If you're going to make a game with the GoldenEye name on it, there are a few things you absolutely have to include. You need a charismatic main character (check), a globe-trotting storyline with lots of dastardly villains and international intrigue (check), and an extensive multiplayer mode with a grip of maps, plenty of diverse weapons, and a lot of gameplay options. Thankfully, in the upcoming GoldenEye: Rogue Agent from Electronic Arts' LA studio, that last one's looking like a check too. We recently sat down with a near-final build of the game and ran through a number of the included multiplayer maps--both offline and on--to get a feel for the competitive gaming on offer in the impending spy shooter.

The multiplayer in Rogue Agent is as fully featured as the single-player component, and it has just as many maps available.

The original GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64 became popular on the basis of its involving single-player campaign, but it remained popular for a long time after its release because of its four-player, split-screen mode. Needless to say, Rogue Agent will support the same mode on all three consoles, providing you with plenty of replay value after you've plowed through the story mode. Perhaps more importantly, in this day and age, the game will also feature online competitive support on the PS2 and Xbox for up to eight players.

The game will ship with a number of multiplayer modes, such as standard deathmatch; domination, which is a Battlefield-style mode where teams vie for possession of control points that are scattered around the map; and tug-of-war, which has two teams trying to move a bomb that's set on a track to the designated end of the map. Rather than picking up the bomb, however, you'll move it by hitting switches along the track that transfer it to the next point. We only got to try deathmatch in our demo of the game, though even that mode offered a good deal to get a handle on.

Maps are always an important element of a competitive first-person shooter, and in a James Bond-themed game, the unique locations always have ways of taking on lives of their own. This makes the maps in Rogue Agent doubly important, because they have to provide thoughtful design and smooth flow for the gameplay while maintaining the character that fans of the 007 milieu will look for. Toward achieving that end, the designers have taken quite a few of the game's multiplayer locations straight from many classic Bond films, adding special gameplay elements to each one that will enhance it for multiplayer play. You can look forward to fighting among the Pyramids of Giza, where Bond fought against Jaws, as well as atop the satellite dish from the memorable, climactic battle in GoldenEye, to name just a couple of maps we haven't gotten a firsthand look at yet.

In our previous coverage of the game, we've reported on the Moonraker levels you'll find in Rogue Agent. In our most recent demo, we got to take a look at several other levels taken from the movies (as well as a few original ones). One of the most impressive we saw was set atop the Golden Gate Bridge, and it re-created the classic scene from A View to a Kill. Yes, that's on top of the bridge, not just on the bridge. As you'd expect, all manner of precarious pitfalls were available on this map to force our opponents through--though we ourselves could do the same if we weren't careful.

As reported previously, death traps will play a big part in Rogue Agent's multiplayer. These switch-activated hazards will let you use the environment to eliminate your foes from afar, and we saw some pretty nasty ones in the Golden Gate level. A blimp overhead would spray down the outdoor area with machine gun fire if we hit a switch up on the catwalk, and this fire would even set off some explosives on the main walkway between the two control towers. Other switches would open up large trapdoors in the level's walkways that would send us plummeting hundreds of feet to our doom in the traffic below. We discovered firsthand that in the hands of an experienced player, these death traps can be highly effective--and more than a little vexing.

We also got to see a map called Carver's Printing Press (taken from Tomorrow Never Dies), which featured a small, symmetrical design that seemed suited to one-on-one battles. A large press in the middle of the map would slam down every few seconds, making travel between the two halves difficult. Machinery on either side could be electrocuted here, zapping anyone within range. However, two small air ducts on the sides of the map provided some extra cover, as well as a less dangerous way through the middle barrier.

Maps taken from classic Bond films will help evoke the spirit of the franchise.

A third map was set in Francisco Scaramanga's funhouse, which fans will remember from The Man with the Golden Gun. This level featured one amazingly frustrating section in which the walls were a solid black, and doorways were outlined in simple yellow. As a result, it was essentially impossible to quickly differentiate the fake doorways from the real ones. Other areas had replicas of a cowboy or Al Capone (both equipped with very real, switch-activated guns). A third area contained a pit filled with retractable spikes and a number of power-ups. Naturally, a switch on the walkway above would extend the spikes, thus impaling anybody foolish enough to be in the pit at the wrong time.

Most of the maps in the game will feature some manner of these death traps, which ought to give the multiplayer a pretty hectic feel (at least from our experience). One original location we saw had a number of huge horizontal presses constantly slamming back and forth, giving us nary a moment's peace as we tried to evade our opponents. However, another new map, called Midas Showdown, didn't feature any substantial death traps; instead, it concentrated on a small, tightly focused competitive experience for a small number of players. If anything, it seems like Rogue Agent's maps will offer a substantial amount of variety, depending on what kind of competitive match you're looking for.