Top 10 First Person Shooter Multiplayer Maps

These are gaming’s greatest arenas. Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we’ll be counting down our picks for the top 10 First Person Shooter multiplayer maps.

For this list, we take a look at the maps that have defined multiplayer matches all over the world, whether it’s against friends at home or taking the battle online. Because there are so many maps to choose from, we’re sticking to our usual one entry per franchise, although we decided to exclude Honorable Mentions from this rule.

Released before the dawn of online gaming, TimeSplitters 2 brought multiplayer mayhem to gamers with a huge variety of maps. With its two base design and single choke point, mixed with fixed machine guns in bunkers, Training Ground was the most memorable. Whether it was a shoot-out over the central waterfall or racing to capture the bag, this map was a chaotic mix of everything that made Timesplitters great. Just watch out for those pesky monkeys trying to get into your base.

Propaganda over the loudspeakers, monotone corridors, somber lighting – yup this is Killzone 2. Set in a military training facility, this map sees the Helghans and the ISA fight it out through open areas and tight corridors. As the most popular map in the PlayStation series, the Academy was host to as many brutal crossfires, as there were players hell bent on spawn camping – so make sure to be on the winning side.

If there was only 1 map the devs could have included with Team Fortress 2, it would have been this one, hands down. With snipers on the balcony, scouts running around below and all manner of chaos on the bridge, 2fort brings its own brand of chaos to online multiplayer. Its iconic design is the quintessential capture the flag layout, consisting of two opposing forts separated by a stream running through the middle, allows players easy map navigation and opportunities with all TF2 classes. Whether you love it or hate it, there are always servers humming away with this map.

Part of what made GoldenEye’s multiplayer maps so iconic was the fact that they weren’t designed with multiplayer in mind, giving them an organic, realistic feel, and nowhere was this more apparent than in the Facility. Whether you were playing with throwing knives or power weapons, the tension of knowing anyone could come right around the corner ready to give you the dreaded screen of death made this map great. Players could dash around all guns blazing, or hide in the toilets with mines – but if you played as Oddjob everyone probably hated you.

Strafe jumping, map knowledge, fast movement – these are all things you need to master in order to play Quake II multiplayer. Mastering The Edge, however, is another matter. With over fifty trick jumps around the map, two of which were designed and the rest found by the community, this map remains a true old-school arena and a nostalgic favorite among Quake fans all over the world.

Meant to showcase all the battlefield had to offer in a single map, this is one tropical island you don’t want to be stranded on. Due to its semi-circular layout, you were never safe from tanks crunching around the corner, strafing runs from enemy airfract or from a lone solider swimming across the ocean determined on subterfuge. The first level included in the demo to the original Battlefield 1942, Wake Island has been remade over many installations of the Battlefield series as a testament to its popularity and longevity.

Unreal Tournament is home to some of the most frantic, fast paced multiplayer maps in gaming history. Some are considered masters of map design, others have their own unique qualities that make them great. Morpheus is one of the later. Combining the standard unreal formula with low gravity, allowing players to jump further and higher, this map lent itself to all game modes and provided a unique twist to multiplayer matches - and with the game-changing redeemer spawning at the top of the map, no one was safe.

When you think of Halo multiplayer, this is the map that comes to mind. The simple two base level design led to nail biting capture the flag games, hectic death matches and long range pistol duels. Later remade as Coagulation in Halo 2 and Hemorrhage in Halo Reach, It remains to this day the quintessential showcase for what Halo is all about: diverse weapons, vehicle combat and methodical gameplay. Just make sure you don’t block the teleporters.

Call of Duty has many memorable multiplayer arenas, but Nuketown stands tall above the rest. This cramped nuclear testing ground allowed players to quickly enter the fray, Its simple and symmetrical design made games fun, fast paced and open to all game modes, from simple deathmatch to domination and hardpoint. The map was so popular, it was reskinned for Black Ops 2 and even appeared in zombie gametypes, showing people around the world that bigger maps don’t always equal better.


Before we unveil our top pick, here are some honorable mentions. As we said before one per franchise won’t apply here.

Terminal
"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" (2009)


Facing Worlds
"Unreal Tournament" (1999)



Sandtrap
"Halo 3" (2007)


Strike at Karkand
"Battlefield 2" (2005)

Standing out as one of the definitive maps in the history of online gaming, de_dust2 has become a true classic of the competitive and casual counterstrike scenes. With its simple, open design and multiple choke points, the map is easy to navigate, but hard to master. If you were to add or subtrack a single in game meter to a walkway, open one of the sets of doors an extra foot, or budge any of the crates in the bombsite, you’d turn the internet upside down and destroy years of strategic experience. No wonder it is the most played map in the counterstrike series, and one of the most iconic multiplayer maps of all time.

Do you agree with our list? Which multiplayer arena have you spent most time in? With new Top Ten’s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.