The exoskeleton is out of the bag folks, Activision has finally shown off the eagerly awaited multiplayer for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. It’s time to take a look at the five most exciting things unveiled by today’s live stream. As ever, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the new-look multiplayer too.

The Exo suit is totally involved

Forget about those fears that all the cool exo abilities were going to be limited to set pieces in the single-player, the multiplayer looks set to be given a huge boost thanks to the new skills on offer. Hardly a sluggish FPS to begin with, the speed of the game will be hurtling forwards with sharper reactions set to play a critical role in staying on top. All movements are now able to have additional boosts. So being able to side-strafe or air-dash in any direction will give you an unprecedented level of movement compared to past entries in the series. There’s a lot to learn yet about the new perks, but one entitled Gung Ho allows you to sprint and shoot. This is going to be insane.

Verticality

A big buzzword throughout the presentation, but it’s an immediately justifiable one as you and your opponents will be spending large amounts of time in the air thanks to the boost jump and air-dash abilities than can even be further augmented with hover augmentations. Let’s not pretend Advanced Warfare will be the first game to enjoy a bit of mid-air action, with Titanfall and the recent Destinybeta still fresh in our enemies, but Sledgehammer certainly aren’t going to be left behind in the growing trend. Hell, with this much control, they may be flying higher than the competition.

Tsunami!

Emergent events are set to play a larger role than before. We’ve had more skyscrapers and satellite dishes land on us than we care to remember in Battlefield, but in the latest COD it looks like we can expect a more natural flavour of disaster with huge a huge Tsunami tearing up the beach while you’re gawking at San Fran’s Golden Gate Bridge. The choice is yours, do you outrun it, boost jump over it or climb to higher ground? You better think fast. Fingers crossed there are plenty more devastating set-pieces in the final game. Battlefield set a high bar here, but it’s not like COD to wimp out on the wow factor after all.

Uplink mode

NEW MODE ALERT! Think capture the flag, but with a ball that you can pass between team-mates or launch at enemies for a powerful strike. The drone-ball must be taken to a scoring zone and either thrown through a hoop or carried for varying amounts of points. Definitely an early contender for viewings from e-sport fans and one us lot at Dealspwn will be keen to try as it reminds us an awful lot of Supraball. But with all the guns.

Virtual Firing Range

It’s the sort of thing we should have had years ago to be honest, but as long as it loads quickly, we think it’s going to be an essential addition to the series. From the loadout screen or inbetween matches you will be able to test out weapons, gear, attachments and perks in a VR firing range. There’s nothing worse than equipping some new items only to find out they’re utter pants or a poor match for your playing style once you’re already in a competitive match.