Activision’s ports of the much-loved Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 immediately raised eyebrows for their price, but they’ve come under fire for their disappointing graphics performance, too.
The tech experts at Digital Foundry have taken a look at the port of the original 2010 Black Ops to PlayStation, and had a few choice words to say about the work Activision put into it. Chief among their complaints is the fact the Black Ops port runs at 1080p, not 4K, despite being a 16-year-old game that began life on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Not only that, there’s no anti-aliasing.
DF also criticized the frame-rate, which is limited to 60Hz even on PS5. “A 1080p60 presentation would be potentially acceptable for the PS4 version – and there is one! – but for a brand new PS5 conversion, it’s disappointingly poor and well below what the hardware is capable of,” DF said.
“For a native PS5 title and a somewhat high-profile port, this is a deeply odd state of affairs,” DF continued. “Even the game’s obvious visual blemishes are preserved: shadow quality was necessarily poor back in the day, but why preserve that problem in the present day when so much more graphics horsepower is available?”
If there’s a silver lining, the PS5 and PS4 versions are better than the one currently accessible on Xbox Series X and S and Xbox One via backwards compatibility, which sticks to the original Xbox 360 resolution of 608p. There are no Xbox enhancements at all.
We’ve already reported on the pricing of the PlayStation Black Ops ports, which cost $40 each. Both games also offer a separate season pass priced $29.99. So, if you want the complete experience (Black Ops 1 and 2 and all the DLC), you have to pay $140 for games. All this for games that came out over a decade ago.
It’s worth noting that if you are a PlayStation Plus subscriber you get a massive discount. In that case, both games cost $20 each and their season passes are $9 each, which makes for a $58 total if you want everything. This discount runs until August 6.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
