Nuketown
You can’t have a Call of Duty map ranking without including Nuketown, which has had several iterations in various CoD titles since its debut in 2010’s Black Ops (there was Nuketown 2025 in Black Ops 2, a zombie version in the same game, the futuristic NUK3TOWN in Black Ops 3, and a Russian-themed one in Black Ops 4). Every version is almost identical: a close-quarters map is modeled after a nuclear testing site, with a fake suburban street, houses, and mannequins smack-dab in the middle of a wide-open space. It’s so Oppenheimer-coded
Nuketown is miniscule in terms of Call of Duty maps—it’s one of the smallest ever, alongside Rust—which means that you are almost constantly getting shot at, having grenades chucked at you, or getting beaten over the head with a riot shield. Its smallness makes for some absurdly frantic gameplay, with a death toll that swiftly climbs no matter how good or bad the lobby’s players may be. Dropping any sort of killstreak on such a small map almost always results in massive casualties (and sometimes full team-wipes) and at the end of every match, Nuketown gets, well, nuked.
And Nuketown stands out from other early Call of Duty maps in part because of how colorful it is—one house is a bright, kelly green, while the other is a soft, 1950s pink with a bright red garage door. The Astroturf is vibrant, the homes are ornately decorated, and there’s even a rainbow in the distance. It’s…pretty!
There’s a reason that Nuketown 24/7 was a game mode in the original Black Ops—this map is top-tier, the perfect space for enjoying CoD’s legendary gunplay and movement.
