Developed by EA Los Angeles and published by EA Games for GameCube, PlayStation 2 and XBox in 2004, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is an ‘anomaly’ in the James Bond video game franchise. Described as “non-canon“, and more of a “what if…” kind of video game experiment, Rogue Agent unfortunately doesn’t have any connection between it and the classic 1997 N64 game called “GoldenEye“. This did actually lead to players calling out Electronic Arts for deceptive use of the “GoldenEye” name.

In GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, you take the role of an ex-MI6 agent, who is recruited by Auric Goldfinger (a member of a powerful unnamed criminal organization, based on Ian Fleming‘s SPECTRE) to assassinate his rival Dr. No. Several other characters from the Bond series make appearances throughout the game, including Pussy Galore, Oddjob, Xenia Onatopp and Francisco Scaramanga (and it’s worth noting that the late Sir Christopher Lee returned to voice Scaramanga himself for this game, and Dame Judi Dench returned to voice ‘M‘).

So you can see all the Bond purists scrambling for their keyboards when this came out… This is the kind of James Bond timeline mashup that could only exist in a video game. Where the, ahem, script standards are lower…

In general, the FPS gameplay is pretty good for a console shooter. The presentation and music are top-notch. And the multiplayer mode is highly customizable, with four-player split screen play, as well as (ex) online support for up to eight players.

You can dual-wield guns; the music was composed by Paul Oakenfold; the lighting is very atmospheric, and the split-screen multiplayer mode is excellent. The game even has the sense to allow two-player and four-player split-screen, using different screen layouts. There are three multiplayer modes initially: Showdown, Domination, and Tug-O-War, but you can also play team games, and unlock more. I’ve shown both two and four-player split-screen in this set of grabs.

In spite of the misleading use of the name “GoldenEye“, and the sheer strangeness of it all, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is still an enjoyable fantasy spy romp and is just about sophisticated enough to be worth a play now. Both single and multiplayer.

More: GoldenEye: Rogue Agent on Wikipedia