A Call of Duty game has made a surprising appearance in what’s rumored to be the PlayStation Plus lineup for this July.
Video Games Chronicle reported on the latest batch of PlayStation Plus games coming up as leaked early by billbil-kun. billbil-kun has consistently and accurately predicted the PlayStation Plus lineup days before Sony announced it, since April 2021. So we generally expect these to be the real list.
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is a 2020 release from Treyarch and Raven Software. Set between the two Call of Duty: Black Ops mainline games, it sees the Black Ops team hunting a Soviet spy named Perseus, who looked to raise tensions between US and the Soviet Union.
Ironically, this game is known for its trouble development, as tensions were raised in real life between Raven Software and the original lead studio, Sledgehammer Games. This original game was not supposed to be a Black Ops game, but Activision intervened to rescue this annual release. It was received well but isn’t particularly noteworthy in the series itself.
It is strange that any Call of Duty game is appearing here at all, given the ongoing legal activity ongoing between Call of Duty publisher Activision and their pending merger/acquisition by Microsoft. Sony’s marketing deal with Activision and Call of Duty is still in force as of right now, so they may not have expected any issues with getting this approved.
Alan Wake Remastered was the first time that the Alan Wake franchise came to the PlayStation platform, for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5, in 2021. Remedy chose to make this a remaster instead of a full remake, so that it would retain its original gameplay from the 2010 release. Of course, Alan Wake was originally published by Microsoft themselves in 2010, and this release became possible after developer Remedy Entertainment bought the rights to the franchise back.
Lastly, Endling – Extinction is Forever is one of many modern era beautiful 2D games, made by a smaller studio and developed independently. You play a mother fox who is trying to get back a stolen cub, at a time where it looks like the world is going to end. Fitting its genre, it has a small but compelling story, difficult game design (in this case with survival and sim elements), and a gorgeous aesthetic.
All these games will be available for PlayStation Plus subscribers on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.