Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 & 2 Ports

Both Black Ops 1 and 2 got ports on PS4 and PS5 on July 9, with native versions for both. No trailer, no announcement build-up, just dropped and released. Xbox and PC both still have the original versions working, with Xbox having major issues, being a hacky mess due to major hardware exploits being a thing. PC has it even worse, the exploits there make the games genuinely unsafe to run. RCE, or remote code execution, should worry you just from the words alone. Workarounds exist but base game being in that state is sad. From Call of Duty 4 2007 until Call of Duty AW 2014, all of these titles are still on sale. Why is that? Due to how networking works, letting host clients do so much, and outdated standards. None of these are even on Xbox Game Pass yet, despite Microsoft owning them. RCE, I think, is a big reason why. Even if they updated and re-released it, it would likely suffer the same fate, unless they rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, and used servers for games. That would require effort and hosting older games, which we get on to later.

The Obvious Points

Let’s start with the obvious points. First, these are ports of very old games. Second, that means few, if any, improvements under the hood.

There’s been no improvement to graphics, outside of now running 1080p at 60fps. The original PS3 version ran at 960×544, Xbox 360 at 1040×600, both aiming for 60fps but often dropping to 50 or even 40. So yes, it runs better on modern hardware but that’s about the most basic upgrade you could ask for on hardware that can do so much more. No upgrades to shadows and more. Feels like a very low-effort port: little time and money used to pull it off.

No changes to tick rate still 24Hz, which is not good. No dedicated servers, which is even worse. It runs on a listen server setup using players as hosts: matchmaking runs through Demonware data centre, but your actual game runs off someone else’s console sending information back, like location, XP and kills. That matters for a few reasons, which I’ll get into.

Netcode and everything else seems to have remained the same. Curiously, snipers are working like they did on the PC version of Black Ops 1, which means this is a port of the PC version made to run on console. The ports seem to be running within an emulator too, which has added some input delay. So PC to PS4 to PS5, which sadly seems like the worst version.

They came out with old exploits that still worked I assume nobody told the dev team, or nobody looked it up. It highlights just how little expertise went into this. As soon as I knew a port was coming, I was worried about exactly this, because that’s how little trust I have in this getting done properly.

This one’s been fixed now, but it’s worth explaining briefly: you could edit your save file, and because you’re the host, that let you feed false information straight to the server no checks in place. One result was an XP exploit that let you instantly level up. Worse, that same file could force you into being the host and send arbitrary instructions to the server, with nothing on the server side questioning what was going on. This was possible because of how the PS3 originally handled saves, carried over into the PS4 version. PS4 save files can be adjusted, and decrypted. Again this rather basic and something dev team should have known about. A couple of server-side fixes have since closed that loophole. But still possible to change the save. Just does not do what it once did.

Within days, players had also found a way to farm XP by killing themselves and disconnecting over and over, which pushed some accounts into negative XP and knocked them below level 1. Activision’s response was disabling select playlists, people had already found ways around that. Just needed to update the file for playlists that was online.

The bad news is some exploits are still possible. The good news is PS4 hardware isn’t fully jailbroken yet, so it’s not possible to inject code and do the more elaborate stuff you can already see happening on Xbox 360, PS3, and PC. Talking about mod menus and aim bots.

Pricing

For such low effort the pricing is well. Astonishing and insulting. $40 each for old ports which have minimal changes. On top of season pack being $30. When everything should have been bundled together. Which it is. Just have to pay to unlock it. That really not good enough. Is a discount on offer for playstation plus members. Given the rough start and the low effort on display, I do question the value for money here. There’s a promotion on right now for PS Plus members for the base game. And 67% discount for DLC. That brings the whole thing down to about $60, running for about a month until August 6, so don’t sit on it if you’re planning to buy anyway. I was tempted to buy it but my god it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Where I Land

I would have rather had a remaster than a low-effort port with no dedicated servers, improved tick rate, and more. I’ve got a first-person shooter itch that nobody’s really built a game for anymore; modern Call of Duty doesn’t suit what I’m after. This feels more like a slap in the face than a love letter. I’m hesitant to buy both games due to A) the ongoing issues, and B) no communication on what’s actually being looked at next. Patch notes so far are just vague tweets. Until that changes, I’d rather wait for an actual fix than pay for a port that’s still broken in the same ways it was over a decade ago and an insultingly basic upgrade for the price being asked. Feels like it was done on a budget, and honestly, a bit insulting to people like myself. Hoping for reasonable upgrades and good price points with ports to Xbox and PS really should not be much to ask for. But here we are.