For every Kino der Toten or Origins made throughout the series, it also has its fair share of misses, most of which are shown here for your scrolling amusement.
- Back from the first Black Ops, Five was (and still is) considered a pretty harsh Difficulty Spike in comparison to Kino der Toten. There are a lot of cramped rooms and hallways which are hard to run through while being pursued by zombie hordes, and even holding out in one position requires maximum teamwork. The underground labs section is even worse because Nova Crawlers spawn there, and you will have to visit it in order to turn on the power and get to the Mystery Box. The unique boss enemy, the Pentagon Thief, can steal your weapon, screwing you over (especially bad if it's Pack-a-Punched) and leaving you at the mercy of zombies whose health increases with each round. It doesn't help that its Wonder Weapon, the Winter's Howl, is extremely situational at best, only being truly useful at slowing zombies down, which does little help considering the map layout.
- Out of all the maps that have been released, most players generally agree that TranZit (or Green Run, depending on what you prefer to call it) is the worst Zombies map to date. First, the power location and the Pack-a-Punch machine, apart from being annoyingly far from the starting point, had to be built first. On top of that, if you miss the bus, which is likely to happen often, you have to wade through some very thick fog to get from one part of the map to the next, while making sure you don't step in any of the liberally-placed lava. Which would be a hassle even without the Denizens latching onto your face every five seconds (which also have very loud, annoyingly inhuman screams every time they do so). And even when riding on the bus, it takes such a long time to get around the place and get set up, since guns are placed so sparingly around the map and most of the useful perks are found in the Town (which doesn't have any wall guns, by the way). Speaking of which, the new perk introduced here, Tombstone Soda, is pretty much useless unless you're trying to troll your teammates. Finally, the map's Wonder Weapon, the Jet Gun, is considered one of the weakest one in the entire Zombies history because Jet Gun has to be built and has an overheat mechanic, meaning it can only be fired in really short bursts or it will break. Not even the fact that there's a partial recreation of Nacht der Untoten hidden in this map could give it a plus. In fact, perhaps the only saving grace in this map is that it was the introduction to the Zombie Shield. It's telling when people would rather just survive in the Town on Survival mode than attempt to ride the damn bus.
- Die Rise, hoo boy, Die Rise. First, you can fall off rather easily, no revive - and even if you do land within the map, you can't get PhD Flopper to prevent going down from fall damage. Second, the Jumping Jacks, which are essentially Kino der Toten's Nova Crawlers on crack. Third, the elevators, and how they serve as a thinly-veiled attempt to reuse the random perk drops from Nuketown Zombies. And finally, the new perk on this map, Who's Who, can actually be a detriment to the player, especially when playing solo. The only real positive is that the new Wonder Weapon, the Sliquifier, is one of the most reliable in Zombies history. Once Mob of the Dead, Buried, and Origins dropped, everyone who got them moved on, and TranZit only has the most players due to being on-disc already.
- From Black Ops III, we have Zetsubou no Shima. Not only does it have an aesthetic that's too muted and depressing even by Zombies standards, it takes far too long to get set up on this map, even if you're running Perkaholic. It's also one of the buggiest maps of all time, with several bugs that can easily ruin your game. Then we have the Thrashers which, as explained under Demonic Spiders, have the player easily outmatched regardless of their equipment, and give no points upon death. Finally, we have the Spiders. If you didn't already hate spiders in real life, these little bastards should fix that. They have such a low hitbox they can't be knifed while standing, can take quite a lot of damage, have an unpredictable pattern, and in general are just as annoying as the Denizens from TranZit. On the flipside, the map does give us the akimbo Marshal 16s, which can pull you through to Round 31, and the Skull of Non Sapwe, which is one of the more...out-there Wonder Weapons.
- Black Ops 4, already a divisive installment with its gameplay alterations, has no less than two examples of this:
- Voyage of Despair, one of three on-disc maps, and the opening map for the Chaos storyline, is a chaotic (no pun intended) mess - the interior is near-Verruckt levels of close-quarters, leaving the poop deck as the only reliable training spot, and even that has it's issues. It makes sense given that it's a map set on a cruise liner, but it's still a bit of an issue, especially when you think of how large the map is, and how every section of the map looks the same. Setting up is a pain as well, with unflooding the underbelly of the boat and unlocking Pack-a-Punch proving to be more trouble than it's worth. The Catalysts and Blightfathers debut here, and begin the trend of Black Ops 4's issues with special zombies. However, the Kraken proved itself to be a well-received and reliable Wonder Weapon.
- And then we have Dead of the Night, the third Chaos map. Coming off the back of the sleeper hit IX, this map had a lot to live up to, and the unique crew for the map featuring the voice talents of Charles Dance and BRIAN BLESSED!!!!! definitely helped it. However, much like Voyage, Dead of the Night is a very chaotic (again, no pun intended) map - though the map is competently designed, there are two key flaws that ruin it - first, the special zombies. Not only do Catalysts return, you've also got werewolves and Nosferatus added to the mix as well, and they spawn in very frequently and have their own unique ways of making your experience on the map an absolute misery - especially the Nosferatus, which the community compared unfavourably to the Denizens from TranZit. Second, to access Pack-a-Punch, each player has to complete their own unique challenges a la Zetsubou no Shima's Easter Egg, and the challenges are borderline incomprehensible to the average player - if you don't have a detective's eye, you'll need a guide to figure this stuff out. The same applies to getting the parts needed for the shield, as well as the silver bullets which you'll need to make the werewolves a manageable threat. Thankfully, the cast of the map is entertaining enough to make it at least somewhat tolerable, and Alistair's Folly proves itself to be an excellent Wonder Weapon - essentially the Chaos equivalent to the Ray Gun.
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