007 First Light Hailed as Best Bond Game Since GoldenEye

IO Interactive's 007 First Light is receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews ahead of its release. Critics widely regard it as the best James Bond video game since 1997's GoldenEye 007. The title currently sits at 88 on Metacritic and 90 on OpenCritic. It marks the first James Bond game in 14 years.

The game arrives on May 27 for PC, Xbox Series X, and PS5. Journalists received review copies at the last moment before the long holiday weekend. As a result, many sites missed today's review embargo or posted reviews-in-progress. Polygon indicated its review will be up soon. While late review code can be a bad sign, that does not seem to be the case with First Light.

Many reviews come from the U.K. due to time zones. The Guardian's Matthew Castle gave 007 First Light five stars, calling it "triumphant." Castle reserves particular praise for the integration of high-octane action and cinematic storytelling with Hitman's "social stealth" gameplay. "Plenty of games have let us be a gun-toting version of Bond, but this is the first opportunity we’ve had to be a Bond relaxing beside a glittering infinity pool in Vietnam, or a Bond trying to get one over on a shell game hustler," Castle writes. "Very few fans get to play in the sandbox of their obsession like IO has here. As far as Bond video games go, nobody has done it better."

VGC's Jordan Middler awarded five stars as well. He described the game as "a real frontrunner for 2026’s Game of the Year."

IGN's Luke Reilly offered a "review so far." Reilly said 007 First Light "has made a fabulous first impression" and that he is "quite comfortable to say it’s the best Bond has been since GoldenEye." He highlighted the attention to detail. This ranges from the long, vertical scar on Bond's right cheek from the character's literary origins to "tiny embellishments like the scratched rims and ziptied trim on the busted-up, 2006 Aston Martin seeing out its time in the service as the training car at MI6’s Malta-based training camp."

Reviewers more familiar with IO Interactive's Hitman games offered slightly more reserved praise. Eurogamer's Rick Lane gave the game four stars. Lane said it is "less cerebral and replayable than IO's World of Assassination trilogy" but makes up for it with "immense charm." "First Light is not IO Interactive's best game. But it is by far the studio's best-written game, and like the superspy himself, it keeps you on side even in its weakest moments by sheer dint of its personality," Lane writes.

Kotaku's Jackson Tyler noted that First Light is suspended between Uncharted-style cinematic action and the stealth mechanics of Hitman or Metal Gear Solid. This suspension can be awkward but is not always unproductive. "Uncharted is more than the sum of its parts while First Light is less than the sum of its parts, but those individual parts are almost all much more interesting and alive than those usually found in the genre First Light desperately wants to imitate," Tyler writes. He criticized the inconsistent tone of the game's story and the weak hand-to-hand combat. However, he found that IO's talents as a developer of sandbox stealth games shine through.