Shoot 'Em Up: A Guide to Xbox Live

Hi there, impressionable gamer. Welcome to Xbox Live!
We know this new and exciting frontier of gaming can be big and scary to the uninitiated, but we’re here to help get you mixing it up with barely literate 12 year old racists as soon as possible. Here's the Skinny’s guide to Xbox Live, helping you to push all the right buttons (little video game humor there).

Step 1: Cough up £39.99. Sure, you just shelled out over 200 quid for the hardware, the games and the fancy headset, but we know you have a couple more 20s lying around. I’ll just wait until you go get ‘em.

Step 2: You’re in. Now you need to set up a Gamertag, which is a fancy word for a user name. It can be anything you like, so long as it isn’t racist, homophobic, offensive, or hate speech, so this can take quite some time to think of.

Step 3: Start making friends. The best part of playing online is getting all the fun of having your mates over, without actually having them over and eating your pretzels. You may find some of the more experienced gamers will constructively comment on your skills, often by dropping their avatar’s crotch in your avatar’s face. This kind of social interaction is how lasting friendships are made. There’s almost always a hate-spewing troglodyte in a multiplayer game, and if you don’t hear one, it’s you.

Step 4: We all love being rewarded, and Xbox Live makes this easy with in-game Achievements, proferring you all kinds of pointless things, and giving you Gamerscore points. These Gamerscore points can buy you lots and lots of pride, and bragging rights. But not much else. Still, there are years’ worth of YouTube videos walking you though every excruciating moment of achieving them.

Step 5: Do other stuff. A Live account isn’t just for gaming (though it’s mostly about gaming). You can use your Xbox to buy downloadable content, play music, update Facebook, watch Sky, watch YouTube, and even prepare dinner service for 8 (note: an Xbox will not prepare dinner service for 8). Some of this costs, some doesn’t, some of it means you have to be 18, some doesn’t, but the important thing is, it’s all there for you when you need a break from pushing buttons.

Now get out there and play your game-loving heart out. Not literally though. The NHS doesn’t cover that.