New Gadget from Q-Branch

 

On one of the video game podcasts I listen to the hosts routinely answer emails from their listeners.  Questions always ranged from oddballs like "Which would be better in a fight; a knife or a bat?" to fun hypotheticals like "If you could choose any developer to design any kind of game who and what would you choose?"

 

I remember hearing the later and answering for myself that I would choose Naughty Dog to make a James Bond game.  I originally had this thought after playing through the opening chapter of Uncharted 3 but it always seemed like a pipe dream.  Naughty Dog went on to make The Last of Us and more Uncharted sequels and Bond games fizzled out with 007 Bloodstone being the last creative gasp of the franchise in 2010.

 

When IO Interactive announced they were working on a new James Bond game, I was excited but given that their pedigree was all the work they'd done on the Hitman series, I figured their Bond game would essentially be a re-skinned Hitman game.  Not that there would have been anything wrong with that.  Those games are extremely well-regarded.

 

I was surprised and delighted, however when I began playing 007 First Light to see that IO managed to create an amalgam of both styles of games.  It had the brash, fast-paced game play coupled with the well-acted cinematics of the Uncharted series but it also had some of the social-engineering almost puzzle-like elements of the Hitman series!

 

I'm taking my time with the game, playing it on my schedule and really savoring the first quality James Bond video game in 16 years.  When I finish it, I will likely attempt to write a review here, but in the meantime it's certainly rekindled my love of Bond as I recently re-watched No Time To Die and am contemplating a re-read of the Double or Nothing novels by Kim Sherwood (which you should definitely read if you haven't already).