Three hours with 007 First Light convinced me it’s a game of the year contender – and maybe the best Bond yet

Normally, you wouldn’t describe James Bond as chameleonic. This is a super spy who in his stories rarely blends in and often flippantly dispenses with fake names and cover stories as a matter of course. In the real world, he’s much more mutable, though. In this framing Bond does have an aspect of the chameleon as he’s been more or less everything – from a level of camp that barely distinguishes him from parody to brooding, gritty, and murderous. Those examples will surely evoke thoughts of the films. But it goes beyond that: there’s Ian Fleming’s original substance-abusing, womanizing blunt instrument, Charlie Higson’s curious adventurer of the Young Bond novels, the distant-but-intimate romantic muse of Samantha Weinberg’s The Moneypenny Diaries series… even the annoying little shit that was James Bond Jr. And then, of course, there’s the video games. Among many offerings, 1982’s Shaken but Not Stirred closely resembled Fleming’s novels in text adventure form. 1992’s James Bond Jr. titles reimagined the spy in crap platformer guise. The Duel offered a slightly better platformer where you at least had a gun. In the late nineties, we got a pair of bangers: a lesser-known but totally brilliant Game Boy title that played a bit like the 2D Metal Gear games – and, of course, N64’s GoldenEye. GoldenEye is rightly regarded as the best James Bond video game – but at the same time, it isn’t the best video game James Bond. Read More...

Apr 30, 2026 - 23:09

Three hours with 007 First Light convinced me it’s a game of the year contender – and maybe the best Bond yet

Normally, you wouldn’t describe James Bond as chameleonic. This is a super spy who in his stories rarely blends in and often flippantly dispenses with fake names and cover stories as a matter of course. In the real world, he’s much more mutable, though. In this framing Bond does have an aspect of the chameleon as he’s been more or less everything – from a level of camp that barely distinguishes him from parody to brooding, gritty, and murderous.

Those examples will surely evoke thoughts of the films. But it goes beyond that: there’s Ian Fleming’s original substance-abusing, womanizing blunt instrument, Charlie Higson’s curious adventurer of the Young Bond novels, the distant-but-intimate romantic muse of Samantha Weinberg’s The Moneypenny Diaries series… even the annoying little shit that was James Bond Jr. And then, of course, there’s the video games.

Among many offerings, 1982’s Shaken but Not Stirred closely resembled Fleming’s novels in text adventure form. 1992’s James Bond Jr. titles reimagined the spy in crap platformer guise. The Duel offered a slightly better platformer where you at least had a gun. In the late nineties, we got a pair of bangers: a lesser-known but totally brilliant Game Boy title that played a bit like the 2D Metal Gear games – and, of course, N64’s GoldenEye. GoldenEye is rightly regarded as the best James Bond video game – but at the same time, it isn’t the best video game James Bond.

Read More...

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