In our view there’s no finer way to round off another tortuous week in the wonderful and frightening world that is the games biz than by poring over a bunch of new screenshots showing WWII soldiers blowing the living shine-ola out of one another. We love it!

There are a few cool-looking WWII games in the offing, but these screens come from the Xbox 360 iteration of Call of Duty 3, which is set to be one of the highlights of the next calendar quarter. Yeah, we said we wouldn’t use that ‘highlights’ bit again, but this really, really is going to be one of ‘em. Sorry.

We think you’ll agree that it’s looking especially topper - a bit dark, perhaps, but this is war not some jolly day at the seaside. We don’t imagine the PS3 version will look too much different either, but then you’ll have to wait another four months to find out and who’s got that kind of patience, eh?

If COD3 is anything like its predecessor it’s going to be a tremendously necessary purchase. That said Activision has been deluging us with postcards detailing such things as the game’s new close-quarters combat system and how the telescopic gun-sight brings the target into sharp focus and blurs the rest of the scenery out, and other such tantalising tidbits – so they obviously think it’s going to be even better. Dammit, they’d better be right too!

Call of Duty 3 is out November 10th for Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox. It’s also a Wii launch title, although there’s no actual date given for that. You PS3 hopefuls are going to have to wait until March 06 at the earliest for your share of the fun. Oh well...