With my Xbox dead I have been turning to other games to sate my desire to play, recently however these distractions were not working as well as they used to. I was missing playing Halo.

Respite has been found though, while moving stuff into the loft for my Mother I found an old Christmas present I had forgotten about, Halo PC. I wasted no time bringing this downstairs and firing up my dads PC, my Macintosh sadly not having the video specs to run this game smoothly.

It was surprisingly cathartic that first time I head the opening to the game, and as I jumped into the single player campaign I felt a degree of enjoyment I just wasn’t getting out of my other games. Right now I am about to start Truth and Reconciliation, so if you will excuse me Captain Keyes needs rescuing and I am the seven foot Spartan II to do it.

Thanks to the wonders of HBO I have discovered a brand new toy for my MacBook.

Xbox Live Friends is an OS X program that keeps a track of your Gamertag’s friends list. Big deal I hear you say, there are other programs that do this. However this program also lets you read and reply to any messages sent to your gamertag from the comfort of your desktop.

Xbox Live Friends is now my main tool for communicating with my friends list. It’s easier for me to grab my MacBook and type on there than to use the USB keyboard I have plugged into my Xbox 360, and much easier than using the virtual keyboard on the Xbox itself. I will not mention Xbox.com, it tries to be convenient but was just not as handy as Xbox Live Friends.

So if you are an Xbox gamer, and you have a Macintosh then go on, do yourself a favour, get Xbox Live Friends.