After patiently waiting all day to play it, I started up the PS3 to find I had to run an update. It was a relatively quick one though and I was surprised to find that the game also needed to update (15mb) before playing.

The graphics and setup are the game are fantastic and offers excellent new levels of game play. I have decided to break this review down into numerous parts as I had the intention of playing each mode of the game, but after starting the single player campaign mode I was so engrossed, I sat for about 3/4 hours without getting up!

Campaign Mode

I managed to complete about 5 missions and racked up 7% of the PS3 trophies. Each mission is played from a different characters’ perspective which ensures the game play stays fresh and avoids repetition. The first few missions draw you into the game with snowmobiles, climbing up icy rock faces, controlling a Gatling gun in the Humvee and defending yourself from dog attacks.

I need to play the game more to give a more in-depth review (that’s my excuse and I am sticking to it!) but will definitely be updating you all soon on the campaign mode, special ops and some of the other great features of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

One quick note, if you are planning on buying this as an Xmas gift, make sure it is suitable for whomever you are buying it for – The game contains extremely violent content (to the point where it has a warning and an option to remove some scenes from the game) an is definitely not suitable for children (hence the 18+ rating).

Please keep a lookout for Part 2 of the review…

However, I have now been given a flash-based project which looks pretty cool and from what I have understood it is going to push me out of my “comfort zone”.

For the project I will have to build a flash video player to stream .flv files from a server and also an clickable movieclip to link the view to another site/page.

All the elements in the flash project will be customizable including the .flv file (so different clips can be played) as will the positioning of the .flv and the positioning, colour and style of the moviclip button.

I really like the idea of creating re-usable work as eventually you end up with a library you can use to make your more productive in the future.

I will however have to brush up on Flash CS4 (which has changed alot since CS3) and also my AS3.

For anyone learning Adobe Flash, Lynda.com is a great tutorial site covering every aspect of coding, development, 2d and 3d design and lots more. Also the people over at FlashKit are great for help with AS3 and offer a whole bunch of tutorials, resources and help via their forum board.

The default layout is somewhat confusing and seems like they have changed it just because they could – but onced swapped back to the old default (tools on the left, timeline on the top, properties and actions at the bottom) things became a bit more familiar.

The new motion editor offers alot more than the classic tween from earlier versions but at the same time can be quite complex. The classic tween method can still be used which is something I imagine alot of people will use.

Along with the motion editor comes 3D motion, allowing you to twist, flip and rotate shapes as if they were 3D.
Another useful feature is Adobe’s Media Encoder which comes bundled with many of the Adobe packages. It allows you to convert various video formats into flv files so they can be used in flash.

As a whole, Flash CS4 feels alot more robust than previous versions and is definitely worth upgrading.

Get Flash CS4 Now

Photoshop CS4 extended , Illustrator CS4 and my Wacom are the most important things for me to be able to do my job and I was hoping there would be some great upgrades from CS3.

I have only had a few days using the products but it is already clear to see what is good and what is bad.

Illustrator CS4 has a cool alignment tool which flashes up guides helping you line up to other objects on the page. It also highlights individual elements as you roll over them making it easy to see where everything is – this has been really useful for more accurate vector work.

Photoshop CS4 extended on the other hand has had some rather questionable upgrades.

In Photoshop CS4 extended,  the addition of OpenGL gives, according to adobe, the following benefits:

• Smooth Display at ALL Zoom Levels
• Animated Zoom Tool
• Animated Transitions when doing a One Stop Zoom
• Hand Toss Image
• Birdseye View
• Rotate Canvas
• Smooth Display of Non Square Pixel Images
• Pixel Grid
• Move Color Matching to the GPU
• Draw Brush Tip Editing Feedback via GPU
• 3D GPU features include:
  • 3D Acceleration
  • 3D Axis
  • 3D Lights Widget
  • Accelerated 3D Interaction via Direct To Screen

Now this sounds great and I thought I am running both a high end Macbook pro (2.5ghz dual core, 4GB FB 1066mhz RAM and Nvidia 9600M GT 512mb Graphics) and Mac pro workstation (2x 2.8ghz quad-core xeons, 6GB FB RAM, ATI Radeon HD Graphics) this should be great and then I realise… they don’t support OpenGL!

Now, considering that Apple machines are supposedly the best for design and Adobe’s Creative Suite are also in the top running in their field, do you not think they would get together to discuss things such as support of a major feature within the most successful and popular image editing and graphic design software applications.

It’s not the end of the world, but it has been a major nuisance as it took forever to work out why the cursor was displaying about 15 pixels above where the actual cursor position was – so every time I clicked, it would select something 15 pixels below what I wanted!

Design Premium CS4 has some nice features and Illustrator CS4 has been vastly improved. I am hoping that OpenGL support will eventually become available so I can use Phtoshop CS4 to its full potential.