Kevin Spacey stars in debut trailer for Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare

The clock on the Call Of Duty site might still be counting down towards some sort of reveal this Sunday, but Activision has already begun the promotional blitzkrieg for the next game in the series with the release of the first trailer for Call Of Duty: Advanced Warfare. As you're about to see, it leans heavily on the presence of an uncannily-accurate looking Kevin Spacey to sell the slightly futuristic dream.

The House of Cards star joins the likes of Snoop Dogg, Full Metal Jacket's R. Lee Ermey , and, erm, Michael Myers , as celebrity talent on Call Of Duty. Though it's fair to say his endorsement was probably more expensive than the others put together. (Myers will basically work for free so long as you're not too attached to the local teenagers.)

Advanced Warfare is due out on 4 November, and is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, the studio formed by Glen Schofield and Michael Condrey, both of whom had previously worked on the Dead Space series for EA at Visceral Games. As the Advanced Warfighter moniker suggests, the trailer is full of sci-fi twists on the well-trodden COD formula, with the soldiers equipped with some sort of power armour that enables them to leap around like heavily-armed fleas. Plus there are robo tanks using stealth, hover bikes, swanky HUDs, and, inevitably, more drones. Always with the drones.

According to the boilerplate message at the start, the footage was captured on Xbox One. Although no further mention is made of formats, unless Activision has lost its mind and is allowing Sledgehammer to take the same depressing approach that Bungie is to Destiny , then we can safely expect a PC version at the same time. It's also worth noting that the old-gen console versions of this year's Call Of Duty are rumoured as being handled by a different team, which hopefully means another game entirely, so the Sledgehammer title won't be hamstrung by the compromises of cross-gen development.

As for the story, it essentially seems to be something, something, democracy, something, private military company, something, foreigners, KABOOM! We should find out more this Sunday, but for now has the presence of Spacey and the promise of a proper update (graphically, at least) to the series got you excited about the next COD? Let us know below.

Tim Clark

With over two decades covering videogames, Tim has been there from the beginning. In his case, that meant playing Elite in 'co-op' on a BBC Micro (one player uses the movement keys, the other shoots) until his parents finally caved and bought an Amstrad CPC 6128. These days, when not steering the good ship PC Gamer, Tim spends his time complaining that all Priest mains in Hearthstone are degenerates and raiding in Destiny 2. He's almost certainly doing one of these right now.