Video game 'trailers'

I've just seen a trailer for Call of Duty 5.

It's designed with some skill, and it looks like a film trailer. But really, what does it tell me about the game?

There is such a think as Call of Duty 5.
The graphics are kind of good, I suppose.
It's set in World War II at least partly in the Pacific theatre.
One of the weapons is a flamethrower.

That's pretty much it.

Although a video game can profitably make use of cinematic devides, a video game is fundamentally unlike a movie. A movie is essentially a series of images and sounds, so giving me a sample of those images and sounds is a fair taster of what the game will be like. A game is interactive. A non-interactive trailer will never be a fair taster of the final game in the way a trailer is for a movie.

Basically, the videogame equivalent of a movie trailer is the playable demo.

As well as not being interactive, the Call of Duty 5 trailer doesn't even give me any idea what the interactivity will be like. A guy in the trailer throws a flare into the air. Will I have a flare-throwing ability in the game, or is it something NPCs do in scripted events? There were aeroplanes blowing up: will I be able to shoot down planes wherever, or will they only go down when the plot calls for it? About the only thing it showcases is the game's graphics engine, and even that's assuming they used the same graphics engine as is in the game to render their little machinima war movie they call a trailer.

If you can't give me interactivity, at least show me what the interactivity will look like. Mirror's Edge is about as far from release as COD5 (both slated for later this year) and that has official in-game footage out by now.