007 First Light's launch bugs and fixes prove disappointingly short on material for James Bond quips

Shaken, not autosave failed?

I fired up the launch patch notes for Io Interactive's 007 First Light hoping to find some rich material for James Bond quips. You know, like when James Bond beheads a villain with a skillet, then says something like "I always suspected you were… small fry." Or when James Bond murders somebody during an egg-and-spoon race, then says "You're cracking me up, my dear sir."

Alas, developers Io Interactive have let me down. The game's first hotfix is a bunch of routine but important-sounding fixes for various crash bugs. For example, it fixes a crash that occurs during a cutscene where Bond and Moneypenny enter an elevator. "Elevator crash bug" – what am I supposed to do with that? Hang on, do elevators also crash??? I need to stop using those things.

Find the full patch notes here. They've also boffed a problem whereby guards in chapter 6 skip some initial confrontational dialogue and just immediately start shooting Bond in the head, thereby depriving him of the ability to make witty remarks. The game won't crash any longer when you leave M's office in chapter 2, either, nor will Bond absent-mindedly repel certain NPCs through walls or make them disappear entirely, while standing in their way. Hmm, I guess you could do a good quip about the last one. Perhaps the real problem here is that it's after 4pm on a Friday, and I am weary of wording.

The developers have also released a Known Issues list. Some of the technical gremlins yet to be ousted sound quite serious. There's a start-up failure problem that appears to have something to do with the game defaulting to your integrated graphics card, that great traitor lurking deep inside your computer. Somebody on Steam has devised a workaround. Also, HDR will sometimes turn off when you exit the game, and need to be manually re-enabled. A few players are finding that the autosave is on the blink, too, with repeated "Save Failed" notifications even before you start a game.

"This is all very well, Agent Edwin, but what's the RPS take on the moderately stealthy action rollercoaster beneath all these bugs?" you cry out to me, like an impatient Judi Dench. I must apologise: our 007 First Light code came in late and we're still finishing the review. It isn't far off, judging by the increasing dishevelment of Mark's tuxedo. The broad consensus appears to be that this is one of the better Bond games, though maybe not as gratifying as Io's sandboxier Hitman series. While you await Mark's thoughts, please read his ranting about watches.