10 Best Multiplayer Modes of All Time

The modern multiplayer gaming landscape is so ludicrously huge that it's incredibly difficult for any one game to stand out, especially if said multiplayer mode is tacked onto a single-player experience that naturally invites low expectations.

But we've all experienced those unexpectedly jaw-dropping multiplayer modes that got their claws into us and wouldn't let go, leaving us spending way too many long nights unable to pull away while promising ourselves "just one more match."

And so, having pored back over the history of multiplayer games, these are the 10 modes that blew so many of us all away.

Some of them surprised us with their unexpected quality against basement-low expectations, while others found an unexpectedly clever way to reinvent their core gameplay for online multiplayer mayhem.

Each proved so damn fun as to perhaps even suck up way more of your time than the core single-player campaign. 

And years on from when they launched, you're left with nostalgic memories of all that joyous time playing them. In a few cases, though, these modes have endured enough to still be accessible to this very day...

Let's kick things off with a multiplayer mode that's so damn incredible it probably should've been spun off into its own game - Splinter Cell's Spies vs Mercs.

Introduced in the series' second game, Pandora Tomorrow, Spies vs Mercs is far from a conventional multiplayer deathmatch, given that opposing sides play the game from different perspectives.

Mercs go about their business from a first-person viewpoint and are kitted out with plentiful weapons, albeit at the cost of their speed and mobility. 

Spies are meanwhile given a third-person perspective, granting them wider awareness of the general area even if their lack of weaponry requires them to attack the Mercs stealthily.

It's a frankly ingenious way to reinvent Splinter Cell for multiplayer, and proved popular enough to reappear in numerous subsequent entries into the franchise.

Given the mode's enduring popularity 20 years on, Ubisoft would be daft not to include it in their upcoming remake of the original game.