I confess I'm not much of a Resident Evil fan, but unlike a lot of games I don't particularly care for, I can understand the appeal of Resident Evil 5. It's gorgeous, it emphasizes smart careful gameplay, and the gunplay is really gratifying. Plus, you know, zombies.

But as soon as I started playing the retail version, something happened that I never would have experienced while playing the preview builds Capcom sent out a couple of months ago. Something that makes me glad I hadn't written it off completely. Something that made me question whether I can still say I don't particularly care for Resident Evil 5.

Read about it after the jump.

It was the very beginning of the game. Sheva pulled out some sort of electrified cattle prod. As the zombies closed in on the shack where we were cornered, she stood at the window and zapped them away. All I had to do was keep my sights trained on the other door to cover her back. Once we were flushed out of the shack, I followed her to the roof of another shack where she used the cattle prod to keep most of the zombie at bay while we waited for air support. When she switched to her pistol from time to time, I saw that it used a clip with 99 rounds. Mine only holds 12 rounds. As we progressed through the levels, Sheva would run ahead and show me cases with new weapons. She pointed me to an awesome shotgun on the wall in a small room I would have missed. One short jump beyond the exit from one level, she showed me a large chest full of gold and jewels. She would use her laser sight as a pointer. She lead me to the perfect defensive spot during an onslaught in a fishing village, putting her back to the sea and using her rifle to pick off zombies as they shuffled down the pier. I stood by her side with my shotgun and dispatched any of them who got too close. Not many of them got too close.

We got into a routine as we scrounged for ammo: rifle rounds for her, shotgun and machine gun rounds for me. When we got to the first boss battle, something that had taken me no small amount of fumbling around the previous times I'd played it, Sheva knew exactly what to do and when to do it. A couple of grenades, a shot at a conveniently placed explosive canister, a quick dodge, and the boss was killed in under two minutes. Amazing. I didn't have to fire a single shot.

Of course, Sheva wasn't just Sheva. She was aube32. At least, that was the gamertag of whoever was playing her. I didn't realize it at the time, but aube32 is in Japan. I only found this out when I was messaging him (or her?) an apology.

We had gotten to one of the cut scenes where you have to press buttons to avoid a grisly fate. I wasn't sure how it worked in co-op, but I was tagging my button presses just fine. But then we'd get to a certain part and Sheva died every time. Three times. Four times. Ten times. It must have been fifteen times of both of us starting back at a gate, opening it together, running to the point that activated the cut scene, and pressing the button to skip ahead to the interactive bits. The first button press was easy - it was always either A or X - but on the second press, Sheva would always die. Finally, aube32 quit. I figured the poor guy (or girl?) simply couldn't get the timing down. It's a shame really, as he (or she?) seemed so good at the rest of the game.

So I soldiered on ahead, teamed up with my newly AI-driven Sheva, shuffling uncertainly, hanging close by, considerably less authoritative then when she was driven by aube32. I got to the cut scene. And she died. And again. And once more. What was going on?

I don't usually believe people when they say "I'm mildly dyslexic", because I think everyone's like that. Everyone confuses his right and left from time to time, or has to stop and consider whether it's "i before e" or "e before i", or accidentally inverts two numbers when jotting down a phone number. It's just how we are. So I'm trying not to be too hard on myself for confusing the X and B button the entire time I played that cut scene. I've had plenty of God of War training to drill into my muscle memory the difference between the circle button and the square button on a Playstation controller. But this is the Xbox 360. Plus, I really am mildly dyslexic.

I wrote aube32 an aplogy on Xbox Live and thanked him (or her?) for being such a great partner. Because for a time, Resident Evil 5 wasn't just a dopey Capcom game about a white dude rampaging through mobs of rabid Africans with his token ever-so-slightly black chick in tow. Instead, it was about a guy out of his element, led around by a strong female figure who knew the area well and was equipped to deal with it. I was the sidekick, the stranger, the guest. Thanks, aube32, for fixing a little bit of what Capcom has fumbled. I'm just sorry you had to die so many times to do it.