Call of Duty: World at War Preview

CoD is back, this time set in WW2 and with Treyarch at the helm.

Two Japanese soldiers approach the United States prisoner of war, strung up inside a dimly lit tent somewhere in the Pacific. He's seen better days. Blood seeps from horrible wounds. He is slumped, exhausted, physically broken from torture. But his spirit and his mind are intact, and his defiance in the face of the might of the Imperial Japanese army is as resolute as ever. He turns and looks at you, a fellow POW, and with what proves to be his last breath orders you to tell them nothing.

One of the Japanese soldiers takes a drag from his cigarette and stubs it out in the eye of your friend. The torturer then draws a katana and slits his throat, blood spraying everywhere. It's shocking, disgusting and utterly compelling.

Now it's your turn. He turns and approaches you, bends down and, with sword drawn.... schlick. He slumps to the floor, a knife in his back. At the last second you've been rescued by a US infiltration squad called Carlson's Raiders. Your binds are cut and you're given a weapon. Call of Duty: World at War is about to begin.

We're watching senior producer Noah Heller take us through the opening level of the Pacific campaign of World at War, the latest game in the hugely successful Call of Duty franchise and the follow up to the mind bogglingly brilliant Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. With an Xbox 360 controller in hand Noah shows us the fruits of developer Treyarch's work on the Modern Warfare game engine.

Expect the unexpected - enemies are everywhere.

To say all hell breaks loose would be an understatement of titanic proportions. Charges blow and explosions light the night sky. Soldiers run about like headless chickens as fire envelops them. Bamboo huts gradually crumble as they burn. Moonbeams seep through holes in destructible environments. It's spectacular to watch. Could World at War be just as intense an experience to play as its predecessor?

With the rescue squad by your side we move into the jungle. Things quieten down here as visibility is reduced. Your squad mates whisper to each other as they creep about, mindful of a Japanese ambush. Your goal is to meet up with the second squad who are waiting for extraction on a nearby beach. But, as you'd expect, things aren't that simple. As the beach head comes into view you discover that squad two is under fire. Japanese soldiers spring out of the ground, almost like magic. You're surrounded, being attacked from every direction. It's too dark to pick out the enemy properly, so flares are lit, showing off some more of the game's impressive lighting. But it's too much. You're going to die, surely. And that's where the demo ends.

Our expectations have well and truly been blown apart, and that's a good thing, because expectations for this title are sky high. Infinity Ward's Modern Warfare raised the FPS bar when it came out late last year. World at War developer Treyarch, who's last game was the divisive Call of Duty 3, knows this. It also knows that there is a degree of cynicism among hardcore gamers at the return to a WW2 setting, and indeed that it isn't Infinity Ward that is doing the game. And so, the pressure is on.

To relieve this pressure Treyarch could have taken the easy option - that is wrap Modern Warfare in a WW2 skin. What's ironic is that the developer tried this, and found it didn't work. "We built a beautiful Pacific environment and Japanese models and put in CoD AI and it didn't work out," says Noah. "The issue was in the Japanese tactics. They fight very differently. They will fight down to the last man."