Black Ops and BO2 Need a Proper Remaster, But Not a Remake
In case you missed the big news, Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and 2 have been re-released as native ports for PS4 and PS5.
While it’s good to be able to relive these two all-time classics (especially for me, since I think Black Ops 2 is one of the best in Call of Duty history), the ports themselves are, well, literal ports. That means the game remains unchanged, for better and worse, and with a pretty high asking price, it feels like Activision should have done a lot more than port these games over to a new platform. .
What these games really needed was a proper remastering rather than a direct port, and before anyone says it, no, I don’t think they should have been remade from the ground up.
Finally, Call of Duty Back for Us Oldheads
Look, while I’ve enjoyed Call of Duty games up until this point, I ain’t going to lie to you all. I’m what the community calls an oldhead. I’m constantly reminiscing about the old Call of Duty games, wishing the franchise would go back to a more boots-on-the-ground experience, removing excessive movement, bunny-hopping, slide-canceling, and all the other weird things people do in the latest games.
It’s not that I can’t keep up with that style of play, because I most certainly do; It’s just that I grew up in an era of shooters that were never really focused on playing like I’m on crack. Were they still twitch shooters? Yes, but this new era of Call of Duty has all been about how fast someone can slide across the entire map and in whichever direction they can do it.
The biggest problem with Call of Duty as a whole is that it’s grown such a large player base that it no longer has a single target audience. You can’t make a Call of Duty game without pissing off part of the player base. Take away the movement, and the movement players get upset; add more movement, and the non-movement players get upset. We saw that happen with Modern Warfare II (2022), and the thought of going too far into the movement game (like futuristic settings with jetpacks and such) is one that players have already rejected before. It’s a constant balancing act, and no matter which direction the developers take, someone will feel like Call of Duty isn’t being made for them anymore.
Which is why I’m all for them re-releasing these games on modern platforms, because it gives the newer generation of players a chance to experience what made Call of Duty so great in the first place. Granted, I don’t think this is going to move the needle much for the studio to go back to these more simplified experiences. We are where we are because the bulk of the audience wants these kinds of games now. But nonetheless, it’s a fantastic way to make old players happy, and by the looks of things, both the PlayStation re-releases of Black Ops and Black Ops 2 are proving to be quite successful. So much so that even Xbox and PC players want to see a re-release of their own, to help combat their ongoing hacker problems.
But the thing is, these re-releases are just direct ports, with practically nothing new added.
This does leave me a bit divided about the releases, because, on the one hand, I love that the experience is remaining “untouched.” It’s the classic Call of Duty formula, and in my opinion, with Black Ops 2, the peak of it. On the other hand, these ports leave much to be desired from a quality-of-life and technical standpoint.
Now, if Activision announced that they were remaking these games, I’d be the first person in line for them, but at the same time, we’ve seen what we got with the Modern Warfare franchise when it got rebooted. The Black Ops franchise took a very different approach: instead of forgetting the original games and starting fresh, it kept building on the story and kept those games part of the current canon. This has allowed the studio to evolve the Black Ops franchise without feeling like they were trying to replace the originals.
So these re-releases also serve as a way for the newer generation of gamers on PlayStation to complete the whole Black Ops saga on a single platform, since all titles are now playable on the PS4 and PS5.
So seeing them re-released on a modern system is great for preservation, but Activision charging a whopping $40 (cheaper for Plus subscribers) for bare-bones ports while simultaneously forcing us to re-purchase individual, decade-old DLC season passes just to fragment the player base all over again is a tough pill to swallow. It’s a massive win for nostalgia, but a pretty disappointing reminder of how these classic eras are handled today.
A Remaster With Modern Anti-Cheat and Other Technical Features Is What We Need
What we really needed here was a full remaster, and I say this over a remake, because the thought of remaking these from the ground up would likely mean changing the games’ formula to meet today’s market. All due respect to the Call of Duty studios, but can we really trust them to remake these games without adding all the new movement options and such? Not to mention even more monetization, but you know what, screw that part; this could have been a perfect incentive to make these ports even bigger than they are now by adding more monetization. As much as I dislike microtransactions, breathing new life into these legacy servers requires a sustainable player base, and a battle pass or retro-inspired cosmetics could have given Activision the financial incentive to actually support these ports beyond just being ports.
Imagine RICOCHET Anti-Cheat, modern matchmaking pools, or full cross-play functionality. These features are completely absent in these ports, and it’s something we oldheads might actually tolerate if it meant keeping the lobbies alive and clear of hackers.
Then there’s the graphical side of things. These are direct ports from a console generation that is 20 years old now, and we’ve made quite the advancements in graphical features since. I’m not talking about higher polygon counts that lead to better textures and more advanced particle and lighting effects. I’m talking about pretty basic stuff nowadays, like 120 Hz frame rate, VRR, anti-aliasing, and native 4K resolution. Instead, we’re left staring at jagged edges and blurry textures that look incredibly dated on a modern 4K television, even if the game is technically outputting at a higher resolution than the original 720p.
I don’t think players are asking for the world here; they just want something that feels a bit more like a remaster than a re-release.
With these now on modern consoles, the hope is that the studio will, down the road, update them with better features. I’m happy we got them and will be playing the crap out of them on my PlayStation 5, but I’ve got my fingers crossed that we’ll see some new features in a surprise update for these games.
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