euros for 15hours of campaign… There is no real replayability unless you want to try going f[or collectables]."

The median playtime across all hundred critical reviews is 15.8 hours — these are people who completed the game and then wrote about it, which makes the length claim credible rather than reactive. Replay appears in 18 of a hundred.

At NZ$99.99, plus a NZ$26.00 Deluxe upgrade, that's the weakest part of the proposition. It's a different failure from NBA 2K26's season passes — nobody here is being nickel-and-dimed after the sale — but a hundred dollars for fifteen linear hours with no reason to return is a hard sell, and it's why value scores a 5 and replayability a 4.

Two more things worth knowing

The writing divides people. Story appears in 51 of a hundred negatives — the second-highest term — generally for predictable plotting and dialogue that reviewers find tonally off. A 302-vote review calls the script "predictable and lazy". Some reviewers go further and speculate about the writers' attitude to the source material; that's a motive claim I can't verify and won't repeat as fact, but the underlying complaint about the writing quality is widespread enough to flag.

AMD users had a rough launch. A 242-vote review is specific: "No FSR4 Support, No Frame Gen, No Native AA. You want to run it without an upscaler? good luck." Worth checking the current patch notes against your hardware before buying.

The verdict

007 First Light earns a 7. As a Bond game it's excellent and as a piece of production it's a 9 — this is one of the best-looking, best-presented games of the year, and IO have supported it with patches, a free update and the removal of Denuvo.

It lands at a 7 because it's a linear fifteen-hour blockbuster asking NZ$99.99, because the studio best in the world at replayable sandbox levels didn't make one, and because the writing that has to carry a heavily authored game isn't strong enough to do it.

Negative reviews have fallen from 48 in May to 40 in June, 10 in July and 2 so far in August, and recent sentiment holds at 91%. This is a well-liked game with one very specific disappointment attached. Buy it on sale, expect a film rather than a sandbox, and you'll have a good time once.