Melee combat in games that star James Bond has always been a bit of a sore spot for us. It’s been functional for the most part, but it has always felt secondary, ceding ground to gunplay, driving, or gadgets. Well, 007 First Light has come along to change that, bringing a brutal, almost primal take on Bond’s proficiency with his fists that fits well within the story it’s trying to tell.
We previously discussed First Light as Bond’s possible Arkham moment, but that was before we got to play it. Things are different now, and we’re now convinced that First Light is its own beast on the combat front.
Its combat takes Bond in a grounded, more brutal direction, and that works well for this younger, rougher version of the super spy, giving its combat a layer of authenticity that’s entirely its own. How has it managed to do that? Let’s dive right in and find out.
The Chaos of Battle
Let’s begin with what was so good about Arkham, and how First Light puts its own spin on it. For starters, Batman in the Arkham franchise was a seasoned superhero, with years of fighting crime under his utility belt, which lent a certain grace to his fighting style that belied his years of training and practice.
But First Light’s different, since Bond isn’t as seasoned, and IO has made sure that it shows. He isn’t zipping between enemies, and the ones he gets close to aren’t comic book thugs who are meant to take a beating to make a superhero look good. Bond can, and perhaps must, fight dirty, grabbing foes to slam them into walls, to smash them through glass, throwing things lying around at them, or using his gadgets to gain the upper hand.
There’s grace in his movements, sure, but there’s also an underlying desperation that lends both urgency and weight to each swing he takes at a bad guy. First Light ensures that every swing that lands in combat looks painful, no matter who’s on the receiving end, a facet that’s on display every time you or an enemy use the environment to your advantage. Indeed, it’s the way in which the environment has been baked into combat that makes it feel as violent as it does.
Everything around you is a weapon, and that immediately changes the moment-to-moment flow of combat in a way that’s both visually brutal and mechanically satisfying. Are you near a wall? It’s a perfectly good place to give a pesky enemy a concussion and take them out of the fight. Is someone you’re looking to take down a far distance away? Use bottles, ashtrays, glasses, or anything else that isn’t nailed down as a projectile to their face.
It’s quite nice to see the space around you become a part of the fight, and it makes for a combat loop that has you improvising on the fly. First Light’s distinction is that its brutality comes from impact, with the arena becoming more than just a stage for the action, giving you weapons outside of the ones you bring with you to make you feel vulnerable, yet skilled enough to survive the fight.
Fighting Dirty
Another area in which First Light sets itself apart is in how gadgets are woven into the combat loop. Where Batman’s batarangs, explosive gel, batclaw, and the disruptor were all quite fancy gadgets, they weren’t things a spy would carry into the field. They were tools crafted for a superhero, and functioned to help the Dark Knight control the battlefield and meet his foes on his terms. First Light smartly makes its gadgets as unobtrusive as they can be, ensuring that Bond isn’t going to face any problems at security checks.
He gets quite a few fancy tools of his own in the game, though. There’s that awesome watch with a laser baked in. There are smoke bombs, flash mines, a shockwave camera, and of course, the missile pen, which was our pick of the lot thanks to its utility and wow factor. But all of these tools seem tailor-made for a spy to carry around without raising suspicion, and are probably not what anybody would expect to see if they find themselves in a fist-fight with a seemingly innocuous yet suspicious individual.
It’s the way those tools are used in a fight that sets First Light apart. Bond’s use of gadgets in a fight isn’t about control, but about gaining the upper hand, no matter the situation. His line of work doesn’t allow him the luxury of the moral high ground, unlike Batman. Instead, he needs to make sure he survives every brawl he’s in, and as such, uses the tech in his pocket to ensure that he retains the metaphorical high ground in lieu of the moral one. He’s often outnumbered, and his gadgets are merely tools that let him even the odds against enemies who are intent on bringing his career at MI6 to an abrupt end.
The fact that both the environment and your gadgets aren’t just options, but necessary components of any successful fight in First Light, is where the feeling that you’re playing a relatively inexperienced take on Bond comes into play. It lets the game present Bond as a spy who has no intention of leaving even the slightest opportunity for his opponents to turn the tables on him, because it’s made very clear to you that your enemies are also looking to gain every advantage they can against you.
But how does that shape the experience for us, the ones who are behind every blow or block? How does it all come together to make us feel like we’re actually behind the man we’re controlling in every fight?
The Human Side Of A Hero
Batman’s grace and elegance fit the superhero fantasy that the Arkham franchise was trying to sell, his moves reflecting extensive training and confidence, in a suit of armor that was reasonably bulletproof, as was his fearsome reputation.
Bond in First Light doesn’t have those luxuries. He’s almost a nobody in the game, a rough draft of the fearsome operative he’s destined to become, but without the years of experience, highs and lows, and training that would get him there. He’s younger, less calculating, more reckless, and as such, very human in situations that might warrant superpowers that he doesn’t have.
Bond is an ordinary man tasked with being extraordinary. Those expectations can make even the best of us desperate in a pinch, and the messiness of every fight works in First Light’s favor because it makes Bond feel dangerous, but never untouchable. There’s a certain messiness that underlines every fight, serving to highlight the desperation in each struggle while lending a sense of urgency to your efforts to bring your enemies down. It encourages improvisation and using every advantage you can find so subtly, you barely realize that you’re almost as breathless as Bond himself.
That’s because it fits within the game’s narrative framework while lending a layer of authenticity to the entire experience. It’s a great way to translate the rough edges that Bond brings to the table into a combat system that helps sell that notion. Bond is definitely deadly, but he isn’t as untouchable. He’s human and needs to remember that alongside us as he fights to avoid being overwhelmed in the face of impossible odds.
That messiness is also on display in the way guns are woven into the heat of battle, with First Light making them one of your available options, and a potent one at that. Of course, Bond and the Bat do share an aversion to killing, but Bond does accept that death is a part of the job. His use of firearms and the way his Licence to Kill activates showcase that difference quite well.
But the presence of guns themselves is not what we’re examining here. It’s in how you get to seamlessly switch between your fists and firearms that makes the entire thing come together. For instance, we found ourselves in a brawl after a bit of stealth went wrong. We began by promptly taking out one enemy by slamming into a wall before diving for cover to shoot at a couple of faraway foes. One of them proved to be quite nimble, and we soon ran out of bullets.
We proceeded to throw our gun at the poor fool, a move that he didn’t see coming, before disarming him and turning his own weapon against him. Was it messy? For sure. But was it satisfying as hell to pull off? Hell yeah! It felt like a scene straight out of a Bond film, and the fact that the game allows spy craft to collapse and devolve into all-out brawls where survival isn’t guaranteed is an area of combat that truly lets Bond feel like a talented brawler, but a very vulnerable one. It’s a challenging balance to achieve, but First Light does it with style and substance.
Balancing Brutality and Fluidity
We’re going to preface this part of our take on First Light’s combat by saying that it doesn’t need fluidity and crowd control, both of which fit very well within a superhero fantasy but not one about a spy. But when it comes to sheer brutality, we think James Bond takes the win, using every advantage he can get in ways that might have Batman raising an eyebrow under his cowl even as he acknowledges that the British operative needs to be that way to survive his often risky road. It’s a way of giving Bond his own fighting identity that works, and does so very well indeed.
First Light has done well to do that, giving James Bond a combat system that brings brutality and improvising on the fly to the table. It has made its take on an inexperienced Bond feel gritty by not letting him dominate a battlefield. Instead, it gives you everything you need to survive it, and look hella cool in the process.
And that’s something that sets it apart.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
