A Surprisingly Poor Effort from Activision

Activision’s recent ports of Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 have raised eyebrows for their price, but it’s their disappointing graphics performance that has truly caught the attention of tech experts.

The team at Digital Foundry has taken a closer look at the port of the original 2010 Black Ops game to PlayStation, and their findings are less than impressive. The game runs at 1080p, not 4K, despite being a 16-year-old game that began life on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Furthermore, there’s no anti-aliasing, which has left many feeling underwhelmed.

But it’s not just the resolution that’s the problem – the frame rate is also limited to 60Hz, even on the powerful PS5 hardware. For a brand new PS5 conversion, this is a disappointingly poor performance, and it’s well below what the hardware is capable of.

A 16-Year-Old Game with 16-Year-Old Graphics

The Digital Foundry team has criticized the decision to preserve the game’s obvious visual blemishes, such as poor shadow quality. This is a problem that was inherent to the game when it was first released, but it’s something that could have been easily improved upon with modern hardware.

In fact, the PS5 and PS4 versions of the game 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, which makes the PS5 port all the more disappointing.

Disappointing Pricing, Too

The price of the PlayStation Black Ops ports has also raised eyebrows. Each game costs $40, and the separate season pass is priced at $29.99. This means that if you want the complete experience, you have to pay $140 for games that came out over a decade ago.

However, there is a silver lining for PlayStation Plus subscribers. They get a massive discount, with both games costing $20 each and their season passes priced at $9 each. This makes for a total of $58 if you want everything, which is a significant saving.

The discount runs until August 6, so if you’re a PlayStation Plus subscriber, be sure to take advantage of it.

A Disappointing Effort from Activision

The Call of Duty: Black Ops PS5 port is a disappointing effort from Activision, and it’s clear that the company hasn’t put enough effort into bringing the game up to modern standards.

The poor graphics performance, limited frame rate, and disappointing pricing have all contributed to a game that feels like it’s stuck in the past.