The move towards a more family oriented console was first seen with the New XBox Experience that was launched in November. This added avatars, the XBox equivalent of Nintendo’s Miis. It also added in lots more sound effects when performing actions and changed the interface drastically so there were bigger pictures of what options were available at each stage. The changes in interface are for the better, and do make the XBox easier to use, but there’s no mistaking that they also make it more family friendly.

As the run up to Christmas draws towards a close, it is no coincidence that the adverts for games are more for those where the family can get involved,  with titles such as Mario Party 8 and Rayman Raving Rabbids TV Party for the Wii and Little Big Planet for the PS3 getting advertised heavily, alongside the XBox’s latest weapons in this arsenal; Lips, You’re in the Movies and to a lesser extent Scene It!.

This shift places the XBox in an interesting middle ground, where it is appealing to families on one side, and more serious gamers on the other side with this year’s release of distincly non-family games Grand Theft Auto 4 and Gears of War 2. Of course, this means that it is now open to a wider audience, and could well increase the console’s lifespan.

The hype around the launch, including articles about it heading towards the fastest selling game ever (eclipsing last year’s new record breaker – Halo 3) lead to a lot of people pre-ordering, queues to get the game at midnight and people suggesting that there’d be no chance in hell of getting hold of a copy without a pre-order. Of course, this was all nonsense as I happily walked into a shop at lunchtime on Tuesday and picked up a copy with no problems whatsoever.

Eventually I arrived home and threw the disc into the Xbox, and away I went to Liberty City. For those who aren’t aware, Liberty City is modelled on New York; in a not-very-loose way. The names have been changed, but there’s no mistaking the Statue of Happiness for the Statue of Liberty, or Star Junction for Times Square (especially with the replica of one of the offices at work on it). This resemblance makes the game very interesting, especially having only visited New York within the past couple of months.

So far I haven’t managed to explore too much within the single player, as work has got in the way of playing, but what I have encountered has been good fun. Compared to Vice City, the last GTA game I played, the vehicle handling is much better, and the AI is also very good (with people getting out of their cars and running away if you point a gun at them). Another great new feature is the mobile phone, allowing you to call up your contacts to arrange things, prank call the police, and most crucially – get to the multiplayer.

GTA IV is the first of the GTA games to support multiplayer natively, although previous versions have seen the Multi Theft Auto mods add this to it, and despite it being a new venture for them it seems to work remarkably well. There are a number of different game modes, with different ones being suited to different numbers of players, and my only criticism would be that at times the areas seem a little too large when playing with 8 people.

All in all, GTA IV is one of the best games I’ve played, and with the mass of achievements available and stats being tracked left right and centre, I’m sure that I’ll be playing it for a while yet.