First Modern Warfare 2 footage airs, full reveal coming May 24

The first trailer for Modern Warfare 2 made a point of not showing any footage from the game. Instead, it relied on sound cues to drop hints of an attack by Russian-speaking terrorists on an airport where English was spoken. In fact, other than the game's existence, the only major revelation in the trailer was that the Infinity Ward-developed game had split off from the Call of Duty franchise--which Treyarch is reportedly taking into the Cold War era.

Luckily, this weekend offered gamers watching the NBA playoffs a chance to see Modern Warfare 2 in action for the first time. A 15-second spot--now viewable on YouTube--confirmed that the sequel would have a US/UK-vs.-Russian scenario similar to that of the 13-million-unit best-seller Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The clip begins with several Hughes MH-6 Little Bird helicopters dropping off a US Special Forces unit onto an air base in a frozen landscape. That landscape is apparently Russian, given that subsequent clips show a MIG-29 fighter-bomber exploding amid what appear to be soldiers in former Soviet bloc uniforms.

The trailer then goes on to show some new scenarios not playable in Call of Duty 4. Shots reveal an underwater mission with several commandos decked out in scuba gear and a snowmobile chase ending in a spectacular crash. The clip ends with a night-vision shot from what appears to be a guided bomb closing in on a solitary figure, closing with the announcement, "world premiere May 24 [during the] Eastern Conference Finals [on TNT]."