While taking a look at the upcoming installment to the Call of Duty series, I was taken by surprise. I wasn’t expecting much with Treyarch’s newest CoD offering, but as I watched, I found more and more to enjoy, perhaps even more than what was found in Modern Warfare 2 (which, let’s face it, had an ordinary single player element). The pacing, the action, and the new components all created something that’s dynamic, compelling and, most of all, fun.

Call of Duty: Black Ops takes place during the Cold War, with a story spanning from the late ‘60s to the mid ‘70s, and with that longer timespan, there’s a lot of potential for telling a great story. “The Cold War era hasn’t been covered a lot in other games, but there’s so many interesting stories from that time period,” explains Dan Bunting, senior producer at Treyarch. “There’s a storyline that spans multiple years and goes through the Vietnam war and a lot of other locales around the globe. You’ll be following different characters and their stories throughout the game. It’s focused on the special operations, the behind-enemy-lines type of operations, so it’s not your frontline battle type of Call of Duty.”

The first level on display was dubbed “WMD” and starts as a pilot enters an SR-71 Blackbird stealth jet and leads to a familiar scenario. During this sequence, you’ll act as an eye in the sky, scouting the area for the black ops ground forces deep behind enemy lines. It’s very reminiscent of the AC-130 level in Modern Warfare, but rather than providing supporting fire, you’ll be guiding the troops safely, letting them know where the enemy is and what the safest route is. But this won’t last long. As the enemy closes in on the location of the ground forces, the perspective switches to one of the hiding members of the black ops team. This is well behind the borders of the Soviet Union, providing a frigid and snowy backdrop to this stealth-oriented stage. Once the coast is clear, you’ll approach a cliff and rappel down until you reach an enemy stronghold. As soon as you’re in position, you’ll have to breach through a window, taking out all enemies in concert with your teammates quickly and quietly.

As the demo progressed, the troops approached a relay station that they had to disable, but as they did, we saw that this station was crawling with baddies, so some of them had to be felled from a distance and quietly. This is where we first saw a crossbow – one of the new weapons in CoD. It comes with a variable zoom scope, allowing you to get a closer view of the action, and more importantly, it comes with different ammunition types. In the demo, the player launched an explosive bolt at a gas, then switched back to normal bolts to silently take out a few enemy soldiers. Once the jig was up, the explosive bolt on the gas tank was detonated, taking out a few more enemies with it.

“One of the unique things about the black ops is that they take prototype weaponry into the field. They take weapons that are standard issue and they modify them to suit their own needs to get the mission done,” says Bunting. “That’s a big part of what black ops is. These guys go into these secret missions and they get carte blanche to do whatever they need to do to get the mission done and part of that is arming them up with whatever weaponry they need… A lot of the stuff they would do were homemade devices even and all sorts of crazy sh*t you don’t see in the standard military game.”

With the opposing forces out of the way, this radio relay was disabled, but not before an avalanche began coming down on top of the Player. With that, you have to frantically sprint to safety, but what’s considered “safe” isn’t entirely clear until the very last moment. As you run away from certain doom, you reach a cliff with, seemingly, nowhere to go. Luckily, you went into this mission with a parachute strapped to your back, so you must base jump off the cliff and into safety. With all the range of action and objectives in this one level, it provided something that much more appealing, and that’s exactly what Treyarch is after.

“The SR-71 represents the breakthrough of technology of that era. This is a big boom of technology that happened at that time and the Blackbird is just a shining example of that,” explains Bunting. “We wanted to get that into the level and have the player experience something new as an intro to the level, but then you get right into the action. You’ll see that there’s a deliberate pacing to the level. You’ll start with that kind of more strategic kind of element and then you go into more of a stealthy element and then you go into the full on battle, then you’ll go into the classic Call of Duty cinematic moment where an avalanche is coming down on you and you’ve got to escape and jump off a cliff where you’re just going ‘oh my God. Sh*t’s going crazy.’  It’s just one more example of variety.”

The second level unveiled was dubbed “Slaughterhouse,” providing a stark contrast to the more deliberate “WMD” stage. Here, you’re being choppered into a warzone deep inside Vietnam. As you’re rappelling into your LZ, your chopper is hit and spinning out of control as you dangle helplessly from your rope. As the helo is going down, you’re flung through a window, but as soon as you gain your bearings, you’ll find that this building is swarming with enemies, and the entire screen erupts in a chaotic firefight. With the building in shambles, ablaze, and swarming with heavily armed hostiles, you need to get moving and out in the open. Once you’re outside, you’ll see a whole new nightmare. Enemy tanks are prowling the streets. The skies are swarming with choppers. Buildings are on fire and ready to fall. After seeing all this, all I could say is “wow.”

“The pacing here is very different,” Bunting explains. “The level’s designed to make you feel like you’ve been dropped into hell. From the red lighting to all the fires and explosions going on around you, the level’s not designed for you to feel like there’s a lot of pacing. It’s designed to make you feel like it’s intense. You’ve got to f***ing keep on running the whole way through. WMD by contrast is a lot of pacing. It’s more about feeling like you’re in that stealthy moment and enjoying the environment around you and experiencing some non-standard, non-traditional gameplay moments throughout.” The fact that these missions aren’t frontline battles creates new possibilities, taking players into scenarios inspired by real world events that audiences may not even be aware of. The variety shown between the two levels is extremely appealing, giving a great look at what we can expect.