Ladies and gentleman, it's nearing time for the next Call of Duty to be released and this time around you're neither playing in the present nor in the distant past. You're somewhere in the middle this time, playing as a black ops member during the late 1960's during the Cold war.

Treyarch opened things up with the player entering a rocket and launching into space. From there in an almost RTS style fashion, the player was giving coordinates and moving a black ops team on the ground from space. Moments later the camera zoomed down from the space craft and the presenter took control of the team on the ground. The black ops team is in Russian occupied territory, tasked with taking out a satellite further on in the level. As the mission progressed new weapons were shown, such as a crossbow that was used to silently take out enemies. Further on when faced with more enemies, an alarm was sounded and although the demonstrator made it through alive, it was obvious it wasn't a cake walk. According to Treyarch, and as discussed with GamingExcellence's Liana K (watch for our E3 videos coming soon!) the Black Ops team went out of their way to make sure the enemy AI was realistic. This involved hiring former Spetsnaz to give insight and guidance on how your enemies would react in a real fire fight. This means you're no longer going to be able to get easy kills or headshots, it's going to be a bitch to fight through these Ruskies.

The mission concluded with the player grappling down the side of a complex and busting through a window, all the while taking out enemies and finally fighting his way across the mountain side structures towards the final goal. Once the objective was completed, a massive scripted avalanche occurred and the entire black ops team was forced to jump off the side of the high up mountain. The action was fast and tense and will likely delivery a familiar experience to fans of Modern Warfare as well as previous COD games.

The second level shown off took us from snowy mountain top to the jungles of Laos. We can assume yourself, or some of your men had been capture and held prisoner, because in this level it's clear you're back for revenge. After taking out some clueless foes from the cover of the jungle, the team made their way towards and took control of a helicopter. The presenter made it clear to us that this vehicle was not on rails, you had complete control of flight and weapons. The rest of this vehicular based mission titled 'Payback' concluded with flying along a river taking out various military bases and vehicles.

It seems like Black Ops is trying to keep the formula that made past games such a success while making improvements and introducing gameplay mechanics that will add some new types of excitement.

Call of Duty Black Ops is set to hit store shelves November 9, 2010 and will be available on the 360, PS3, PC and the Wii.