After a year of owning an Xbox 360, I finally got round to subscribing to Xbox Live Gold. So I start it up, join a game of GTA IV and end up waiting in a lobby for ages. Nothing much happens, people come and go but the game never starts. Not a very good first impression. Then I end up in a game with around a dozen people, and that’s when it starts to get interesting. People driving up and down the streets, shooting each other with rocket launchers, assault rifles and the like.

Then I remembered my Xbox came with a headset. So I plug that in, and I really wish I hadn’t. The whole server was full of whining teenagers, complaining about any tactic that they thought was unfair. “Don’t drive the cars. Don’t hug the walls, wall hugger”. I think I’ll be playing without the headset, at least with people I don’t know.

Grand Theft Auto is one of my favourite series of games, and I’m glad the gameplay online isn’t as awful as I was dreading. I wish I hadn’t left it so long to get Xbox Live, as undoubtedly most people have moved on to other games by now. But for me, that white box under the TV just got a whole lot more interesting.

My gamertag is: HowardThomson