Fun? On my Xbox Live?

Usually when you think of Xbox Live, you immediately think of a great online gaming network filled with whiny, arrogant and down right abusive people who are usually teenagers. In some instances that is very much true and you will come across that kind of horror in many of the games you play… however, I had some very interesting experiences lately while playing the Resident Evil 5 demo that I want to share with you guys.

Capcom was nice enough to include a feature in Resident Evil 5 where you are able to play through the game in co-op mode with a person you don’t know… this is a great feature which is common nowadays in a lot of games though I haven’t really tried it until now.

Most players didn’t have a microphone so we ended up using the in-game speech system to communicate. While it is limited, you can use them quite effectively as you play. First off, I noticed that if I’m hosting a game, a lot of players will make Sheva say “Thanks” at the very start. I also found that most players were genuinely co-operative. I got very few people who were ammo/item hogs and we always made sure to share what we had and back the other one up. Whenever we’d swap items or save each other from certain doom, there was always an effort to thank the other player for their help.

There were also players who did have mic’s and this allowed me to turn my own mic on and chat with them as we played. A couple of people even enjoyed playing with me so much that they added me to their friends list. I felt pretty surprised that I was actually meeting genuinely nice people on Xbox Live of all places… usually in other games you get some really arrogant geeks online… but it seems as if Resident Evil attracts some nicer folks than usual lol.

During these games we’d all get really into it and each person I met online had a different play style which made the experience even better. I hope to do a lot more online co-op on Xbox Live in the future…