With Hitman developer IO Interactive at the helm of 007 First Light, there was an expectation that the new James Bond game would be a showcase for what the developer does best: intricately crafted levels and worlds that run with clockwork precision. What I wasn’t expecting was a game where throwing hands wasn’t just surprisingly effective, but also evocative of a beloved open-world classic, Sleeping Dogs.
In 007 First Light, Bond often finds himself in a situation where gadgets or bluffing won’t suffice. Unlike Hitman: World of Assassination, brawling is one of the best ways to move forward, and it’s brilliantly realized with a system of hard-hitting blows, grapples, and using the environment to your advantage. It’s a skillset that was understandably absent from Agent 47’s tour across the World of Assassination, with any fisticuffs usually being over in three button prompts and running the risk of alerting a small army of security guards to open fire on you.
But with Bond, the world is more forgiving of outbursts of violence. Fighting in 007 First Light feels dirty, brutal, and improvised, a sensation that United Front Games mastered in its 2012 masterpiece, Sleeping Dogs. A love letter to Hong Kong action movies, Sleeping Dogs gave you ample opportunity to drop a Triad gangster with a spinning roundhouse kick, and that action was one of its greatest strengths.
007 First Light’s brawls feel like a spiritual successor to the showdowns of Sleeping Dogs, as both games offer players the opportunity to improvise on the fly with environmental takedowns and using whatever’s at hand to bludgeon an enemy into submission. There’s an inherent savagery to the combat in those games, a no-holds-barred approach to breaking bones that’s enhanced by top-notch sound design and feedback to your actions.
Admittedly, Bond’s skillset pales in comparison to Wei Shen’s martial arts mastery, but the protagonists feel connected. Both games also choose to treat firearms as an absolute last resort, emphasizing skill and cunning over ballistic kisses, while Bond and Shen also find their loyalties tested as they adopt new identities in pursuit of justice and vengeance.
There’s even some Dark Knight DNA in the mix, as 007 First Light’s principal combat director, Adam Vincent, also worked as a combat animator on Rocksteady’s Batman games. “Bond is young in First Light–inexperienced, eager, and a little reckless,” Vincent said in a Reddit thread. “The combat needs to feel slightly more like a bar brawl. People can be used against others, haymakers, and slightly over-extended strikes, improvised weapons, and lots of environmental strikes and takedowns. Bond can obviously kill as well, which is the opposite of Batman.”
It’s the closest we’ll ever get to a Sleeping Dogs sequel, as a combination of disappointing sales–by Square Enix’s infamous standards–and the eventual shutdown of Sleeping Dogs developer United Front Games torpedoed any chance of a follow-up to that cult-classic even when it was reportedly in an early stage of development. Who knows what’s happening with the Sleeping Dogs movie, a project that has gone through numerous phases over the years.
For now, 007 First Light scratches a 14-year itch for roughhousing. It might not have neon-soaked Hong Kong streets to drop goons on or offer you roadside pork buns to make you feel whole, but Bond’s two-fisted approach to saving the world feels comfortably familiar once you master it.
