Call of Duty: Warzone’s Area 99 Is Exactly What Nuketown Needed

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Call of Duty: Warzone's Area 99 Is Exactly What Nuketown Needed

Key Takeaways

  • The Call of Duty NEXT event annually reveals upcoming content, and it brought plenty of looks at the future this year, with Warzone’s new Resurgence map included in the stream.
  • Call of Duty: Warzone’s Area 99 map truly shakes up the Nuketown concept, something that is long overdue due to how similar the various versions of Nuketown have been.
  • Area 99 explores the area where Nuketown’s staging is built, and its various locations make it look like a fresh play space as opposed to another Nuketown reskin.

As a long-time Call of Duty fanatic who’s seen more Nuketown maps than I care to remember, I must say that this year’s Call of Duty NEXT event has brought a breath of fresh air! The reveal of Area 99 for Warzone is the shake-up that Nuketown desperately needed after all these years.

2022 marked the start of an annual tradition known as Call of Duty NEXT, which occurs in anticipation of a new installment in the popular first-person shooter series, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. This event allows content creators to preview the upcoming game and gives developers a platform to share a plethora of fresh details about it. The 2022 edition of Call of Duty NEXT was brimming with announcements and demonstrations, featuring numerous multiplayer live streams, some intriguing Zombies insights, and the grand unveiling of Call of Duty: Warzone.

Four years have passed since the debut of Call of Duty: Warzone, and thanks to regular updates and content releases, the game has grown even larger. Each year, a fresh map is added to Call of Duty: Warzone, and this trend will continue with Black Ops 6. During the Call of Duty NEXT event, it was unveiled that Area 99 would be the next Resurgence map for Call of Duty: Warzone, potentially bringing a long-overdue change to a 14-year-old map.

Call of Duty: Warzone’s Area 99 Map Is The Refresh Nuketown Needed

Nuketown Is Old Hat Now

Making its first appearance in the 2010 game “Call of Duty: Black Ops,” Nuketown stands as one of, if not the most legendary maps within the entire “Call of Duty” franchise. This map mirrors the fast-paced, tight-quarters combat style found in maps such as Shipment. In “Black Ops,” Nuketown provided the perfect environment for close-knit team games and one-versus-one battles. With its two houses featuring facing windows, a bus acting as mid-map cover, gardens tucked behind each house, and an unmistakable 1950s ambiance, every aspect of Nuketown contributed to creating a map that was both inviting and exhilarating. As a result, it earned the acclaim it rightly deserved.

But that was only the start of Nuketown’s legacy. Nuketown was brought back just two years later with Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, where it was given a retro-futuristic makeover. Then it appeared again in Call of Duty: Black Ops 3. And again in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. And once again in Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War. While it’s always nice to see a new version of Nuketown, playing the map has gotten very repetitive, with its layout not changing at all in the last 14 years. The only difference between all these versions of Nuketown is the visual theming of each map.

Area 99 Changes and Expands on Nuketown In Some Major Ways

Set to launch together with Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 in October, the freshly unveiled Area 99 Resurgence map for Call of Duty: Warzone is introducing some significant twists on the classic Nuketown design. Essentially, Area 99 constitutes an entire Resurgence map modeled after the blueprint of Nuketown. Combatants will be engaging in battles across manufacturing plants that produce Nuketown homes, shipping yards where those houses are lifted by cranes and loaded onto ships, test-site bunkers where missiles are eventually launched from, and a variety of other Points of Interest (POIs) all inspired by the original Nuketown layout.

Instead of simply rehashing Nuketown, Call of Duty: Warzone’s Area 99 map takes it to a whole new level, enhancing and extending the fundamental idea of Nuketown significantly. It’s important to note that there will indeed be a Nuketown version in Black Ops 6’s multiplayer mode, named “Sandhouse.” However, this iteration breaks the mold by presenting the location after a nuclear explosion, with sand dunes covering the remains of the traditional houses.

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2024-08-29 22:25