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How Many Maps Are in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Are They Good?


Credit: Activision

Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War launched in November of 2020 with 10 total maps: 8 traditional 6v6 maps, 2 larger Fireteam maps, and no Gunfight maps. Since its launch, many maps have been added to the game. In this article, we'll explain what has been added and talk about what makes a great Call of Duty map.

How Many Maps Does Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Have?

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Credit: Activision

Black Ops Cold War went live with only 8 traditional 6v6 maps, which is a remarkably small number of maps for a mainline Call of Duty game. Initial maps include: Armada, Cartel, Checkmate, Crossroads, Garrison, Miami, Moscow, and Satellite. On top of these, 2 larger Fireteam maps were also included: Alpine and Ruka.

As of Season 5 of Black Ops Cold War, there are 37 total multiplayer maps in the game. Currently, there are 24 (23 if you don't count the ‘Holiday' version of Nuketown) traditional 6v6 maps; 8 small 2v2 Gunfight maps; and 5 large Fireteam maps.

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Of the 24 traditional 6v6 maps, there are 10 remastered classic Call of Duty maps: Nuketown ‘84 (and Nuketown ‘84 Holiday), Express, Raid, Standoff, Rush, Hijacked, Drive-In, Slums, and Zoo. The rest of the maps are completely new additions to Call of Duty.

Not included in any of these numbers, though, are Black Ops Cold War's ‘Strike' maps, of which there are 4: Armada Strike, Collateral Strike, Crossroads Strike, and Miami Strike. These maps are very different from their non-Strike counterparts, which are much larger and generally designed for bigger 12v12 battles.

However, there's a lot of flexibility when it comes to Cold War's playlists, so you can play these maps in a variety of very different ways. For example, the 6v6 Face Off mode plays only on the 2v2 Gunfight maps, while the map Diesel is a 2v2 Gunfight map that's also playable in 6v6 in normal matchmaking. Furthermore, there's a 12v12 Mosh Pit playlist that plays only on the traditional 6v6 maps. Though, it's important to remember not every playlist is available on Cold War forever, them being swapped out from time to time.

What Makes a Good Call of Duty Map? Does Cold War Have Good Maps?

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Credit: Activision

Naturally, different people have different ideas on what makes a great Call of Duty map, but there are a lot of map design choices fans generally agree are better than others.

First and foremost, large maps are not well-liked in Call of Duty games. Almost universally, if the map is too big players will get bored spending the first couple minutes after spawning in getting into a position where they can see enemy players. Plus, big maps tend to have a lot of sightlines, encouraging players to camp with snipers, which isn't much fun.

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Then, three-lane maps (maps with three main routes: one on either side and one in the middle) with very well-defined lanes are also essential to a great Call of Duty map. Maps with endless cover, tons of sightlines, and lots of head glitches (pieces of cover you can hide behind to obscure most of your character when shooting) encourage camping and make it difficult to not get beamed from a far-off angle you didn't even know was possible.

However, it's also important that lanes are dynamic with lots of ways to move between them and that lanes aren't straight sightlines without any cover, because then lanes are just funnels for players to camp at an end of and farm kills from forever.

Lastly, a great Call of Duty map needs to have rock solid spawns. Spawns have to make sense, and spawn locations need to be far away enough from enemies to keep the game feeling fair but not so far as to make the map feel too big.

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So, how well do Cold War maps manage to embody these characteristics? There are just a few maps in Cold War that are simply too big for most modes, like Cartel or Miami or Satellite which nobody in a lobby tends to vote for because of the camping and the snipers. And while no Cold War maps stray too far from the three-lane design, some maps go too far in that direction, like Armada Strike with its long, simple lanes.

Depending on the map and the mode, spawns can be a problem in Cold War, occasionally causing players to spawn in front of other enemy players or into the crosshairs of an enemy aiming down sights. But this is largely relegated to smaller maps on certain modes as well as is dependent on how well your team is managing spawning.

All told, compared to a game like the Modern Warfare reboot which was absolutely full of dense, complicated maps with tons of lanes, cover, and sightlines that would often be just a little too big and had just as much, if not more, trouble with spawns, Cold War maps are remarkably solid.

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