As Activision's reveal of the different facets of Call of Duty: World at War continues, we can talk about a couple of new missions in the game. These missions vary from the typical Call of Duty level. The latter usually involves lots of guys running around the screen, deafening gunfire and explosions, and the sense of chaos everywhere. These new missions change the style and pace of the game quite a bit.

The first new mission takes place with you as a crew member on a PBY Catalina flying boat that stumbles upon a Japanese convoy in the Pacific. (If you haven't heard yet, World at War is set during World War II.) The Catalina is a fairly large plane, but for some reason this one is a bit understaffed, so your job is to run between various gun positions on the plane to basically shred the Japanese vessels below. There are various .50 caliber machine gun blisters along the fuselage, as well as a powerful twin .50 caliber turret up near the nose. The pilots will tell you which gun to man, and you've got to maneuver through the plane quickly to get to it and start firing.

It might seem that a machine gun against steel vessels wouldn't do much damage, but the Japanese ships are fairly thin-skinned, plus they are loaded with plenty of ordnance and stuff that does blow up. The Catalina does slow passes over the convoy, so this missions is mainly about the joy of sheer destruction. It doesn't seem too challenging compared to the brutal close-range jungle firefights seen in other levels, but it may well provide some visceral satisfaction after slogging through ground combat.

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It would be easy to assume that the Catalina mission is based strictly off of the AC-130 Gunship mission from Call of Duty IV: Modern Warfare, a level that was both haunting and memorable for its similarity to real-world gun camera footage. However, that would be doing a bit of a disservice. Four years ago Treyarch developed Call of Duty: United Offensive, the expansion pack to the original Call of Duty on the PC, and it featured a level where you manned various machine guns on a US bomber over Germany.

The war with the Japanese isn't the only front being fought in World at War. Treyarch took the curtain off of the European campaign for the first time to showcase the Russian front. At the point of the war depicted in this Call of Duty game, the Germans were slowly retreating out of Russia. The Red Army, enraged by the atrocities their people had faced, was pushing back with a vengeance. You take the role of the Russians.

The first level of this campaign shown opens with a smoke filled sky. A decimated platoon lies dying on the ground, crows picking at the bodies of some who have already passed on. It is not a happy place to be. A sniper asks your character to follow him and to stay out of sight, but he's injured so it's up to the player to do any shooting.

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Staying low, the two spot some German soldiers. Using the bombers flying overhead as sound cover, the player started taking out the Nazis milling about. It only goes well for so long, though, as the two sniper move into some dilapidated buildings. Soon the cover is blown. At this point, all hell breaks loose. Explosions, gunfire and buildings collapsing under the raging fires of war filled the screen while the two sprinted through the buildings, trying to keep a wall a between them and the Germans. Just as the chaos peaked, Treyarch chose to end the demo.

We'll see what Activision has to show off for World at War at E3 next week, but the one thing that's clear is that with World at War Treyarch is striving to offer a mix of gameplay experiences. The question as to how successful this mix will be should be provided later this year, when World at War is expected to ship.