The next Call of Duty game in development by Treyarch is set to be released on November 9^th, 2010. Black Ops’ setting takes place during the Cold War, in various places including Viet Nam. As you may have guessed in the title, you will be performing, well, Black Ops; that is to say operations that are taking place behind enemy lines. Note that this game is considered to be a sequel to World at War (WaW), but when Treyarch made a comparison, they liken the games to be as different as Call of Duty 4 was from Call of Duty 2.

Please note that this is NOT all about Viet Nam, as some previously thought. It is set in the Cold War, from about 1960 to the present day.

The first important things to note are that the multiplayer component will improve upon the normal Create-a-Class. What Treyarch calls “Creat-a-Class 2.0” will let you edit your character’s appearance as well as his equipment, weapons, and perks. It will also, like WaW, have a four player cooperative campaign; no official word has yet confirmed the inclusion of the popular “zombies” variant. Shotguns and machine-pistols will not be available as secondary weapons, and although customizable killstreaks will return, there will be no game-winning killstreaks such as the Tactical Nuke included in MW2. It has also been confirmed that vehicles will see a return in Black Ops multiplayer, but in a different role from those that appeared in WaW.

On the campaign side, things seem to be moving in a bit of a different direction. Black Ops will be more story-oriented than most of its predecessors and it will require more use of stealthy gameplay than other Call of Duty titles. Some of these things point to a much “grittier” game than MW2. A few campaign missions have already been discovered:

-WMD – set in 1968 in the Ural Mountains, all that is known is that it will involve a helicopter, and a new weapon: the crossbow that we have seen from the trailer.

-Payback – set in an unknown time and location, “Payback” will have you piloting a helicopter.

-Victor Charlie – possibly the mission immediately following “Payback”, this mission will have you swimming up the Huong River (located in Hue, Viet Nam) from a crashed helicopter with only your knife as a weapon.

Despite the mystery that always surrounds a new game, I will end this article with a list of some of the new weapons that you will be able to use in Black Ops. Just to note, there will also be at least two types of specialty ammunition: explosive bolts for the crossbow, and Dragon’s Breath rounds (flamethrower) for your shotgun.

Here are some confirmed weapons: AK47, the Commando Assault Rifle, the AUG (Assault Rifle Variant), the G11 (this was just a prototype weapon in reality), a MP5k prototype, Mac-10, RPK, Crossbow, the SPAS (semi-automatic version), the 1911 pistol, .357 magnum, M202 grenade launcher, RPG-7, a pump-action grenade launcher, and the flamethrower.

I suggest you reserve your copy, because I’ll be playing it come midnight on the release date. ;)