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Call of Duty: Black Ops was my entry-point into console Call of Duty, with this game and its sequel producing some of my fondest memories of slowly getting good with a controller, considering moving to console full-time, and then picking up the PC version idly one day and remembering that I was way better with a mouse in my hand. Though the game and its sequel came out on the PS3 back in the day, the unusual Cell architecture of that system has prevented the game from being playable under backwards compatibility on the PS4 or PS5.
Now, that's being fixed, as Activision has confirmed that both Black Ops and Black Ops 2 are getting ports to PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 in July this year, with support for multiplayer, zombies and the campaign. These two games remain a high point for Call of Duty multiplayer, and remain popular as back-compat options on Xbox One and Xbox Series consoles, so it's no surprise that there would be a fair bit of demand for a modern re-release on PlayStation hardware. The ports are being handled by Iron Galaxy, who are well known for their efforts in this area - though not always for the better.
However, what was not known until today was what form the new releases would take. Would these be ground-up remasters with extra content? Or simpler ports that just get the game playable on modern systems with no substantial changes? According to Eurogamer, it looks like the latter, as Activision confirmed to the British outlet (and long-time Digital Foundry web hosts) that the PS4 and PS5 releases are "ports and not remasters".
Based on that, it seems logical to assume that we're unlikely to see a native PS5 release with features like 120Hz or VRR support, and instead a PS4-class release that potentially runs at a higher resolution on the more powerful PS5 and PS5 Pro hardware. Given that Black Ops 2 ran at just 832x624 on PS3 back in the day (thanks Tom from 2012 for the reporting there!) and the original Black Ops was even worse at 960x544 (thanks Rich from 2010), even an output resolution of 1920x1080 for PS4 would be a huge change.
Looking back at other Call of Duty releases, a 1080p PS4 release might run at a full 4K on PS5 and PS5 Pro, potentially with an 1440p, checkerboard or even native 4K PS4 Pro release. There's also the potential to use dynamic resolution scaling, as we saw on some Call of Duty releases that targeted the PS4 and its successors.
Are you looking forward to this release? And what's on your wishlist in terms of changes from the original game, if any? Let me know in the comments below.