Activision stealth-dropped Call of Duty: Black Ops 1 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 last week on PS4 and PS5. Upon release, they crashed the PlayStation Store, and instantly shot to the top of PlayStation Store charts to number one and two. Unfortunately, they are straight ports. Nothing has been reworked or improved, which in some ways is a good thing. These are the classic, nostalgic experiences from 2010 and 2012. They both hold up incredibly well and are a breath of fresh air for those burnt out by modern COD. Unfortunately, when we say next to no work was put into these ports, we mean it. To this end, glitches, exploits, and issues in the original games are still present.
Videos by ComicBook.com
As you may know, Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 have been available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X for years, thanks to backward compatibility. Unfortunately, they are plagued by hackers and cheaters. This is especially true of the first game. This is why there isn’t any cross-play between the Xbox versions and the new PlayStation ports. And unfortunately, the PlayStation ports are now starting to be ruined by the same thing. Dealing with hackers is obviously a complicated issue that many modern games struggle with. It’s a tall task to rework these two original games and support them in order to prevent hacking. So this is somewhat excusable. What’s not excusable, though, are basic glitches Activision could fix but can’t be bothered to.
Glitch Lobbies
Just like the original game on PS3, the XP lobbies are a problem in the PS4 and PS5 versions. Thankfully, the issue is mostly limited to Ground War, but it’s starting to spread to other modes and become more common, especially as casual players thin out from the ranks. For those out of the loop, there are players exploiting a glitch in the game that lets them quickly max out XP by killing themselves rather than playing. And when this happens, it can completely ruin the experience for everyone else.
As noted, this isn’t as bad as lobbies with a hacker, let alone more than one hacker. When there are a lot of them in one lobby, though, it completely ruins the experience. Thankfully, this isn’t extremely common. That said, what’s not tolerable is that Activision couldn’t be bothered to fix this. While this alone doesn’t completely negate the experience, it certainly worsens the experience. There are so many players that you don’t run into hackers, but eventually that will change, too. And Activision seems content not doing anything about any of it because they already made their quick and easy buck. That said, to charge $40 for each of these games, and then $30 for their Season Pass, while not fixing infamous glitches like this that are as old as each game, is simply inexcusable. And if Activision isn’t going to fix this, it could at least let PS5 users turn off cross-play, as this appears to be limited to just the PS4 version of the game. Whatever the case, something has to change.
All of that said, and as always, feel free to leave a comment or two letting us know what you think, or join the video game conversations over on the ComicBook Forum.
