After last year’s Call of Duty: World at War from Treyarch, developer Infinity Ward returns to the helm for this year’s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Activision has incredibly high hopes for the new game, saying it wants Modern Warfare 2 to be the most successful launch ever.

This will be no mean feat given that the original Call of Duty: Modern Warfare sold 12 million copies. In addition the cost of the game has been increased to a “premium”, so the aim is to sell more copies at a higher cost.

The good news for gamers in this is that it shows Activision believes it has a very good game on its hands in Modern Warfare 2. As before the game will offer a combination of single player campaign and, the killer feature from the original Modern Warfare, multiplayer.

Multiplayer footage released by Infinity Ward has shown the new chain bonus, and provided evidence as to the quality of the new graphics in Modern Warfare 2. Everything looks more polished, although there remain some doubters about quality.

There’s more detail, more destructive effects for environment, smoother animation and lots of bullets. So far, Modern Warfare 2 looks very much like the original with the volume turned up. The only downside on visual so far is that the console version won’t render at HD resolution, but at the same 1024×600 that the original Modern Warfare ran at.

There’s little information on the single player campaign yet, but it is known that missions will be spread across different locations from Afghanistan deserts to Russian snowy mountains, and that once again the mission gameplay will vary.

The aim with Modern Warfare 2 looks to have been to improve on every element of the original, so while features and ideas may look similar, everything you’ll find is better. Gamers are likely to find that promise a draw they can’t resist.

Modern Warfare 2 is due out 10th November 2009 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.