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- A surprise shadow drop last week brought back the nostalgia, but the price tag might make you think twice.
- So effectively, you will be spending twice the money on both games.
A surprise shadow drop last week brought back the nostalgia, but the price tag might make you think twice.
If you were scrolling through the PlayStation Store last week, you probably noticed something unexpected pop up. Call of Duty Black Ops and its sequel quietly landed on PS4 and PS5 with zero warning, and honestly, the whole thing caught a lot of people off guard.
You're getting the original Call of Duty Black Ops as a digital-only release, priced at $40 on its own. If you happen to have PlayStation Plus, you'll see that price cut in half, down to $20, but don't get too comfortable, that discount is only running until August 6th, so it's not something you can count on sticking around.
However, things get a bit tricky from here as well. Over and above the base game, you will have to spend an extra $30 for getting yourself the Season Pass of Call of Duty Black Ops. Let’s face it; there’s no way that you will be purchasing it just for replaying the campaign.
Your main interest lies in joining the multiplayer lobby. That said, it would make sense for you to have PlayStation Plus activated in your account as well. When everything is summed up, you can see that you have to spend close to $70, barring any discounts on holidays or future price drops.
But if you also like the second game, then "Call of Duty Black Ops 2" is available for the same $40 price, or $20 with your "PlayStation Plus" subscription activated. Just like with the first game, there is a whole different Season Pass you will have to purchase if you want to get all content unlocked.
So effectively, you will be spending twice the money on both games.
Given the price you're being asked to pay, you might expect some serious upgrades bundled in with Call of Duty Black Ops, think 4K resolution, a smoother frame rate, maybe even a field-of-view slider for good measure. That's not what you're getting here.
You're still capped at 1080p, though the upscaling does look noticeably cleaner than what you'd find running the XBOX 360 version through backward compatibility on XBOX Series consoles, where things get blocky and shimmer a lot more. You'll still notice a bit of shimmering on PS4 and PS5, just far less of it. The one change that actually matters is the server situation.
Call of Duty Black Ops on PS4 and PS5 is running on brand new, dedicated servers, which means you're avoiding the hacker-infested lobbies currently plaguing the XBOX version. If you've tried playing the XBOX backward-compatible version recently, you already know how frustrating those lobbies have become. With this release, you're getting a clean, fresh start, and that alone might be worth it for you if hacking has been ruining your nostalgia trip elsewhere.
Outside of that server upgrade, you're not getting much else to justify the cost. It's a steep price for a game running at 1080p and 60 frames per second with no extra bells or whistles attached. Still, despite all that, Call of Duty Black Ops managed to top the sales charts right out of the gate, even beating out GTA 6 in the process. That tells you just how much pull nostalgia still has, especially when it's paired with a franchise as recognizable as this one.
