Infinity Ward’s preceding Call Of Duty game was expert at putting you into morally compromised positions: its heroes performed assassinations, tortured terrorists for vital information and were not too worried when stray bullets punctured ‘expendable’ civilians. Though with World At War the series has shifted development studios and time periods, it makes similar promises to challenge your conscience.

Two campaigns form its central narrative – the sacking of Berlin by Russian forces, and the US campaign in the Pacific – and are both linked to the theme of revenge: the Russians’ compassionless assault on the German capital being a response to the decimation of their home country; the American involvement in the war being prompted by the attack on Pearl Harbour. In other words, you can expect many moments at which characters pause to muse on the brotherhood of humanity, before shrugging and popping someone with a bayonet.

In order to hammer home the necessary amorality of human conflict, Treyarch has enlisted Kiefer Sutherland to growl his way through the Pacific Theatre as Sgt Roebuck, while other territories get the same dubbing actors used to voice his character in 24. The sequence we’re presented with has Roebuck and his squad (one member controlled by another player) fight their way from a plane wreck in the jungle through a bunker complex and out on to open ground. The action is energising and varied: one moment Roebuck and co are repelling an ambush, the next they’re dousing entrenched enemies with flames, before finding themselves in the midst of a chaotic tank battle.

Can the game keep up such a pace? The signs are heartening: Treyarch is well aware of just what Modern Warfare has done for the shooter and, even as the series goes back in time, World At War hopes to keep the genre moving forward.