Doesn't really have to be a shooter. I guess Laguna Seca in a racer is essentially a MP map too. But I'd be interested in seeing what some of you think are some of the best MP maps you have ever played. I will list mine in no particular order.
Desert Glory - SOCOM, SOCOM II, SOCOM Combined Assault, SOCOM Confrontation
Eventually you could play this map on other modes but this map started out as and was an amazing extraction map. To the far left, out of sight in this pic, is a little two story building. In the back room there was a jail cell with 3 prisoners inside of it. The SEAL team would spawn and be tasked with either eliminating the enemy team, or extracting the hostages. The terrorists were to either survive until the time limit hit, or kill all the SEALS. What usually ended up happening is the last terrorist would make a break for the hostage room and mine it up like crazy, then camp inside of the cell surrounded by the hostages. The SEAL team would send someone in they'd have to hope he didn't kill the hostages. A well placed mine by the terrorists could kill everyone in the cell if the SEALS were ballsy enough to try a frag grenade. What made the map great was even outside of the cell room, it was a well designed map adaptable to any play style. Both sides had good sniping lanes and the terrorists enjoyed a small advantage on the map, as they should. Just visible on the left of the pic is a 3 story building which is where a lot of action happened as you could control the map basically from that building.
Night Stalker - SOCOM, SOCOM II, SOCOM 4
Another amazing SOCOM map. It might have also been in SOCOM Confrontation, idk, I have tried to have the PS3 SOCOM's erased from my brain Eternal Sunshine style, so only bits and pieces remain. The map was very dark, which made long distance shooting nearly impossible without night vision. The map basically had 3 lanes. The middle was cluttered with buildings and rocks, and then each side had a couple buildings but you were, for the most part, running in the open. Sniping was amazing on this map because of how open it was. It really made movement more of a tactical element than you normally see in shooters. This was a demolition map, so a bomb was in the middle of the map in a building and either team could grab it and plant at the opposing base.
Niven - Unreal Tournament
There might be a lot better UT maps out there, I think I missed out on both of them because I primarily played on the Dreamcast console. But this map was amazing. Well balanced, just loads of fun and designed very well. A true mark of the good old days where our shooters came with maps designed specifically for certain modes and not the "one map fits all" stuff that has become modern shooter maps.
Zanzibar - Halo 2, Halo 3
Halo 2 really had some amazing MP, but for my money none of the maps come close to Zanzibar. It really blended together all the different elements of Halo MP into one map. You could have vehicle combat, long range shooting, run and gun shootouts, and close quarters combat all in one. And on the objective type modes, the map was just incredible. Trying to lock it down so no defenders could get in was great, as was trying to crack the defense while on the opposing team.
The Last of Us - Bill's Town
One of the best things about LoU MP is you can play it slow and safe using the TP perspective and listen mode to your advantage, or you can gear yourself up for CQC and rush the enemy team and kill them until they die from it. No map in the game (barring DLC which I have not played) accomplishes this better than Bill's Town imho. Going up the middle is risky but rewarding, but most people stick to one of the two 2 story buildings on either side. Which is where the magic happens. Intense close range combat inside these tiny rooms is usually what the map comes down to. Crafty rushers can usually take out an enemy or two inside the buildings if they play their cards right.
Bloc - Call of Duty 4
A lot of people hate Bloc and think it's a terrible map but they are wrong. A lot like the LoU map I listed above, the best thing about this map is a bulk of the combat takes place inside of small rooms right up close to one another. It's two apartment complexes separated by a courtyard in the middle. You could play any mode on it, but imho the map really shines in TDM and Search & Destroy. It's also a surprising great sniper map, as snipers pick one another off from opposite apartment buildings, each having multiple floors and rooms, allowing for hit and run sniping action. It wouldn't work in todays CoD with big explosive killstreaks and all, but it was amazing in its time.
Chain Reaction - SOCOM II
And we finish the more detailed map breakdowns by coming full circle back to SOCOM. I could actually list 10 more SOCOM maps if I wanted. Anyone who didn't play the first two games last gen have no idea what they missed. You can't really tell anything about the map from this shitty pic, but Chain Reaction was a submarine bay. The SEALS spawned way up on the roof of the building, the terrorists spawned below. There were dormer windows on the roof where SEALS could see in and try to pick terrorists off when the round began, but terrorists could also look up and snipe them. Most of the time though the combat sunk down into the actual building, into the stairways and hallways and little control rooms. This was a supression map, which is basically TDM with one life. Sometimes the SEALS would camp on the roof where you only had two ways to attack, made for real intense final moments of rounds.
Honorable mentions:
Longest Yard - Q3A
Blood Gulch - Halo
Overgrown - CoD 4
Makin Day - CoD WaW
Facing Worlds - Unreal Tournament
Wake Island - Loads of Battlefield games
Canals - Gears of War
Strike at Karkand - Battlefield 2
Feel free to add your own.
