The Young Gamers Guide to Xbox Live – Article

The Young Persons Inside Guide to Xbox Live – This is a little trip into Xbox Live by one of the youngest members of Thumb Bandits at the moment. She showed much enthusiasm with wanting to contribute to this section so we thought what the hey, kids voices in gaming are often pandered to but rarely heard. So here for your pleasure is one young gamers Xbox Live Experience…..

What I think of xbox live and the games that I have….
I think that Xbox Live is great and it is a satisfying way to spend time. However I would advise you to play it when you have a lot of time on your hands as, if you’re like me you are going to want to stay on it for a really long time! Time also plays another part on Xbox Live… it slips away from you when you play on it. Whenever I get the time I sit down and relax in front of the projector screen and game away not knowing how many HOURS have passed.

But you know what they say, “Time flies when you’re having fun!”

Good and bad points about Xbox Live….

The GOOD
The sound element of Xbox Live is really good (people talking to one another through the headsets).
It is easy to find people that have the same skill level as you on the games and the dashboard allows you to meet pre-game and discuss what you want to do.
As you have a friends list it is easy to meet up with people that you like gaming with rather than leaving it to chance.
You can set up a private room for just you and your friends so it means more fun and less stress since you can weed out people that annoy you when you’re playing.
In some games you can even listen to your own music that you have put onto your Xbox using the Xbox’s brilliant Soundtracks option (available on certain games).
Most games flow really smoothly depending on what your/the host connection speed is and you only see the lag monster very rarely.
You can also appear offline if you don’t want anyone sending you invites or you don’t want people joining your games.
You can boot people out of a room (and even report them!) if they are REALLY annoying you.

The BAD
It can be annoying if little irritating kids or even some adults join the game and DON’T shut up.
Some people cheat in the games and it takes away the fun, a lot of people in R63 for example, camp (stay in the same place) for the whole game picking off other players and that’s really annoying.
Even if you set up a private room for you and your friends when you are the host people can still join if they are on your friends friends list.
You can only have up to 100 friends on your friends list, this may seem like a lot but when you have had live for a long time you get a lot of people that you like to talk to and find that you need to delete a lot of them so that you can add other people.
The headset is really easy to break.

Things you have to buy…
Xbox Live costs around £40 UK/$40 US for the starter kit (starter kit lasts a year) then each year you need to pay £40/ $40 to keep it going. You also need to buy an Ethernet cable, the price for this varies. You also have to have an existing broadband connection. And of course an Xbox!

If you do get Xbox Live the games that I would recommend are…
Midtown Madness 3
Rainbow Six 3
Project Gotham 2
Top Spin
Moto GP 2
Ghost Recon

Xbox Live Games
Games to look out for in the near future are Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow (will apparently make use of the new xbox live 3.0 features which includes user created tournaments, messaging and clan statistics) Halo 2 and True Fantasy Live Online.

I hope you’ve liked my article about Xbox Live.

Article by Cat (Published 2004)

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