First Looks// Modern Warfare 3

You also get to grips with a cool weapon named the Reaper, which reminds me of a satellite version of the Slayer in Perfect Dark. Activating it gives you a bird’s eye view of enemies from the sky, and shooting off rockets will make the camera follow the trail as you attempt to hit them smack on the head. Then lots of ‘boom’ occurs.

I was also treated to a demonstration of a second level, set in London appropriately enough. Named “Mind the Gap,” your mission here involves gathering intelligence on a weapons cache being escorted from the docks in Canary Wharf. Against the night sky, with recognisable landmarks like the London Eye on the horizon, you have to covertly take out the enemies within the warehouse and investigate the trucks that are coming and going from the compound.

In one segment, you sneak into the upper floor of a warehouse and watch your sniper’s sight focus on a group of bad guys, clearing the way for you and your squad to smash through the windows and launch a surprise attack. After opening the truck to find no weapons inside, the enemy ambushes you and all hell breaks loose.

It’s remarkable the amount of Hollywood-style action scenes that Infinity Ward can still manage to dream up for a Modern Warfare title. In the scenes that I saw, the gameplay seemed to be very similar to past games in the series - linear pathways, with an opportunity every now and then to stop and shoot some dudes - but Call of Duty has always been about the spectacle of warfare and the sheer ‘wow’ factor that comes from its set pieces.

And Modern Warfare 3 really doesn’t disappoint in this area, evident in the final sequence of the Canary Wharf level where you chase a group of terrorists on the London Underground. Following a hijacked train in a jeep of all things, you hurriedly try to take out the enemies within the Tube carriages while your driver weaves in and out of alternating lanes, barely missing oncoming trains.

Scaring the hell out of commuters on station platforms as you rush past, the segment ends with you capping the driver and seeing the whole train flip off the tracks and take out the concrete underground supports. Debris, smoke and all sorts of train wreckage comes flying at you, before your keep does a barrel roll of its own and your character blacks out.

A tonne of hi-octane action and brilliantly-scripted interactive war scenes will keep all eyeballs on Modern Warfare 3 right up until its release this November. And if those two levels were a mere teaser, you can bet your bottom dollar that there’s even more explosive and exciting things yet to come.