Michael Barnes is the man to thank for this incredible piece of Modern Warfare 2 machinima, which recreates the game's controversial "No Russian" mission in a manner fit for prime-time TV.

What you're seeing here is almost entirely in-game action from the PC version of the game. What Barnes has done is record it from different camera angles than the game's standard first-person perspective, then cut it together to look like a movie or TV show.

The results are a lot more exciting than the actual mission turned out to be.

WARNING: The clip below contains violent content, so don't go watching it at work.

In addition to some other stuff that didnt make it into multiplayer, it has now been revealed that a whole heap of gametypes and weapons didn't make the grade. So what do you think?

Infinity Ward may have tried to distance itself from the rumors about the Call of Duty franchise going down Subscription Lane™, but Activision head honcho Bobby Kotick said otherwise during the publishing giant's recent earnings call. "If you think about the success that we've had in other product categories on subscription, you can get a sense of the direction that we want to take that franchise," he said.

It's by no means a confirmation that you'll be Oscar Mike to the Inn before heading into the Den of Eternal Bunnyhoppers or whatever. But if there's anything Activision is good at, it's learning how to make more money from the massive amounts of money it's already made -- and subscription-based games generate the cash money on a monthly basis.

With Activision's holiday fiscal report expected to release this week, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter is predicting that the Call of Duty profit machine may not repeat its fantastic 2009 performance this year. As reported by IndustryGamers, Pachter believes the Call of Duty franchise will generate "sharply lower revenue," in 2010, to the tune of a $250 million decline. Not to worry, though, as he notes that Activision is likely to more than make up for that amount thanks to Blizzard's impending releases (hello, StarCraft II). Aside from that, of course, it's important to remember that we're talking about a $250 million decrease on almost a billion dollars, so it's not like Pachter expects Call of Duty to wind up in the toilet.

According to a "senior UK trade source" who allegedly spoke with CVG, the next Call of Duty game from Treyarch will be set in Vietnam and arrive at retailers this November. "It's going to be November again - just as with World At War and Modern Warfare 2," the source was quoted as saying. We heard as much back in May of last year, when Treyarch was said to be looking for "Vietnam War era tunes." Add to that the fact that Activision's Noah Heller explicitly said Treyarch would no longer be working on WWII-based Call of Duty games and you've got yourself a more reasonable sounding rumor. We've asked Activision for comment and will keep you updated as we hear more.

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It was an AWESOME 1st for Melbourne and indeed Australia. A MW2 LAN event to which all subsequent MW2 events must now live up to. 9 teams battled out a grueling 18 round round-robin playlist filled with a mixture of gametypes including Deathmatch, CTF, Domaination, Search and Destroy and Demolition. Consistent results saw Malice (44), Frenetic Array (40), Bitter Sweet (38) and The Unit (36) advance to a best of 3 round semi final. The Unit managed to knock out Malice with two game wins while Bitter Sweet took Frenetic Array to the third round after missing losing out on a deathmatch. Now fighting for 3rd place, Malice and Bitter Sweet went head to head with Malice taking home two convincing wins and 3rd place (not published). The final was set for Frenetic Array and The Unit which went down to round 3. Frenetic Array reigning victorious! Read more for full results and some pics. Video of the finals coming soon!

The GoSolid team are gearing up to kick off their long awaited and much anticipated Modern Warfare 2 LAN 'The Melbourne Moshpit LAN!' Aussie soldiers from around the country will be dispatched into the heart of Melbourne on January 31 to do battle and find out who is truly the best of the best. Long time LAN event organisers Roman and Smajser from GoSolid will be leading gamers into war and hope to continue the warfare with successive MW2 LAN events. "This will not only be Melbourne's first Modern Warfare 2 Xbox LAN, It will be Melbourne's first call of duty LAN period. This is the first time developers have given us the tools we need to run COD on LANs and although they still missed the mark we can work around the deficiencies and run an awesome first event" said GoSolid event organiser Roman, who is also a convert from the Halo franchise. Gamers will be combating in a lag-less, mod free environment which means there are no excuses. So if you get your butt whipped, you only have yourself to blame! At the time of writing this article there are 66 registered players and 9 confirmed teams ready to reign havoc. With the event capped at 12 teams there are only 3 teams spots remaining. So if you haven't got your team together you better hurry, registration for the event closes on Friday 29th of January.

For all event details and to register please click here
For all Melbourne MoshPit discussion and questions please click here

A patch for the PC version of Modern Warfare 2 is now available for download from Steam, which nips the negative XP and "running man" issues in the bud. PC gamers should find the game more or less back to normal, but there are still plenty of problems for console gamers, so we we contacted Infinity Ward's Robert "fourzerotwo" Bowling to find out about an update.

Bowling told us a console patch is "currently in test for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions." Unfortunately, he didn't have any word as to when the patch would go live for Xbox 360 and PS3 users. Hang in there soldiers!

CTA Digital, makers of Wii bowling balls, tennis rackets and pool cues, aren't content with cornering the market on bizarre Wii peripherals, they're bringing their line of unorthodox controllers to the Playstation 3 too.

While stalking the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center this week during the Consumer Electronics Show, past women in evening gowns playing snowboarding motion games and people getting Tased, I was stopped in my tracks by the sight of a man holding a full-sized plastic automatic rifle pointed at an LCD displaying Modern Warfare 2. (Read More for pics)