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007 First Light’s debut demo left us both shaken and stirred.

You’ll no doubt be reading this breathless after Sony’s latest State of Play presentation, but we’ve had a little over a week to process our reaction to IO Interactive’s latest. In a nutshell? This upcoming effort, due out on 27th March, is sitting right at the top of our most anticipated PS5 games.

But first, a recap: you’re a youthful amateur James Bond up against the seasoned pro you’re to become. While the Danish developer glossed over the details during our behind closed doors presentation at Gamescom, we now know the villain of this original story will be 009, a wily MI6 veteran who’s learned all the tricks.

This premise is particularly exciting because we’re already familiar with the super-agent Bond will become from the various movies and Ian Fleming books – but how will a rookie overcome these seemingly impossible odds? That’s to be answered in the full release.

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Our demo whisked us away to an elegant castle-like retreat among the picturesque Carpathian Mountains. While the craggy range spans multiple countries, IO Interactive referred to it specifically as Slovakia, so that’s the first passport stamp on this globe-trotting adventure. The studio also mentioned Iceland, among other destinations.

The setup here is that a chess tournament is taking place within the hotel, and Bond is acting chauffeur. His mission is not to infiltrate – he has allies within MI6 to do the hard work – but this is still the reckless charmer from the movies, so it’s not long before he takes a plunge into the deep end.

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Driving is an important mechanic in 007 First Light, and so as the mission opens, you’re actually able to commandeer the limousine and soak in the scenery. It’s while you’re behind the wheel that many of the objectives for the mission are outlined, organically through some pretty engaging dialogue.

But as Bond witnesses some unusual activity involving a shady staff member, that’s where IO Interactive’s Hitman DNA takes over. Bond, restless and impulsive, decides to investigate against orders – and we’re told there are dozens of approaches you can take.

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The puzzle-like infiltration mission that ensues is textbook Agent 47: Bond spots an open window into the building, but the area is heavily populated and forcibly guarded. Fortunately, a hosepipe, lighter, and wheelbarrow of leaves solve pretty much all problems – and so we were shown 007 tampering with the waterworks and setting fire to the discarded fauna in order to create a distraction.

Unlike in Hitman, where these clockwork-style conundrums are the entire purpose of the game, they’ll be just a piece of the puzzle here. However, we were told there’ll still be ample depth and opportunities to experiment with – it just remains to be seen whether the levels will be as replayable when there’s an equal emphasis on action.

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Once inside the building, the estate reminded us a lot of the Parisian mansion from Hitman: World of Assassination; the attention to detail is extraordinary, with each room and corridor feeling like it has a purpose, from the bar in the foyer through to the small rooms occupied by guests.

Bond’s able to interact with some of the staff in order to get clues, and while the dev was keeping the rest of the mission under wraps for our demo, it’s easy to see how the Hitman playbook will be fully explored as you unravel exactly what’s going on within the estate.

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But as we alluded to earlier, this game is more than a mere re-tread of Hitman, and so as we’re fast-forwarded later into the mission, we see Bond in all-out car chase – flanked by an American counterpart with a common goal. It’ll be interesting to see how the pair’s relationship evolves over the course of the campaign.

It’s also going to be fascinating to get a feel for these driving sequences; it’s not something the studio’s ever really done before, so this could easily be a weak point if the studio hasn’t invested adequately into the vehicular handling.

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To be honest, we’re curious how much autonomy you’ll actually have over the car, as we imagine these sequences will be largely linear – perhaps comparable to the infamous jeep set-piece in Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End. It certainly looks that way, as Bond’s funnelled down a road to a nearby airport, where the on-foot action takes a different tact.

This is the part that really blew us away: IO Interactive has made third-person shooters before, specifically Freedom Fighters on the PS2 and Kane & Lynch on the PS3 – but this was a true spectacle.

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As 007 arrives at the airport, an epic shootout ensues, with Bond dodging and weaving between different points of cover, as he picks off goons. The action looks like Uncharted, but it’s even more chaotic, with explosive fuel containers in the background erupting into enormous infernos.

Bond is also augmented with a number of bespoke combat animations, as he rushes into enemies, tumbling over ledges while beating them up. It all looks so dramatic and dynamic – the kind of thing we’d expect if Uncharted had received a native PS5 entry by now.

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But it doesn’t end there, as 007 ends up chasing down a plane on the runway using passenger boarding steps, before picking off a few more goons on the wing as it takes off. From there, it’s a shootout inside the plane, before Bond skydives back to ground – by way of a parachute he pluckily pinches from a fellow falling foe.

One neat detail in the airplane sequence is that James taps into the flight controls, and you have to manually maintain the balance of the vessel while you’re making your way through its insides. The dev suggested there are many more one-and-done mechanics like this in the full game, so we’re excited to see what else it’s come up with across the rest of the campaign.

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And that’s the thing: this is just the first stage. We’re assuming IO Interactive’s showing this off because it encapsulates all of the main mechanics the studio’s constructed, but we can certainly imagine how some stages may lean more into the Hitman-style stealth while others tilt more towards the action.

We are curious how replayable the game will be: the real beauty of Hitman was repeating the same level over and over, evolving your mastery of its mechanics. With the addition of action and car chases here, we wonder whether those aspects will retain their staying power while you explore the sandboxes elsewhere.

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But for now, we can comfortably say this is up there among our most anticipated PS5 games by quite some margin. IO Interactive appears to have blended the best of Hitman with the bombast of Bond, and does it honestly get much more exciting than that? Time will ultimately tell if 007 First Light can hit its mark, but the Danish developer certainly has the pedigree to pull the trigger on something truly unforgettable here.

So, after this brief glimpse, do you share our enthusiasm for 007 First Light? Do you think this rookie Bond will be able to live up to the legend? And what aspects of this IO Interactive effort are you most looking forward to? Drop your thoughts in the comments below and join the debrief.