I put my foot in it last week with my gun-jumping initial response to Grand Theft Auto IV. The game has since grown on me I see what all the fuss is about. Part of the reason I didn’t initially take to the mayhem of Liberty City is because this is the first GTA title I have really bothered to spend time on. Perhaps if I had played one of its predecessors I would have known what to expect and gotten into the swing of things more swiftly. (more…)

It was around this time yesterday that I fired up GTA IV on my Xbox 360 for the first time. 24 hours later and I’m not sure that the high scores it has been receiving from the media are warranted. To call the game bad would be wrong, but it certainly isn’t a five-out-of-five title for me.

It must be mentioned, however, that I am playing the game in campaign, or ‘single-player’ mode and am yet to experience the online fun I am promised awaits me on Xbox Live. But I wanted to get my initial impression of the game out in the interim and will perhaps do a more comprehensive review later on, should my opinion change. (more…)

Microsoft’s Fall Dashboard update to the Xbox 360 added DivX and Xvid codec support for media playback on the console, reestablishing the 360 as the leader of the next-generation console pack in terms of features and making the Xbox 360 a compelling media centre device. Not only is the 360 a rocking gaming platform with superior online features, but is also a media powerhouse capable of playing just about any music, photography or video file you throw at it.

This functionality is made even radder by the fact that the 360 supports external storage devices or can be used as a media extender for any computer running Windows Media Center. You can even share media stored on a Mac in iTunes using connector software called Connect 360.

Of all the options available storing media on an external hard drive seems most logical to me, but this is easier said than done given the Xbox 360′s limited support for filesystems.
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