Cover photo from 007 First Light.

Hello folks, hope everyone had a great holiday weekend (ridiculously hot/stormy weather notwithstanding). I’m glad to finally be getting this post up; lately I’ve frequently found myself in a state where my brain is exhausted or the words just aren’t coming to me when I sit down to write, and in those situations I try not to force myself to. One of many reasons I don’t think I’d ever try to make this more than a hobby. I feel like when my brain IS engaged though, I end up being really proud of the pieces I put together.

So despite stumbling through a misasma of brain fog, I have indeed managed to play some video games. The primary one I have in progress right now is Sekiro : Shadows Die Twice, which I finally plucked off the top of my backlog. Given how much I enjoyed Nine Sols, I think it was natural to go back and play one of its primary gameplay influences. It’s probably no surprise that I adore it so far, despite some early difficulty bumps. I’m also currently in the middle of Mina the Hollower, which I am definitely enjoying and will get back to after Sekiro releases me from its clutches. I also just finished playing the bite-sized experience that is Sayonara Wild Hearts, but I’ve decided to write about that in next month’s update instead. But as for games I played in June, let’s begin with my favorite.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever had any strong attachment to the 007 series of films. I mostly remember seeing a few films from the Brosnan era from when I was growing up, and of course I spent many summer nights playing Goldeneye 007 with my friends on the N64. I think the first Bond movie that honestly impressed and stuck with me was 2006’s Casino Royale, a well-constructed and entertaining film which reimagined the character as a version that thankfully left behind some of the goofiness (and misogyny) of prior incarnations.

007 First Light is the origin story for a whole new James Bond imagined by the developers IO Interactive, the studio responsible for the Hitman series of games. It begins with a covert operation by the British Special Forces going awry; inbound via helicopter to a site on the coast of Iceland they are shot down by a group of heavily-armed mercenaries. The only survivor isn’t one of the elite SAS soldiers, but rather a regular air crewman, our new James Bond. Alone and surrounded by hostiles, Bond is directed by an MI6 handler to extract a group of scientists involved in retrieving intel from a crashed satellite. Needless to say, Bond proves his ability to think quickly, improvise, and favorably resolve an intractable situation. Because of this, he is invited to join the 00 program, recently resurrected by the new head of MI6.

First Light hits the gas right from the jump; the initial scenario after the helicopter crash is incredibly engaging and it rolls directly into a training montage where Bond and a small cohort of trainees learn what’s necessary to become the most elite of Britain’s covert operations force. If you’re the type that gets bored easily by tutorials, I promise that this is one that won’t put you to sleep. It’s a rapid-fire series of mini challenges which will have you training in hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, parkour, and high-speed driving — all the while effectively portraying Bond’s budding friendships and rivalries with his fellow potential 00s. It’s honestly one of the best tutorial sequences I’ve ever experienced, equipping you with skills you’ll use the rest of the game and managing to be a fantastically entertaining scenario.

After some classic Bond shenanigans around how he finishes his capstone trial, he and his cohort are put on a critical mission : to bring in rogue agent Rhys Beckett, AKA 009, who has been on the run for a decade. This first real mission, at an international chess tournament in Slovakia, highlights how flexible First Light’s mission structure is. There are often multiple ways to accomplish your objectives, and based on your own preferences (and which gadgets you bring from Q Lab), you can play it full stealth or instead choose violence, cracking skulls in melee combat or running in guns ablaze. Certain gadgets will make some approaches easier — for example the watch laser can cut through locks and give access to areas otherwise inaccessible, the dart phone can give a guard standing in your way an expedited trip to Sicksville allowing you to slip past, and the Q Watch itself has the function of being able to hack or otherwise manipulate nearby electronics to provide distractions. In the event that you’re spotted or your cover is blown, you can try to bluff your way out of the situation or simply let your fists do the talking; quickly knocking out your opponents before they sound the alarm will lower the alert level back to baseline (so long as their bodies aren’t found by others). It’s also perfectly viable in many scenarios to go in guns blazing, if that is what you prefer. It’s still level-based and not quite what I would call an immersive sim, but still provides a good amount of player agency.

No matter which approach you take though, First Light will present you with an incredibly polished gameplay experience. The gunplay is snappy and mixes well with the melee combat; emptying your clip and throwing the empty gun at an enemy before taking him down in melee, taking his weapon, and repeating the process never gets old. You can also improvise and use objects in the environment against your foes, and there are often fun, unique voice lines that go with these interactions. For example, KOing an enemy by kicking in a door prompts a “knock knock!” from Bond, and beaning an enemy with a coffee mug might get a quippy “two sugars right?” If you choose stealth you have a plethora of options including the aforementioned special gadgets as well as other environmental distractions. You can also stealth takedown enemies from behind, get the jump on them from above, or yank them off a ledge while hanging. The two modes of gameplay complement each other incredibly well, and I tended to just roll with it if I botched a stealth portion and had to go loud. It honestly feels true to the spirit of the films and I’m glad they leaned into it rather than it leading directly to a failure state.

I went into 007 First Light with very few expectations or pre-existing hype and ended up very pleasantly surprised. Besides the main campaign there are also standalone Tac-Sim missions I haven’t touched yet but plan on going back to, since the core gameplay loop is just that good. It’s definitely one of my favorite games of this year and comes highly recommended.

Eldritch Horror is one of those genres that I think lends itself really well to being adapted to video games, though it can also be challenging for artists to visually depict things that are often described as “horrors beyond comprehension” in written text. 2024’s Still Wakes the Deep manages to pull it off convincingly, all within a setting that I’m not sure has been depicted before in a video game.

The year is 1975, and you play the role of Cameron “Caz” McLeary, an electrician, husband, and father of two who has recently taken a job on an offshore oil rig near Scotland called the Beira D. This was out of necessity; Caz is laying low after a bar fight he got into left his opponent seriously injured and in the hospital. Consequences are catching up to him as the story begins; he is fired by the ornery rig supervisor and a police chopper has arrived to arrest and bring him back to the mainland. Before he is able to board, however, the rig’s main drill strikes something horrible and alien. The rig lurches violently, the helicopter crashes, and Caz is sent plummeting into the sea.

He comes to after being fished out of the water and resuscitated by a crewmate, and in the brief time he was unconscious the situation has gone to hell in a handbasket. The Beira D has been enveloped by strange, almost alien tendrils reaching up from the sea floor. His fellow rig workers have also been affected by the unknown lifeform to varying degrees; some have been driven mad and others completely warped and transformed into unspeakable horrors. The organism has an effect on anyone who gets close to it; Caz will see spots in his vision and also flashbacks of his own memories during certain parts when he comes into close contact.

The game mostly consists of exploring the rig and trying to rectify the hopeless situation the crew finds itself in. There’s some light first-person platforming and sequences where you’ll have to avoid or confront your crewmates that have been transformed by the entity in the process. Frequent flashbacks serve to add more context to Caz’s character and how he ended up here, though it’s not always clear that Caz is a reliable narrator. The story itself isn’t quite as interesting as I’d hoped but it does get major points for its creature design and the level of detail put into crafting the interior and exterior of the oil rig. The whole thing is a tight 3 to 4 hours worth of gameplay so I’d say that it’s definitely worth grabbing while on sale.

Well, I’ve finally done it. Almost 35 years after playing (and ragequitting) the original US release of Dragon Warrior II on the Nintendo Entertainment System, I’ve finally seen the end of this story through the newly-released HD-2D Remake edition. This version fleshes out story and characterization and smooths out some considerable difficulty issues that were part of the original (notoriously untested) NES release. This is absolutely the definitive edition of this game, and if you’re in the mood for a classic RPG that has been brought up to modern standards, I definitely recommend it. I had a lot to say about it, so I wrote a full review which can be read here.