#68 - 007 First Light

Hey, it's been a while! 007 First Light released in late May 2026 and, as a huge James Bond fan, I knew immediately I needed to write a review of this game.

Before I started writing about video games, I had a movie review blog where I essentially did this, but for films. And the James Bond film franchise was my magnum opus. When COVID put everyone on lockdown, I decided to re-watch the entire franchise and write a daily review of each film, starting with the first TV appearance of James Bond, the Climax! Mystery Theater episode, Casino Royale (1954). You can read each film's review throughout April 2020 in the blog archive at that link, with the most recent film, No Time to Die (2021), reviewed in October 2021.

Anyway... I've been a big James Bond nerd since my childhood, so this new game caught my attention. I know the film franchise has been struggling in the past couple decades, and with Amazon buying out MGM Studios and then green-lighting this game, I knew it'd live up to the quality of the film franchise.

By the way, this game is developed by IO Interactive, the Danish game development company known for the Hitman games. So it was no surprise to find stealth and infiltration elements from those games in this one. Honestly, it was nice to actually use stealth, bluffs, and misdirects to sneak around an area, instead of just going in guns blazing like most James Bond games. The puzzles and sneaking were so much more satisfying than just rushing through a level with a gun. Made me feel like a real spy.

NOTICE: I will only be discussing the first four chapters of this game (chapters 00-03), in generic detail, so as not to spoil the main plot of the game. Basically, I'm just going through the intro, tutorial, and slight introduction to the main plot, which surprisingly takes a whole four chapters to get going.

Also, this game is extremely lore heavy, so I will be summarizing a lot instead of getting into the fine details. I want you to enjoy the full plot in your playthrough, not have every minor detail explained in advance here.

Note: I didn't realize it until after I beat the whole game, but I had a graphics option titled "radial blur effects" turned on, which apparently blurs the edges of my screen. I didn't notice during gameplay, because I was mostly focused on what's in the center of the screen, but looking back at my screenshots, I now see that the edges are all blurry. Sorry about that!

This game is actually an origin story for James Bond, not only rebooting the franchise, but showing how he came to join the British Intelligence office of MI6.

It starts with a baby-faced Aircrewman James Bond, part of a rescue team on a mission to Iceland. As they near the coastline, suddenly their fleet of helicopters are shot down! Being next to an open door, Bond is thrown out and manages to survive the crash into the icy ocean waters.

We see this is how he got his iconic cheek scar. Ian Fleming, the original author of the James Bond novels, described Bond as having a faint scar across his right cheek; a distinct trademark missing from his movie appearances.

Bond finds a radio in the ruins on the beach but is immediately set upon by enemies, scouring the wreckage for survivors. He manages to sneak past them and move further inland.

When he does get a signal on his radio, the intelligence office MI6 intercepts and asks who he is. There's a classified research base in the area that belongs to them. It's been taken over by some sort of terrorist organization and MI6 asks Bond to sneak in and give them a SITREP (Situation Report) so they can take control of the situation.

You find out that MI6 has bombs planted all over the research facility, to avoid any secrets escaping. This plays in the favor of the terrorists, who have stolen the detonator and plan to blow up the site when they're done looting it. You sneak in a window and don an enemy's coat and mask, allowing you to walk among them.

You enter the large tent in the center of the base and find a wreckage being excavated. MI6 asks you to pull the on-board computer, but it's already missing.

You find yourself fighting consciousness and MI6 informs you that a nerve agent was released in the tent and has contaminated you. You have precious little time to find an antidote before you're dead. You manage to inoculate yourself and survive, but your terrorist disguise is contaminated, so you ditch it. You now have to sneak around the camp in your aircrew outfit. No more blending in.

With the information you collected for MI6, they determine who the terrorists are and where they're going to sell the on-board computer. They tell you the situation is contained and that you should clear out of the area and wait for an extraction.

But Bond isn't finished. He discovers there are still scientists being held captive, and this terrorist group doesn't leave survivors. MI6 informs him that he has a less-than-one percent chance to rescue everyone and escape and that he should stand down. Bond accepts those odds and hangs up on MI6.

Bond gets ahold of the detonator and manages to make a run for it with all the survivors, but draws the attention of the whole base in the process. In a desperate attempt to escape, Bond and the survivors fight up a rocky valley until they find themselves cornered on the edge of a cliff over the ocean.

Bond tells the terrorists to stand down or he'll blow them all up. They call his bluff, and in true Bond fashion, he follows through on his threat and detonates the entire base.

Cue a standard James Bond title sequence, with the game's theme song, credits, and lots of dancing silhouettes and guns. You can't call it a Bond property without one.

We cut to MI6 headquarters a month later, where James Bond is being brought in for questioning. We meet Moneypenny in the lobby, who escorts Bond to M, the head of MI6.

Despite the disastrous Iceland conflict, where Bond chose to destroy the asset rather than let MI6 retrieve it, M actually offers to recruit Bond as a spy. He's brash, difficult, and ignores orders at his whim, but his methods managed to save lives and stop terrorists, despite a very slim chance of success.

M has recently reactivated an old 00 program, which was previously discontinued. There are already six recruits in training for it and M makes Bond the seventh. He's shipped off to Malta, where he'll attend basic training with the rest of the recruits.

Bond meets John Greenway, the training instructor, who immediately dislikes Bond. He assigns the top two recruits, Cressida and Monroe, to catch Bond up to speed.

Bond then proceeds to flash through several training courses including driving, sharpshooting, hand-to-hand combat, and capture-the-flag from OpFor (Opposing Forces).

I especially like that they brought back the 2006 Aston Martin DBS from Casino Royale (2006) for you to practice your driving with.

RANDOM TRIVIA: The DBS was originally only available from 1967-'72. Aston Martin resurrected the DBS model for Casino Royale (2006), giving it a modern spin for the spy flick. Commercial DBS models were then sold from 2007 on. I still see Casino Royale (2006) as a modern James Bond film, so it hurts my old heart when Bond calls it a classic car in this game.

Upon graduating basic training, Bond returns to MI6 where he's issued his standard gear from Q-Branch.

We meet Q, who gives Bond "Q-lenses" that provide an AR (Augmented Reality) overlay for him, so he can see stats on his equipment like weapons, ammo, and gadget supplies.

We're also issued the standard Omega watch. You're allowed to choose which one you'd like. As far as I can tell, the only difference is the color of the wristband.

You're assigned to a luxurious safehouse in Bayswater, London, with Monroe and Cressida as your roommates. You're informed that you will be bouncing between Malta and London as your 00 training requires.

The game flashes through seven months of a training montage. Upon completing a final training course in Malta, the recruits decide to enjoy a night out in a club in London.

Unfortunately, your celebration is cut short when you're all given a mission. Some leaked government information is being exchanged at the club you're attending, so you split into teams to track potential targets and investigate the situation.

This is where you learn how to eavesdrop on conversations; an important information-gathering skill in crowds.

Upon a successful mission, the recruits are all informed to report to M at 8 AM the next day. Turns out, the former 009 from the previous 00 program, despite being underground for years, has reemerged.

He, and several other 00 agents, were marked as traitors to the crown, which led to the end of the 00 program. All had been eliminated except 009, who vanished. Now, he returns claiming to have evidence of a conspiracy against the state. He requests a full pardon if he turns it in, but he will only exchange it with John Greenway.

The meeting place is set for the Grand Carpathian Hotel in the High Tatra Mountains of Slovakia, during a World Chess Championship.

The 00 recruits are tasked to track down and monitor 009 until the exchange with Greenway concludes, since they're all new to the system. Their faces aren't really known yet, making them perfect infiltrators for the clever and dangerous 009.

Greenway, finding Bond to be reckless and unreliable, tasks him with being a chauffeur stuck with the vehicle, while everyone else gets to dress up and attend the fancy event. Bond is bored, hanging out in the parking lot, until he sees a suspicious blonde bellhop dump someone's luggage over a railing.

Ignoring orders, Bond pursues the suspicious person, eventually finding himself wrapped up in a grander plot within the hotel that changes the course of the whole story.

From here, Bond will travel all over the world in pursuit of a global threat, from a pirate king's black market city on the desert coastline of Mauritania...

To a luxury resort in Vietnam...

To a secret research facility hidden in Antarctica.

Bond will experience all sorts of adventure...

Danger...

And even take some... recreational breaks.

The young Bond will even learn to tie a bow tie for the first time, in a quick-time event with Q.

Oh, and the pirate king is played by Lenny Kravitz, who plays it as... Lenny Kravitz.

This game was loads of fun! It took me about 17 hours to play through it and it felt like an immersive James Bond film the whole way through. The music was incredible and the visuals were spectacular. Every time I thought the story was reaching its peak, another twist would occur that would ignite a new direction for the plot.

And when you're done with the campaign, there are "Tactical Simulations" you can play, where Bond can explore custom missions with timed goals to accomplish. You can train in these simulations and get ranked based on your score.

You can actually find the employee who designed it while talking with people in Q-Branch during your gameplay, and she'll offer to let you try it out before you continue. So it's not strictly an endgame thing.

This was one of the rare games where, as soon as I finished it, I was tempted to start it up again from the beginning. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it! I really hope this spawns a franchise of connected games, instead of the random one-off Bond games we've had over the years.

#64 - Enshrouded (Revisted)

Welcome back! Today we're going to be doing an in-depth look at the first game I ever posted here: Enshrouded. Now that I do long-form blog discussions instead of just screenshot posts, I figured it was time to revisit this game and give it a solid overview.

This is the third most-played game in my Steam library, which says a lot considering I have over 4,000 games. My friends and I have put about 532 hours into this game so far.

Enshrouded has been in early access for about a year and a half and the developers are still actively working on it. I'm kind of glad I waited until now to give it a full review because it's received tons of new content in the past year, and it's only getting better.

Enshrouded is unique in that it's a third-person open-world fantasy game, but it's also a crafting/survival game where you can dig/mine anywhere there is terrain and destroy almost everything placed in the world.

You can travel the world, discovering new quests and lore and improving your weapons, armor, and skills. Or, you can pick a place to settle down and build your own fantasy home, literally from the ground up. By the current endgame, you can have up to ten city-wide bases established anywhere in the world, where you can build to your heart's content.

You can also host your own public or private server and invite up to 16 people to quest in your custom world. You can fine-tune the settings of your server, so players or NPCs are stronger or weaker, determine how quickly weapons and tools break (or set them to never break), adjust how long daylight and nighttime is, and a ton more detailed customizations. Not needing food and water to survive is a default setting, although you can turn it on if you want the true survival feeling. You can also lock down your builds so strangers joining your game can't just destroy your cities and loot your resources.

I just started a new character to get screenshots for this post and I was surprised to see an opening cutscene explaining the lore of the game! That's a new addition.

Long ago, a stranger traveled to the lands of Embervale and presented the humans and Ancients with "The Elixir," a potent drug that boosted one's natural abilities. It was highly addicting and humans, of course, went a little nuts over this miracle drug, attempting to harvest their own elixir straight out of the earth themselves.

But like the Mines of Moria, humans delved too greedily and too deep, and they awoke The Shroud - a terrible fog that poisons the land and turns people into a sort of mindless undead creature called The Fell.

As The Shroud overtook the lands, humans and the Ancients worked together to create "The Flameborn," a type of person attuned to the power of fire, who is more resistant to The Shroud. This is your character.

It's never really explained, but Flameborn are essentially immortal. If you die, you just respawn from the last Flame Altar or Return Beacon you visited, so you can't ever truly have a game over. Also, you're resistant to fire.

By the way, if you find vials of the elixir in-game, it'll give a 30-minute buff of 30% damage increase and let you stay in The Shroud for up to a minute longer while it's active.

After you've built your custom Flameborn character, the game opens with you awakening within a Cinder Vessel. You climb out to find yourself in a long-forgotten Ancient Vault. Society has basically collapsed long ago and despite some scattered "Scavengers" (humans driven mad by elixir consumption) who roam the lands, there's no sign of people.

Traveling through the halls of the vault, you find a Flame Shrine, which ignites in your presence. (All sources of light in the world - even extinguished flames - will automatically flare up when you approach them.) The flame whispers to you, urging you to create a Flame Altar in the world to shelter yourself from the dark. The vault doors open, allowing you to explore the ruins of the world.

You step out onto a crumbling and overgrown terrace, where you get your first glance at the outside world and its various ruins. There are weather events in this game and it happened to be overcast at this point of my gameplay, but you'll see random sunny days and rainy days as well. Even snowfall if you're high enough up in the mountains!

The plains below are marked with a tall red flame, showing the general area for you to build your first Flame Altar. But to get there, you have to travel through a Shroud-filled cavern down the mountain.

This is your first experience in dealing with The Shroud. When you step into it, a timer bar appears at the top of the screen, counting down to your end if you don't escape The Shroud. You start with about 5 minutes of time, but as you strengthen the flame at your Flame Altar, you'll improve the amount of time you can spend in The Shroud.

When you make it to the plains, you'll need to pull up your crafting menu to make a Flame Altar. Make sure you have the proper materials to make it! In this case, you need 5 stones, which you can literally pick up off the ground.

Once you have made your Flame Altar, you need to place it in the world. See the faint yellow square around the borders of the plains? That designates the build area near the Flame Altar. Anywhere within that square, you can build whatever you want. As you level up your Flame Altar, that square will get exponentially larger, until you have space for a small city!

It's actually a cube space; you also have a limit to how high and how low you can build from that shrine. But as with the sides, that space will grow as you level up the Flame Altar. You can eventually build a massive tower to the heavens! Or a dungeon deep into hell...

Put multiple Flame Altars within range of each other to expand a single base's build region, or place them randomly around the world. Flame Altars are not only build areas, but also fast-travel points, so scattering them in hard-to-reach areas saves you on travel time around the massive map.

Remember that you can only place two Flame Altars when you start the game, so don't make a bunch of them. As you strengthen the flame at your Flame Altar, you will be able to use more. Ten is the current max number of Flame Altars you can have in the world, so place them wisely. You can always deactivate them and re-place them somewhere else, but anything you've built in their region will eventually disappear if you walk away for 30 minutes.

The flame at your new Flame Altar whispers to you, telling you to seek out more survivors who are slumbering in other nearby Ancient Vaults. At this point, you can either dedicate your time to crafting a base, or going out to find other survivors in the world. I chose to track down the first survivor - a blacksmith.

There are currently nine craftspeople, five assistants to the craftspeople, and ten villagers to find in the world. The craftspeople have specialized skills that will expand your crafting capabilities, the assistants have duplicate skills of specific craftspeople, so you can have two people with the same crafting skills scattered around your base, and the villagers are just NPCs to make your bases look more lived in.

Now that I have a blacksmith, I need a shelter for him. I guess I should at least build a house. You need to craft a workbench first, which will give you more advanced crafting abilities than what you can access from your crafting menu.

Once you've placed a workbench, accessing its menu will give you blocks of building materials you can craft. As you discover new materials in the world, this menu will expand with new types of building blocks.

I know the numbers don't add up - 100 stone blocks from 2 stones?! But hey, if I have to mine 100 stones to craft 100 stone blocks, I'll be mining all day! And 100 blocks don't go very far when building. So I'm glad I can craft more materials with limited resources. It keeps the gameplay moving forward without bogging you down with (excessively) repetitive tasks.

Once you have blocks crafted, ensure you have a construction hammer on your toolbar. (You can craft one from your crafting menu or from the workbench menu). Switch to your construction hammer, open the building mode (Tab button on PC), then select the shape and material you want to construct.

You can lay one individual brick at a time, or select a custom shape to build a platform, wall, giant block, ramp, roof, etc. If you have dirt or stones in your inventory, you can also create various shapes and sizes of terrain and edit the shape of the land around you.

You can also craft an axe and pickaxe to cut down trees and dig up the terrain. Everything is destructible around the world and will restore to their original setting if you leave the area for about 30 minutes. Except for anything within the build area of your Flame Altar; those changes are permanent until you remove the Flame Altar and leave the area for 30 minutes. So don't go mining in your backyard unless you want to destroy the natural terrain. Although you can always manually fill it back in with the construction hammer and some stones or dirt.

I found some flint to mine on a cliff side here, which is one of my favorite building blocks. There are dozens of different materials to be found around the world, so you can customize the look of your bases however you want.

I finished building a small rough stone house with plant fiber roof just as it started raining. Which was good, as the blacksmith was starting to complain about not having a roof over his head.

Then the blacksmith informed me of a nearby Elixir Well that needed to be cleared out. Yeah, yeah, as soon as I'm done taking a nap.

The Elixir Wells are home to Shroud Roots: giant red fungus-looking things which are the cause of The Shroud. Chopping them down with an axe will clear the area around the Elixir Well of any Shroud. Although if you leave the area for 30 minutes, it will revert to its original state and the Shroud will come back.

Shroud Roots are guarded by large bosses; in this particular case, a Fell Thunderbrute. When you take down these boss-level characters, you can claim their heads, which you can later mount on your wall in your home. I've been meaning to build a trophy room in my original game's castle...

Destroying the Shroud Root will give you a skill point, which you can spend in a skill tree to further spec your character. There are twelve categories to build out. By the endgame, you will have enough skill points to have nearly maxed out three of them, so you're not locked into one specific category of gameplay. I personally chose Battlemage, Wizard, and Healer. (Since my teammates are always jumping head-first into fights they can't handle, ha!)

As you play on, you'll find more enemies around the world, plenty of quests, materials, and cosmetics to discover, and tons of lore hidden in books and scrolls.

There are varying climates, like desert wastelands, freezing winter mountainscapes, forests, plains, and of course, Shroud valleys and mines everywhere. Or you can get to work building a cozy hobbit hole deep underground, a castle way up in the mountains, or a fairy home deep in the woods.

Don't forget to craft a glider, so you can coast quickly across the various regions. Besides fast travel between Flame Altars, gliding is the best way to travel between places. I like to place my Flame Altars high up on mountains so I can fast-travel there and then jump and glide to my nearby destination.

Just keep an eye on your stamina gauge while you're gliding. Nothing worse than being a mile up in the sky and all of a sudden falling to your doom. If you're about to run out of stamina, the best thing to do is just drop, which will stop consuming stamina, then glide again when you're just about to hit the ground. You'll tuck and roll and take no damage.

Here's my first attempt at building a small castle in the starting zone prairie. You can garden and plant pretty much anything that grows in the game, which is where that massive perfectly-aligned forest came from in the background. You can also build farms and raise animals, or find dogs and cats in the world to keep as pets in your base.

Here's a shot of the main floor inside the castle. The back wall inside the giant fireplace is a secret door, with steps leading down into an underground cavern where my alchemist and blacksmith hang out.

Here's my first attempt at building a castle wall near the top of a mountain. I used glowing blue blocks to create the impression of a moat, which looks fantastic all lit up at night. Water is the one resource you can't build with in this game. (Yet!) The developers have mentioned that it's something they'd like to do, but it's on the back burner for now.

Oh, and that dragon in the first screenshot? My buddies and I took it down. That was a rough fight.

This "Fell Dragon Youngling" is currently the endgame boss. I dunno how big an adult one of these will be, but there are dragon skeletal remains scattered around the world that are bigger than cities! I hope the developers incorporate an adult Fell Dragon in a later update, because that would be an epic endgame challenge!

The map is only about 1/3rd open for exploration, and since early access dropped, two new regions have opened up with new content, including several non-Shroud dungeons with rewards for completion. So there's tons more to come with this game. It's so much fun, no matter whether you enjoy questing, base building, crafting, or just exploring. I highly recommend you check out Enshrouded!