Release Date: 30/10/2013
Played On: Win
Available On: Win
Time Played: 4h 17m
Progress: Completed
Developer: Modern Dream
Publisher: SEGA
There once was a time between when I got my first job, and when I actually had to start paying bills. This was a time of spending money on anything at all, without responsibilities or obligation to tie you down. It was the perfect time for feeding coins into arcade cabinets, long after the arcades had gone out of fashion and jacked up the prices.
My favourite arcade games where light-gun games, probably because they hadn't really been replicated on home consoles since Duck Hunt. The game I always gravitated to and spend the most money on was House Of The Dead 2. It was stupid as all hell, but I could shoot the heads off of zombies with a friend for hours and never get bored.
I'm still wondering why light-guns never made it to a mass market level of consumerism, but I've since got my hands on The Typing Of The Dead: Overkill. There's no more need to wonder, as everything you've ever wanted from the franchise is here, and it's as stupid as it ever was.
The Typing Of The Dead is a port of the light-gun masterpiece House Of The Dead. Except instead of pointing a plastic weapon at the screen, you're tasked with typing random words as they appear. The entire game is on rails and pulls you through a magical journey of B-movie horror shlock, while you type furiously and wear out your keyboard.
I was never too familiar with the first House Of The Dead, but as far as I can tell, this is a direct port of the arcade version. There is an option to play with the mouse instead of a light gun or typing, but it's actually a cumbersome input method that feels slow and imprecise. Instead, the typing mechanic does an excellent job of recreating the panic and desperation felt as zombies and monsters pop out of nowhere and lunge at you fiercely.
It's a neat way to turn an on-rails shooter into a frantic test of skill and precision. With a light gun, there's essentially no lag between aiming and firing, which is why I think the mouse alternative ultimately fails. With the mouse there's a short amount of time between seeing a target and moving the reticule to an accurate aiming position, then firing away. It isn't a lot, but it's enough to take away from the immediacy of pointing a light=gun and pulling the trigger.
Typing manages to substitute well for the peripherals, as it offers immediate reactions tied to skilful execution. As soon as an enemy appears on screen, a word accompanies them, which can be typed immediately. Each letter hit acts as a gunshot, so that when the entire word or phrase has been accurately typed out, the beast has been slain. Pretty soon you'll end up watching like a hawk for new words to appear, before hammering away frantically as you attempt to spell out words at blistering speeds.
It's one of those mechanics that really has to be felt to be understood, especially when you begin to think about how the words themselves can contribute to the game's experience. Indeed, the words you'll end up typing as fast as you can, aren't random collections of letters. Most of the time they fit the theme of bad horror movie tropes, and even form a narrative of sorts on different elements in the game. It really is fun when a huge chainsaw wielding zombie runs at you while you desperately spell out "COME TO PAPA" on your keyboard.
The clever use of words and the thick veneer of bad horror movie tropes make Typing Of The Dead a whole lot of fun. At times it can be a bit on the nose, as there are the bad tropes as well as the genuinely charming ones. The dumb blonde with massive boobs, the swearing black cop who's always getting "tired of this shit", and the biker babe who kicks butt and goes on about girl power a bit too much.
The other characters and enemies are just as well stereotyped and overdone that the excess becomes comical and enjoyable. It's the epitome of "so bad it's good" that keeps the story interesting in Typing Of The Dead, but it's the mechanics that really sucked me in and kept me playing.
Who would have thought that a typing test would turn out to be an excellent game mechanic for fighting swamp monsters and cow demons? Typing Of The Dead might be essentially a one trick pony, but even when it's repeated throughout the entire experience, it never gets tired.
It's nice to know I can save my coins and fire this game up whenever I get the urge, rather than dreaming of arcades. Typing Of The Dead manages to port the arcade experience to PC without losing any of the excitement and frantic action of its origins. Definitely worth a few bucks for a silly time spelling weird words and killing monsters.
I actually don't have a lot else to say about The Typing Of The Dead, as it's just about as self-explanatory as it can get. The entire thing is stupid, but typing out gunshots is surprisingly fun. Absolute B-grade dirty fun, but fun nonetheless.