Has Meat stolen the crown for best small CoD map? Some fans think so

Call of Duty fans over the years have been spoiled by maps of all shapes and sizes, but many players can’t stop playing the game’s smallest offerings. The pantheon of small CoD maps has a new entry with 2023’s Modern Warfare 3 in Meat—and to some veterans, it deserves the crown.

But can Meat really match it pound-for-pound against the all-time GOAT maps like Rust, Shipment, or Nuketown? Results from a Jan. 26 debate on the MW3 subreddit seemed to suggest Meat deserves a spot among the very best maps ever made in CoD, as long as the devs make more changes to its awful spawns.

“It being small isn’t an excuse to spawn people up my ass when my entire team is on the same side of the map,” one player said, but they ultimately defended the map and believe it deserves a spot alongside Nuketown and the post-crate nerf version of Shipment. Meat’s spawn problems date back to its release, and despite devs disabling some of the map’s game modes to address the issues, it’s clear more needs to be done.

While many expect to queue Shipment and get spawn-killed for 30 minutes straight, Meat’s elongated design and clear distinction between each half of the map should mean spawns are clearly defined. However, this hasn’t been the case so far with Meat, or MW3 as a whole even, with spawn points criticized for being too dynamic and inconsistent.

Otherwise, Meat has quickly built a cult following among newer CoD players. The outdoor longer sight lines allow for an assault rifle and even marksman rifle use, but as soon as you hit the “chaos” that is the B flag and the indoor slaughterhouse, I hope you’ve got a sidearm or SMG on standby. The tight corridors and various doorways make for some fast-paced action and a whole lot of kills.

Players are favoring Meat even over the iconic Rust, which saw a rocky return with MW3 after over a decade out of CoD. Rust’s altitude adjustments and equally terrible spawns are tormenting the new generation of CoD players, so Meat’s arrival has been well-timed and, if anything at all, offers a new landscape to grind those Interstellar camos.

It’s still got a ways until it knocks off the all-time best map Nuketown, in my opinion, but Meat’s only one or two adjustments away from becoming a CoD classic.