I’ve often been asked which my favourite games were and I’ve always responded by saying that there are too many to list. But today I thought I might write down all the games which I thought were good and I was surprised to find that there were only few games that I genuinely enjoy playing and wouldnt mind playing again. I might have forgotten a few games so I’ll try and update this list whenever I feel the need to.

1. Half Life 2

Words cannot describe the sheer level of awesomeness of this game. Before I bought this game, I did read that it got many awards and such but never expected it to be so amazing. The entire gameplay experience is just perfect with a deep and involving storyline, superb graphics, the best AI enemies ever, characters who you start to relate with and the list goes on. I cant honestly point out a single flaw in the game, and if any game deserved a 10/10, it would be this one. The episodic content definitely improved the story and I cant wait till Episode 3 is released. It is probably a sin to say that I havent finished the original Half Life, simply because I cant stand its graphics after having witnessed the amazing graphics in Half Life 2 but hopefully, the BlackMesa mod should fix this.

2. Max Payne 2

Another legendary game by Rockstar. One of the first games to incorporate ragdoll models in games which resulted in very realistic models and shooting experience in the game. The story of the game is insanely good and when combined with the classic traits of Max Payne improved with better technology, it provides for what can only be called as a too awesome to be true gaming experience. Once again, everything was just so perfect in the game, the characters, the sounds, the presentation, the details in the maps, its just overwhelming. Max Payne 2 left everyone wanting more but I doubt a third one will be released anytime soon.

3. Grand Theft Auto III

Even though I’ve played GTA IV which has been touted to be one the best games in the history of videos games, I dont think it has the same charm as GTA III for some reason. I cant pinpoint the reason why I like GTA III so much, I just guess its the atmosphere and the feel of the game which I fell in love with. The characters of the game are some of my all time favourites and even though the protagonist couldnt speak, the game ensured that you felt like you were in the Liberty City yourself. The leap from the topdown GTA 2 to GTA III was immense and the level of change is probably something that the gaming world may never witness again. GTA III will definitely remain as one of the games had a huge influence on the world of 3D games.

Honorable Mention - Transport Tycoon Deluxe

I’ve probably spent about a year of my life just playing this game. I can still remember the days when I used to sit in my school computer lab when I was 7 years old and watch my teacher play the game. I eventually convinced him to teach me how to play it and after that, there was no looking back. My dad used to sit up nights with me while we played the game together, trying to maximize revenue while minimizing cost. Those days did disappear after awhile but I’ve had a renewed interest in this game over the last few months and have once again got addicted to it. You can download the game for free from here.

If anyone feels like this list needs any additions, please feel free to list your favourite games in the comments.

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Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had meetings for the various clubs and societies at University and I was duly elected President of the Gliding Club, President of the Photography Society and Vice President of the Politics Society for the next academic year. I’m quite thrilled by these posts which I have undertaken and I shall do my best to ensure that I help all the societies equally.

I successfully spent the International Shutdown Day without using the computer all the day. I had to take photos of sports for most of the day so it was bit easier to refrain from using the computer since I had something to keep myself occupied with. I did feel the urge to use it in the night after I’d finished all my work but I managed to keep myself under control. And I hadn’t really missed many happenings on the internet as I saw on the next day.

Thanks to a friend, I finally got the chance to play the most coveted game of the year, Grand Theft Auto IV. I played the game on a Xbox 360 but I didn’t really care which I console I played it on as long as I got to play it. My first impressions of the game was the highly improved graphics from the previous games and the physics. Enough cant be said about the new physics engine which is very realistic and gives a whole new feel to the game. We also played the Multiplayer for sometime which was great, we had a bit of a lag but otherwise had a new and exciting experience. I tried to do a mission and I almost completed it when I got killed at the very end. I just cant get used to the dual joystick use in consoles since I prefer PC gaming. Regardless, if you’re going to get only one game this year, make sure it is GTA IV. You can watch a very good 10 minute video review of the game here.

I’ve made some changes to my wishlist, I’ve now amended it to include items that I actually want as opposed to things that would simply be nice to own. Take a look at the updated Wishlist here.

After many months of thinking, I bought myself a Flickr PRO Account yesterday. It offers unlimited upload of photos along with several other incredible features at a very reasonable price of approximately $2 a month. I shall be embedding the Flickr Gallery into the site soon. You can take a look at my Flickr Stream here.

We’ve got exams from next Monday and honestly, I have hardly studied anything. I really hope I get things done soon.

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I went Gliding yesterday after more than a month. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to glide and had some very enjoyable flights yesterday. The weather has improved which made the whole experience more pleasurable and we had a great day out at the airfield.

GTA IV comes out in less than 2 days. I wasnt really anticipating the release of the game that much since I’m not as interested in games as I was 2 years ago when San Andreas came out. However, I did want to try out the game just once to see how it is and if there is enough improvement as has been publicised. And yesterday, I read IGN’s review of the game and they gave it a perfect score of 10 and called it ‘One of the best games ever’. I also watched the gameplay videos which are totally awesome. And some of my friends over at GTAGaming got invited for all expenses paid trip to New York by Rockstar Games to have a sneak preview of GTA IV, you can read about their exciting experience here. These events have reinstated my interest in the game and I look forward to release. You can see a countdown to the release of the game here.

I got a PC Sync Extension cable for my cameras flash so that I can fire both of my flash simultaneously indoors, I have taken some exciting photos with some new techniques and you can view some of these on my Flickr Stream and my 365 Day Project. I can also use my flash outdoors now, using the cable and I’ve been experimenting to get unique shots which can be seen in the links above.

I had an Economics Test a couple of days which went fairly well. My exams start on May 12th and ending on May 30th. I also got the result of my Politics Essay and I was quite happy with it as was my teacher.

In order to make my domain more ‘UK-friendly’, I have now redirected my previous derelict website and domain name - Cozmonite.com, to this site so that now anyone who visits that domain can click a link to visit this site which is my primary website.

And I have some big plans about the photo gallery which I shall try and implement soon so that it will be easier to view photos here.

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Went gliding yesterday, it was a beautiful day for gliding and the airfield was buzzing with activity. I got an opportunity to go in a motor glider, and I flew upto the university, and got some nice aerial views of the University Buildings. We flew for about 45 minutes but it felt like just a few minutes, time flies when your flying. Flying a motor glider is easier than flying a traditional glider. The motor glider literally flies itself, and doesn’t require constant attention.

I went to London today, and went to Madame Tussuad’s Wax Museum, which is simply amazing. I had only expected wax statutes, but there were more stuff there. The statues were very realistic, a few people we saw include Gandhi, Shah Rukh Khan, Robin Williams, Hitler, Vladimir Putin, and so on. This list is very very small compared to the total number of people we saw. There was a ride called ‘The Spirit of London’ which took you in mini London cabs and showed you about the history of London using visual elements of moving statues and well made sets. It was fun, informative and exciting. The final part of the museum was planetarium which showed you about ’stars’ in the context of movie stars, famous people, etc. It was a good one and a half hours.

We then went to Harrods which was quite enormous, along with the prices. Most of the stuff were boring to me but we did catch the occasional glimpse of exciting like a 70″ TV, original vintage posters of movies, great sound systems, and some fancy looking clothes. We didn’t go anywhere else, but felt that these two locations were good enough for a day.

I’ve been playing a lot of ‘Transport Tycoon Deluxe’ lately. Its a classic economic simulation game made in 1995. It may sound old but I still feel its better than newer simulation games. I can still remember the days when I used to spend half my waking hours playing this game late into the night, while my dad sat next to me giving advice on which move to make next. If you wish to play this game, you can download it from here and in order to make to run on Win XP/Vista, you will need to download a patch from here.

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I finished Half Life 2: Episode Two yesterday. Another epic game by Valve. The story was great, gameplay was great, visuals were excellent, sound was mindblowing, I have absolutely no complaints about this game except for the fact that it was too short. I really feel like playing more of Half Life, so I guess I’ll start playing Half Life 2 again or Episode One.

On a sadder note, Indonesia’s former dictator, General Suharto, passed away on Sunday January 27th, aged 86. This may not mean much to you, but it has a sublime effect on me, knowing that I lived in Indonesia during his reign. May his soul rest in peace.

Sometimes, I think that I should get rid of my spectacles and go for contact lens but then this image changed that impression. A reason for all us specs wearers to continue wearing them.

Ever wanted to know what it feels like to pilot the world’s largest commercial airliner? Now you can with this panoramic view of the cockpit of the Airbus A380.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of one of the most popular toys around the world, Lego. I cant tell you how much I used to play with this as a kid, it’s good to know that it survived for so many years and hope it will continue to do so for the following generations. Google also commemorated this event with a special logo.

And coming to the local news, a Bugatti Veyron was given a parking ticket in downtown Manchester and a crowd supposedly cheered while a parking warden wrote him the ticket.

In the Tech section, an insider source has revealed information that the 80GB PS3 model will be discontinued, paving way for a 120/160GB model, which will come along with Dualshock 3.

Another exciting yet not very useful tool for webmasters is this service which finds out other websites which are hosted on the same server as yours by performing a reverse IP domain check. I tried it myself and found out that discount-oriental-area-rugs.com, papayacoconut.com and meaningfuljewelry.com are hosted on the same server as mine. Give it a try yourself here.

Update : I’ve done some minor updates to the ‘About me‘ page and added new photos to the ‘Me‘ gallery, check them out here!

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Today is the 58th Republic Day, and we supposedly had French President Nicolas Sarkozy as our guest of honour in Delhi. So, anyways, Happy Republic Day to everyone. I played Portal all night yesterday along with the help of a couple of friends. It was a lot of fun and is definitely a great game. It requires you to use your brain extensively which made it even more exciting. We finished the game after playing for about 4 hours, taking turns for certain parts. It was quite a short game but highly innovative. The game is basically about several puzzles which can be solved using your Portal gun. You progress to the next room after finishing one puzzle. Each puzzle is tougher than the previous one and slowly introduces new elements into the game. At the beginning of the game, you can only shoot blue portals but after a certain level, you can shoot both blue and orange portals. For those who are still confused about the whole concept of Portals, let me explain. You can shoot Portals with your gun and the blue one is connected to the orange one. If you walk through the blue one, you’ll come out of the orange one, which, if used properly, can lead to some very complex and interesting situations. For example, you can shoot a blue one next to you and an orange one at a higher place which you cannot reach by jumping. When you walk through the blue portal next to you, you will come out at the orange one above. If you are still confused, this video should be very helpful, it is the trailer for the game.

The game has a lot of dark and subtle humour which has become very popular all across the gaming society. The final credits song after the game is really hilarious and I feel that everyone should watch it. If you havent played the game, but plan to, then you might not want to watch it since it has some spoilers but if you dont plan to play it, then you must watch this video. I’ve posted it below. And click here to view the lyrics to the song.

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I spent the whole of Sunday in London. It took a while to get there, and both the train and tube journeys were extremely boring and monotonous. I tried to walk from the hotel to the Heathrow, quite unsuccessfully and ended up walking in circles and finally caught a bus. Once in the main city of London, I took ‘The Original Tour‘ in an open top bus for about 3 hours. It was a good ride as I got to see most of the tourist attractions in a short span of time. London was an interesting city, with lots of places to visit, possibly in the future. And as with other English cities, the sun set at around 1630hrs and after some more walking around in random streets, I went back to the hotel.

My plane was on Monday morning to Dubai, spent a couple of hours there, walking about. My plane to Hyderabad landed at around 3 in the morning.The baggage was delayed infinitely and I had almost given up on my suitcase arriving when I saw it tottering along. I grabbed it, and ran out to be greeted by my dad. Meeting my family after 3 months was a pleasurable experience.

Being back home is a great feeling, although I do miss Essex. I met up with school friends day before yesterday, you can see the photos in ‘18-12-2007‘ under ‘Everyday Photographs‘. And yesterday, I went to Lotus Park along with friends from the Hyderabad Photography Club and we had a great time there. You can see the photos from the trip here. I also got a chance to try out a friend’s Canon 100 - 400mm lens which is a fabulous lens, but a bit too expensive for me. I tried out another friend’s Canon 50mm 1.8 too, and its pretty amazing for its price. I’ve decided to buy one before going back to University.

I played on my Wii today after a long time, it was quite fun and I had almost forgotten how fun it was playing the Wii. I also played Warioware: Smooth Moves which is a lot of fun and quite amusing.

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We went to town yesterday, for a huge shopping trip. Although we spent only about 4 hours there, we went to a lot of places, and spent a lot of money. We picked up many random things that caught our eye, but those things only were a small part of our buys. I also found a used Sunpak 140 Flash, which was a bargain at £2. I didn’t expect it to work but surprisingly, it did work and even though it isn’t very powerful and does not have a manual mode, it’s quite useful.

My main bank-breakers were a pair of Creative 2.1 Speakers, which are simply amazing and definitely worth the money. I also got ‘The Orange Box‘, which I can only play after I get home since my laptop cant handle it and I’m eagerly looking forward to playing it, ‘Warioware : Smooth Moves‘, which was recommended by several friends as a good multiplayer game for the Wii, and finally, ‘GTA III‘, because it’s such a classic and remains my favorite GTA Game to date. I was shocked by the amount of money I had spent on the games, but I guess quality entertainment doesn’t come cheap.

My new Hard Disk also arrived today. Its a 500GB Western Digital MyBook and looks quite sleek and compact. Its silent and doesn’t heat up fast. I’m glad that it finally came since I was rapidly running out of space on the laptop. You can see it in today’s photo of the day.

My only concern from these purchases is the huge amount of wires and cables which are currently behind my laptop screen but are visible once I close the laptop, and to be honest, look pretty ugly. I don’t think I can do much about it for now so I’ll have to learn to live with it.

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After following several discussions on various forums about Max Payne, I decided that its about time I played the game again. Unfortunately, my CDs were scratched so much that my PC refused to read them, even after many repeated tries. And then, I remembered that I had installed the game on my old PC and since my old PC was still lying around, I thought that I’ll be able to retrieve the game from it.

The PC ran perfectly well, a little slow, but acceptable, even though it had been almost a year since I last used it. I was able to locate the game and successfully copy all the data on to my Portable Hard Disk, and it ran perfectly on my computer.

I’m already halfway through the game, and I’m looking forward to playing the ‘Hard-Boiled’ version once I finish it. Max Payne is an epic character, I wish that they would make Max Payne 3.

I met up with some old friends yesterday after a long time, we had quite a good time. Life has been relatively good in the past week, I haven’t had much to do except for a few things here and there.

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Life has been pretty slow the past few days, hung out with friends a couple of days but we didn’t do much anyway. I’ve also been playing Half Life 2 Deathmatch quite frequently. You can find me hanging around at the GamesArena Team Deathmatch server. Its one of the better servers I’ve played on and it has one of the lowest latency levels(that means its faster).  Basically, I haven’t been doing anything other than sitting on the PC and watching TV all day, very boring.

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