For months now, we've been drooling over Infinity Ward's modern reboot of the Call of Duty franchise, taking it from the well-trodden, war-torn battlefields of Western Europe circa 1943 and replacing them with something a little bit more... well, when was the last time you saw Allied forces wearing night vision goggles?

It's not just night vision goggles; given the more modern setting, it's no surprise that we're seeing stuff like laser-guided rocket launchers (there really is nothing like seeing a rocket go screaming up into the clouds onto to come straight down seconds later right into the roof of an incoming tank up on an overpass off in the distance), underslung grenade launchers and the trusty MP5 submachine gun. Of course, if you've been keeping up with impressions of the game to this point, you've probably already heard about the first single-player level Infinity Ward showed off around E3 time, The Bog.

For those that aren't quite familiar with the mission, it essentially tasks the 1st Force Recon US Marines unit that will make up half of the game's single-player component (the other is the British 22nd SAS Regiment) with protecting an allied tank and destroying a few enemy ones. The two forces are actually working toward the same goal against the same enemy, though much of the storyline is being kept under wraps. The Bog, however, was familiar territory. What wasn't was actually the first single-player mission we got our hands on.

Call of Duty 4 is an almost unbelievably pretty game; from lighting to textures to the absolutely stunning, butter-smooth framerate even in the most insane firefights, the game quite frankly single-handedly bucks the trend of PS3 games dragging behind other platforms. Infinity Ward has developed an absolutely stunning engine, and when the game rolls into the first real mission, choppers coming in hard and fast on a dimly lit tanker out in the open sea. Frankly, the developers were just showing off. Lighting lanced across the sky, rain beat down mercilessly and as we made our way across the rain-slicked deck and into the hold we were treated to a basic tutorial explaining the controls for taking cover, firing, reloading... y'know, the usual stuff.

It wasn't until we'd secured our objective that all hell broke loose, however. The ship's hull was breached, sending water pouring in and forcing a quick about face and dash to get back to the choppers for an extraction. Again, Infinity Ward's engine continually impressed us with how damn smooth it was. It's amazing how 60 frames a second with solid lighting and great animation just makes a game feel... well, it feels truly, properly next-gen, and there are people out there that will probably end up buying the game just for looks.

Ah, but she's pretty and deep, and until now, we hadn't had the opportunity to actually sit down and see how the game's multiplayer was stacking up. It was, in a word, blissful. Chaotic, messy, dirty and frantic, sure, but blissful all the same -- mainly because that same silky framerate was firmly in place. We played through the same three maps that were revealed to all the lucky 360 owners that got in on the multiplayer beta, featuring a bombed-out Middle-Eastern city and a slightly more rural Eastern European village as well as a dilapidated office park.

All three maps had been updated based on data culled during the 360 multiplayer demo, so some buildings had very slight tweaks, while some materials were swapped out, removing some areas of protection and creating more pockets of conflict to keep the game balanced. What this meant was that there were almost always multiple points where fights could break out, so finding safe spots to camp were few and far between. We also managed to take a look at a new map that featured a bombed-out semi-symmetrical village riddled with rooftop sniping points that played perfectly against the game of Domination (think capture and hold) that we ran through.

Any first-person shooter these days comes with a multiplayer mode by default, as well they should, but it's in what Call of Duty 4 is doing with the progression system that makes it all so damned interesting. Kills are notched not just as numbers, but as experience points, allowing you to literally level up, and as you gain levels, you're awarded perks, which we talked about in our last preview. Perks allow you to do more damage, start with more health and so on, and with more creative perks like Martyrdom (you pull the pin on a grenade as you die to blow anyone nearby to kingdom come) and Last Stand (you switch to a pistol to get a few more seconds of life to take down the guy who did you in), the mix-and-match aspects are nuts.

We also got a taste for the game's rewards system for completing stings of kills. Air strikes, helicopters, an enemy revealing radar pulse and so on are notched as you rack up consecutive kills, and once you bank a reward, it stays with you even if you die, allowing you to pull out a much-needed little bonus during crucial last-minute rallies. It sounds like a simple thing, but there's nothing more rewarding than gunning down a bunch of dudes -- nothing except getting a little useable perk for doing it in addition to those bragging rights (not to mention extra experience).

The few hours we had with the game (we also played through the 360 and PC versions for comparison and they are quite literally identical in terms of visuals and gameplay) were enough to seriously hook us. The only plus was that the multiplayer beta was actually finished or we would have actually fallen victim to the game's absolutely evil online matches and ludicrous level of polish. November 5th can't get here soon enough.