RARELY has a computer game caused such outrage and admiration in equal measure as Grand Theft Auto IV.

Gaming fans see it as the utopia of escapism - albeit of the most violent nature. Critics, on the other hand, see it as representing all that is wrong with society today.

After all, what right-minded person wants to become a lawless thug who drink-drives, is involved in drug-dealing and kills at will? He is hardly a good role model.

The £200 million taken in pre-orders before the game's release last week, show that lots of people do.

But, before we all start bemoaning how today's society is going to the wall, maybe things haven't changed all that much.

Pick any decade and there is bound to have been a similar outcry over violent entertainment.

From Shakespeare's tales of rape and cannibalism in Titus Andronicus to the brutal beatings of children in novels by Charles Dickens, violence has always been there.

"It is intrinsic to western culture to have violent images," explained Dr Eamonn Carrabine, senior lecturer at Essex University's sociology department.

With their sensational, lurid stories, the Penny Dreadful comics caused outcry among Victorians, as did the early gangster movies of the 1920s and 1930s.

Dr Carrabine said results from studies into the impact of violence in the media were mixed. While some studies found players felt more violent after playing violent video games, others found the opposite.

"In fact, they are mainly played by young men, in their bedroom, and not out on the streets where they might get drunk and violent. It is all contradictory," he added.

The problem, then, is maybe not with adults, but with children having access to violent games. It is an issue not lost on the Government: it recently backed a review by psychologist Dr Tanya Byron, who called for video game ratings to be overhauled.

With computer games, TV programmes and movies becoming ever-more violent, Dr Carrabine feels there is the problem with people becoming "desensitised" to violence.

"We are surrounded by some shocking stuff," he stressed.

When the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers was shown to the world a few years ago, he said people were shocked but there wasn't the outrage that there might have been a decade before.

Even so, there are still the stories which have the ability to shock and break the desensitised barrier like 9/11, Madeleine McCann and last week's story of Austrian Josef Fritzl, who imprisoned his daughter in a dungeon for 24 years.

Clinical psychologist Dr Joost Drost agreed that computer games did desensitise violence to the player.

He can remember as a youngster in the 1960s play- fighting with friends with lumps of wood as swords. If anyone got hurt in the game, the consequences were obvious. The same cannot be said of today's computer games.

"They are numbed to the consequences," he stressed.

Even so, he is not against computer games as, like other games, it teaches children how to cope with feelings of anxiety and anger.

Dr Drost, who works for the Colchester-based child and adolescent mental health service, is more concerned when violent computer games are played in isolation.

"Just because you play violent video games doesn't mean you are going to be violent," he stressed.

As long as children have the balance of good role models around them, Dr Drost said children will learn the distinction between harmless gaming and real life.

For youngsters who don't have the support of a good role model, the violence can have an "enormous influence on their lives", he stressed.

Dr Drost advised parents to take time to sometimes watch children playing the games.

"They should observe what they are playing. They should show interest but not lecture," he stressed.

Get the balance right, then, and maybe computer games are no more harmful than pretend cops and robbers.