I was playing Ghost Recon the other night and remembered how awsome the Embassy level was for multi player. I think it is the most perfectly designed level of any FPS type game. You have people in the alleys, on top of the embassy, in parking garages. Very realistic IMHO. Great lvl.
Anyway, what are the best maps you can think of? I liked the prison lvl in Halo as well, but never really got too into that game.
I nominate Deck 16 II from the original Unreal Tournament.
DM3 from the original Quake. Best. Deathmatch level. Ever.
Probably not what you had in mind, but a friend of mine made a Quake II map where the various spawnpoints were at the beginning of conveyer belts that led through totally enclosed spaces fraught with crushers, rotating knives, spike projectors, etc, with no possibility of successful navigation, and visual contact with other players only through impervious glass walls on the way to the “killing floor.”
He’d host it, labelling the game “BOVINE UNIVERSITY” and then we’d giggle as people dropped in.
As for a DM that was actually fun to play, I really liked the “Duel of the Fates” map for Jedi Knight that was floating around. The force-field hall, the abyss, the catwalks. It was perfect.
2fort from TFC/Facing Worlds from UT
ONS-Torlan from UT2K4.
Blood Gulch from Halo and the one with the elevators from Goldeneye.
Wizard on Halo is pretty good too if you play with only shotguns. It’s such a small board that you can get 25 or 50 kills really quick.
I knew someone was going to respond with this. Everyone says it. Why? It isn’t a bad level but neither is it a particularly good level. I would rank it below average. Death Island is a way better level.
Operation Overlord. UT.
Counter-Strike: CS: Rats.
Level 1 from the original Doom.
Heheh.
No, 2fort5 from the original Team Fortress! Oh yeah…
Actually, the level theRock was heaps of fun too. Each side had control of an identical prison and you had to get into the opposing teams chemical room and set off their bomb. Which would kill everyone who didn’t get to a gas mask. It also had underground tunnels that demolition men could blow up for alternate enterances (or collapse for safety) and really cool sniper towers. I think it was the most interactive multiplayer map for its time, and doesn’t get near the amount of recognition it deserves.
I’ve been playing that map on and off now for over five years.
Best multiplayer map I’ve ever played is from, what else, a Halflife mod - Day of Defeat. DoD_Charlie
November from Unreal Tournament
The games could drag on, but I never noticed Red winning any more often than Blue, or vice vera. I’m a sucker for assymetrical maps, especially when they’re balanced this well.
Facing Worlds wasn’t just overplayed, but also a sniper’s paradise.
Well, the worst thing about this board when playing online is sniping. It’s annoying and I personally think it’s immature and borderline cheating.
In an offline game with my friends though, I think it’s fun to have the ability to snipe. I do it once near the start of the game and then put the sniper rifle down and maybe pick it up once more towards the end of the game. I try not to ever kill anyone twice in a row by the same method in FPSs.
Now that that’s out of the way, what’s not to like about Blood Gulch? It’s big and outdoorsy, easy to learn but has some good hiding spots that take awhile to find. It has all types of guns which are all useful at different areas on the board. It has two clearly defined bases for CTF and team-play. It has VEHICLES, which are incredibly fun and rare in FPS games; not to mention a rocket launcher to blow the things away.
At times it seems a little too big for 1 on 1, but I’ve never had more fun in big team games.
Good visuals, good weapons, good overall fun. Blood Gulch is definitely my favorite MP FPS board.
I nominate ns_nancy and the original ns_bast from Natural Selection. Atmospheric as hell, great vent systems: killing aplenty from every direction in every possible way. Much fun had.
Old school, I’d say that the canalzone map from TFC was pretty boss to play on.
For multiplayer games, I’ll nominate:
Outrigger from UT2003
The Temple from Goldeneye
Hang 'em High from Halo
The Beach from Return to Castle Wolfenstein
I’ll have to think about single player maps…
On that note, I remember my astonishment upon finding out people actually played e1m1 and Doom2’s MAP01 as DM levels. Tiny, linear, and uninteresting, and yet, quite popular. I still don’t get it.
I nominate Mementomori for Descent and the Spa map from Rogue Spear. Going by sheer quantity of time played, though, I’ve probably spent more time in Ledges for Doom than any other single map - but in retrospect it’s really not that great. Funny how two of my three mentions here are third-party maps, when I tend to have such a low opinion of unofficial additions in general.
My list of candidates:
AS-Overlord from Unreal Tournament (GOTY)
ONS-November from UT2K4 gets my vote as well
The Edge -DM map 1 from Quake 2
UT GOTY: DM-Morpheus, DM-SpaceNoxx, DM-Phobos, AS-Overlord, CTF-Face
UT2K4: DM-Morpheus3, AS-Convoy, ONS-Torlan
Enemy Territory: Bank, Beach, FuelDump, Radar
…chalk up another vote for the Temple on Goldeneye… ::wipes tears with memories of that game:: me and my mates were so hooked on that game-we used to meet at each others houses and we would bring out television sets (in my case, an old Amiga Monitor, which I used to watch TV, long story!!! ) and by using a four-way splitter borrowed from the Sky City theatre we could play Goldeneye multiplayer on our own TV screens… we had to cover each the other three “split screens” so that we couldn’t cheat… boy, I’m a geek!!! 
I invented the “Apollo Maneuver”-a tactic so unbeatable that only one guy could beat it: I’m looking at you “Export Bear”
