What's the best Call of Duty map of all time? There's an argument to be made for the chaos of Rust, the flow of Terminal, and even the atmosphere of Hijacked, but for my money, one in particular takes the top spot. Nuketown gets everything right: it's got a great concept, tight and quick spawns, and more than enough sight lines for all types of players. That said, we first went boots on the ground at the nuclear test site 14 years ago. It's been so long in fact that one Treyarch developer says not many of us have actually played it. Luckily, Black Ops 6 is going to change that.
Over the years there have been six versions of Nuketown, one for each mainline game in the Treyarch series leading to Black Ops 6. Call of Duty Mobile, Zombies, and more versions of the FPS game have featured the map as well, but each mainline entry itself has undergone a pretty drastic redesign. So unless you've been playing Call of Duty as long as I have, you probably didn't start with the original '50s version of the map.
Black Ops 6's '90s setting means Treyarch can bring the original flavor of Nuketown back, and this made expert level designer Adam Hoggatt realize something. Most Call of Duty players have likely never touched it.
"Recently it started occurring to me that probably a large percentage of our players have never actually experienced the original [Nuketown]," Hoggatt says. "So I'm really excited that with Black Ops 6 we get to revisit the original Nuketown with the exact magic of the original one, but looking better."
Personally, my favorite version of Nuketown is the Black Ops 2 Zombies one. The tight spaces make for a disorderly session reminiscent of Nacht Der Untoten, and the zombie's eyes changing to blue on round 25 is still one of the best twists of all time. Either way, I'm really glad Nuketown came about, and it turns out that the original was actually a happy accident.
According to Hoggatt, Nuketown wasn't on the production schedule for Black Ops. Instead, they ran with an idea that'd been floating around the team. "I just started building," Hoggatt says via the same IGN interview. "It wasn't in the schedule I just thought 'I'm going to do it because it's too cool to pass up.'"
Well, I for one am glad we got the map, even if it was a happy accident. Keep in mind that you won't be playing Nuketown on day one though. The Black Ops 6 Nuketown map is coming after launch, but you really won't have to wait long.
If you're ready for the new Call of Duty but don't know exactly what to expect, we've put together all the Black Ops 6 Zombies maps and best Black Ops 6 loadouts to help you get started.
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