“Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Wall Street” are both often held as classic pieces of cinema for their time. What happens though when you take the beloved stages for those stories, throw in a bunch of Russian invaders with guns and get Michael Bay on board to direct a John Milius screenplay based there? You get Modern Warfare 3, that’s for sure, and Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer’s sequel is looking to pull no punches this coming November. They lost their “biggest entertainment launch ever” crown to Black Ops last year and they want it back. It doesn’t get any more straightforward than that.

I know what you’re thinking, “Yes, we’ve seen the foreign occupation of America before in Homefront,” but in Modern Warfare 3, the foreign occupation is everywhere... even France! At a recent unveiling in London, IW’s Robert Bowling and Sledgehammer’s Glenn Schofield took to the stage to show off two different levels of the sequel to the 2009 smash hit. Although we got to get a glimpse at London and New York – and we know we’re heading to France and Germany too – Bowling also revealed that we can expect to head to Russia, Africa and the Himalayas as well. Get those passports at the ready.

Picking up directly after the events of Modern Warfare 2, we join Sandman and his Delta Team as they head into the foreign occupied New York city – specifically Wall Street – in a mission called, “Black Tuesday.” It’s your typical combat-orientated Call of Duty mission, with explosions, reams of soldiers to plough through and decimation around every corner. How it differs though is quite easily its setting. Crysis 2 may have done a fine job of destroying New York in its epic sci-fi campaign, but there’s something more terrifying about watching buildings tumble and debris drop from the surrounding iconic locations from the perspective of a normal crew of soldiers. Even rolling through various unknown buildings that’ve seen better days with collapsed floors and downed choppers encased in them is a pleasure.

Moving down toward the New York Stock Exchange, it’s clear that Infinity Ward have put extra care into carving out these traditional Call of Duty moments in more familiar settings – you know, not some random cave or field in Outer Mongolia. In the first 10 minutes alone, we see the Delta squad fight its way toward the Stock Exchange, engaging in intense close quarters combat inside Tiffany’s, rallying the support of a convoy of APCs outside a Western National Bank which we assume is on Broad Street, brushing shoulders with the exterior of the Crown Building and then fighting at the base of the huge US flag of the mission’s final destination: the Stock Exchange building. It’s iconic stuff.

Granted, I might not have much of a knowledge of guns these days – the judge told me to drop that fascination after that incident with an air-rifle and the anus of my next door neighbour’s cat – but it looked like Infinity Ward were not only flicking scopes on the fly depending on the range of their target, but they’d also included a few new weapons – one acting like a grenade launcher of sorts with huge explosions, even bigger splash damage and high-velocity projectiles that rarely show any signs of slowing down or dipping below their original trajectory. Other than that though, it was the usual array of red-dot scoped assault rifles that took on the majority of the action. A quick refill of ammo in the lobby of the Stock Exchange and our fearless crew were fighting amongst the ticker machines and screens of the main floor of the Stock Exchange. Infinity Ward may have had many familiar locations like this before – like in COD4 for instance – but none quite as iconic as the NYSE.

From there the battle took to the Stock Exchange roof, with the Delta squad tasked with taking down a satellite mast that’s acting as a jammer for the occupying forces. In typical Call of Duty style though, the squad are asked to clear the area for a friendly chopper, enlisting the help of a Reaper Drone to blast the legions of enemy soldiers on various other rooftops to smithereens – presented in thermal vision and takes the form of user controlled missiles. After using the Reaper Drone to take down an enemy bird that comes on the scene, we find our main man jumping into a friendly Blackhawk to take position at a gun emplacement to mow down enemy soldiers and enemy choppers that appear on the scene. With Hinds coming in left, right and centre, each of them plucked out the sky with relative ease, we’re left watching the Blackhawk dance around a newly constructed building skeleton with an enemy bird in its sights before taking in the huge explosion that comes as a result of the steady aim of the man on the chain gun. The first stage of the demo ends with a chopper collision that sees the Delta squad’s pilot nearly dice with death, before pulling out of a potentially sticky situation and fleeing to safety.

The next mission, “Mind the Gap,” is one of Call of Duty’s traditional covert ops missions… well, at least it starts out that way! So from New York in the day, a city smoldering at the hands of the Russians, we head to the docks in Canary Wharf, London, under he cover of night, sneaking through back alley after back alley, silently disposing of any guard who happens to be unlucky enough to cross their path. From a Brit’s standpoint, I have to say that London didn’t have the same unique feel to it like New York did and if it wasn’t for One Canada Square’s iconic glowing peak in the skyline, you’d be hard pressed to pinpoint where in the world it was, yet alone the UK. We assume that’ll change as we get into more iconic locations, but if there’s one thing that the London and New York level showed us, it’s that although Modern Warfare 3 isn’t a huge graphical step up over its predecessor, it does boast some much improved textures.

A familiarly voiced solider, which sounded suspiciously like Gaz, accompanies the soldiers as all hell breaks loose and the team blow their cover by diving out a series of second floor windows. If that hadn’t have blown their cover, the assisting attack chopper surely would have, and the teams look to take down and search a series of trucks that were holed up in the dock area. It’s your traditional high-intensity, fast-paced shooter action from here on out as hostiles flood the area with the odd-scripted moment of chaos thrown in for good measure – like an explosion taking out a stack of pipes on the far hand side. After searching one of the trucks the hostiles begin to flee and the covert ops team are tasked with chasing down their targets into a nearby Tube station.

The majority of the London sequence, ironically enough, took place underground in the Tube tunnels – or subway tunnels to any non-Londoner. It’s another trademark Call of Duty cinematic set-piece that sees the covert ops squad throw two fingers up at being stealthy and chase down a train in a couple of jeeps. It’s an on-rails section that has more cheap thrills and explosions than a U2 concert and ends with the typical “Uh oh” moment – something that’s best experienced and not spoiled by these here words. You can expect everything though, from close calls and racing through a crowded Tube station, to drama and lots of loud noises and explosions. It won’t disappoint.

More of the same and then some seems to be Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer’s approach with the sequel then, but this time with a more urban warfare edge to it than ever before. So that’s more explosions, more soldiers to plough down than ever before, more crazy set-pieces, more action, more iconic locations and possibly more importantly, more helicopters than you could possibly imagine. Watch out, it’s like a helicopter graveyard out there! They were everywhere!

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 is scheduled for a November 8th release.