With fall looming closer every day, soon it will be easy to tell the signs of the season: the changing of the leaves, the cooling of the weather and the announcement of another installment in the Call of Duty video game franchise.

Treyarch studios, developer for “Call of Duty: World at War,” the fifth release in the widely-popular first-person-shooter franchise, is looking to thrust players back into the throngs of WWII, this time reprising the great war in the pacific theater. Previously, all games set in the period focused primarily on efforts made on the European battlefield.

“With ‘Call of Duty: World at War,’ we’re re-defining what it means to play a WWII game,” said Mark Lamia, studio head for Treyarch in an Activision press release. “We’re excited to give players a host of new enemies that employ entirely new tactics, as well as new, groundbreaking tools.”

Lamia continued in the press release by stating that some exciting highlights of the game would be the addition of a cooperative play mode where players would be able to play through the campaign storyline together, a first for the series. In addition, players will also be able to team-up online with up to four people on a single console. Previous installments sporting online play had limited players to single-player gaming.

Following in the footsteps of last year’s smash hit “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare,” created by the minds at Infinityward, the Treyarch team, which has only produced two games in the Call of Duty series, is looking to borrow a thing or two from the 2007 game of the year. More specifically, the graphics engine which made it stand out from the pack.

“Modern Warfare” ran on a graphics engine tailor-made for the game, built from the ground up by Infinityward developers to portray true world-dynamic lighting and shadows, depth of field and bullet penetration, just to name a few of the complex variables which went in to creating the most popular Call of Duty title to date.

Other aspects for fans to look forward to include a system which will dynamically scale gameplay difficulty based on the players ability, which Activision and Treyarch both hope will lead to more depth and challenge in the average playing experience.

Online gaming forums have been buzzing about the game since it’s announcement in early June, and while there are those lamenting yet another traipse onto the war-torn battlefields of WWII, the general tone is one of excitement at how the graphics rendering from “Modern Warfare” could apply to the pacific theater. “Call of Duty: World at War” is set to release titles for Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii and PC near the end of 2008.