
There are good Call of Duty maps, there are forgettable Call of Duty maps, there are bad Call of Duty maps, and then there's Babylon. Set in a dusty corner of a beleaguered Iraq in 1991, Babylon is a Black Ops 6 map I find so unpleasant that it takes all my will not to insta-quit lobbies that vote for it.
I'm not alone in my Babylon hate, but it'd be wrong to suggest it's the most hated map in Black Ops 6. There's no consensus so far: My coworker Jake Tucker hates Scud with all his being, a map that I like despite obvious annoyances, and my lobbies are avoiding Red Card like the plague. To me, Babylon is the worst map in a pool of pretty underwhelming battlegrounds in Black Ops 6. I give Treyarch high marks for the theming of its 6v6 maps this year—Red Card's soccer pitch, Skyline's rooftop hotel, and Lowtown's Venice-like canal networks look fantastic—but their layouts succumb to the worst tendencies of Activision map design: cramped quarters, exploitable sightlines, terrible spawns, and unimaginative floor plans.