The Haunted Hoard: The Typing of the Dead (PC)

With so many games offering us the chance to blow zombies to smithereens, we’ve seen quite a range of weapons. Machine guns, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, chainsaws, crossbows, and all sorts of tools have been provided to help clear out the undead, with the House of the Dead series even featuring some of the more exotic ways to dispense with the living dead. It might also be the series that came up with one of the strangest ways to kill a zombie though, because in the spin-off The Typing of the Dead, the keyboard is truly mightier than the gun as it is literally how you and the characters clear out the undead invasion.

 

The Typing of the Dead is a typing game where killing zombies requires you to be a speedy typist. When a monster appears on screen, they’ll also be accompanied by a text box containing the word you need to type to take them out, each letter essentially a bullet as you can watch them get holes blasted in them by each character you enter. The green blood is meant to soften it a bit, but you are still facing undead with some gruesome designs including exposed hearts and plenty of wounds before you’ve perforated them with perfect typing. However, because these creatures do want to eat your flesh, that also makes them a pretty strong fit for a game that aims to train you to be quick on the keyboard. If you’re too slow in typing out the words, the zombie will be able to close in and attack you, and since they’re often not alone, the other enemies will get a chance to close in as you’re working on eliminating their companions. With later and more powerful enemies requiring full on phrases to be typed, it can get rather intense to see the undead lurching towards you as you try to not just hit the right keys, but hit them in a hurry. Fortunately, typos don’t usually cause issues, but if you’re able to keep up perfect typing for a while, you can earn some extra health at a faster rate to help with long-term survival.

One of the best things about The Typing of the Dead is how it starts to iterate on the typing challenges as you head deeper into the game. Periodically the game might interrupt the action for a short minigame where you need to type much more quickly or account for special incoming dangers. For example, some enemies will throw hatchets at you, it only taking a single letter to knock the hatchet out of the air, but if you’re typing another zombie’s word at the time, you need to finish that up quickly to be able to shoot down in the incoming danger. Bosses are especially fun challenges in The Typing of the Dead too. While already interesting concepts like a headless suit of armor guided by a little imp flying beside it or a chainsaw waving giant, the bosses all try to concoct some new way to vary up the typing challenges. Rather than just typing words, you’ll get tougher tests like needing to write a full paragraph, punctuation and all. One boss is a full-on quiz, although it is undermined a touch by the multiple choice answers displaying in too short of a time before the boss is rearing up to make its attack. Even someone who types often for a living will find situations or foes in The Typing of the Dead that test their ability to type quickly and under pressure, especially as later stages can start to get a bit devious. It might show a phrase that seems familiar only to swap out a word, and while capitalization is rarely emphasized since that could lead to less enjoyable trip-ups, the game does sometimes pull from symbols that even a skilled touch typist might not know the placement of by heart.

 

There are two variations of the main adventure in The Typing of the Dead, Arcade and Original both taking the plot from The House of the Dead 2 and doing very little to alter it. It is a bit more comedic at points, mostly in the alternate endings and the fact that the agents of the AMS trying to stop a zombie outbreak in Venice are wearing Dreamcasts strapped to their backs with keyboards in front of them to type on. The House of the Dead 2’s hilarious bad voice acting works even better here then in the original light gun arcade game, the main villain Goldman in particular having odd inflections that make strange lines even stranger in ways that were unintentional but feel right at home here. After all, during the course of levels, you can sometimes press a key to grab nearby items, and while some of these are useful like extra heath, vaccines that weaken zombies, or even dictionaries that briefly give a theme to the words used to blast zombies, others will activate features like big head more or swap out your agent character with a portly civilian or even one of the zombies. Civilians thankfully can’t be shot unintentionally in these modes, but when they’re under attack, your quick typing is tested once again as saving them can give you some of those helpful or funny items.

 

Arcade and Original mode are primarily differentiated by how you tackle them. Arcade hews closer to how The House of the Dead 2 was designed, the player tackling levels in order, sometimes taking branching paths within a stage based on which civilians are helped.  Original mode is not only more willing to let you select levels in most any order, but when you grab special items in a stage, you can use them as you please. Rather than a vaccine immediately weakening the next zombies you face, you can hold onto it for a dangerous situation, or you can even carry instant attacks like molotov cocktails if you’re worried your fingers might get tripped up in a tougher fight. More interestingly, Original mode’s stages all have extra goals to clear to earn coins, and when you get enough coins, you start unlocking new options. Already The Typing of the Dead lets you set the difficult of the game to suit how good you are at typing, even the easier modes able to put up a fight a bit thanks to the speed of the monsters while harder difficulties certainly require a thorough knowledge of touch typing to survive. Original mode can give you some more cushions though as it lets you unlock the ability to increase how many continues you have, meaning even if you fail, you can gradually works towards a successful completion with the help of the new settings.

Interestingly, while The Typing of the Dead could have likely worked just fine as a game more about typing being the means of gameplay than having any veneer of being educational, it actually include a thorough tutorial mode that will try to teach you how to use touch typing with the standard QWERTY keyboard. It isn’t exactly a fun tutorial despite the occasional injection of zombie-related humor, but it does seem to be a decent enough set of lessons. It must be tackled in order sadly, meaning if you just need to brush up on certain aspects it’s not that great, but there is a different mode that can help with that. Drill Mode is a selection of brand new minigames that can help you hone your skills while also providing quick score challenges. Sorted into categories like Accuracy, Reflex, and Special Keys, the game will present bite-sized challenges that test their associated skill. One game has zombies hiding among humans for example, the player needing to be quick to spot the undead and type their words before the opportunity passes. Another will have zombie frogs hopping towards you, requiring you to be adapt at hitting number and punctuation keys in a hurry to clear out the huge waves. You might have to type things perfectly at risk of instant failure should you not or have barges full of barrels move across screen carrying words you have very limited windows to type, some games ending after certain thresholds are hit while others will keep going until you fail. While only some of these have the very effective pressure of a zombie coming towards you to kill you to make them as exciting as the main game, others do serve as strong typing tests due to being endurance challenges where earning the high rating for performance feel just as satisfying as surviving a close battle.

 

The Typing of the Dead also includes multiplayer as well as an unlockable option to face computer opponents in twists on the normal game stages. Whether you’re working together to type the zombies into oblivion or trying to be faster on the draw in clearing them out in a competition, it does continue to give a bit more life to this game, meaning it might actually be superior to The House of the Dead 2 in terms of not just its breadth of offerings, but the skills it tests. Pointing and shooting still requires good reflexes and identifying threats properly, but the actual act is much easier than having to write out full words perfectly when under the pressure of potential death. If you are not adept at touch typing though, it will be the bigger hill to climb in terms of being capable enough to clear the adventure, but with every difficulty at least preserving some of the danger, it’s at least not like playing on easy will come with a drastically worse experience should you need to.

THE VERDICT: The Typing of the Dead is a creative twist on killing zombies, the reliance on typing out words quickly and accurately making for plenty of tense moments where your fingers try to keep up with the increasing pressure. Bosses and later monsters changing up the way you have to type keep the concept from getting old as do the minigames over in Drill Mode that push you to really have your touch typing down pat. It does feel like there is more room for new challenges in the main adventures to shake them up, but The Typing of the Dead hits a nice spot between testing reactivity and precision since survival depends on a lot more than just pulling a single trigger.

 

And so, I give The Typing of the Dead for PC…

A GOOD rating. Most games with zombies can get you to panic a bit if the undead are closing in and you can’t get a good angle on them, but The Typing of the Dead requires you to be constantly aware as you need to quickly read a word, know how to type it, and repel that foe in time to get to typing the words for the next nearby threat. It does tantalize you a bit with the creativity shown in some of the boss fights and Drill Mode though, but it also doesn’t always bring the best ideas either. One of the bosses for instance just has you have to start or stop typing based on if the boss’s weak point is visible, this just slowing things down since you’re not really punished for typing out of turn. Generally, keeping things like capitalization out of most of the adventure was wise, and punctuation and numbers usually being reserved for tough situations or special minigames helps to manage difficulty a touch even if you’re incredibly quick with your keyboard otherwise. Being locked into following The House of the Dead 2’s story beat for beat might have been part of why this typing adventure couldn’t expand its creative twists further. The quiz boss for example works well because it’s a three-headed hydra so each head is tied to an answer, but if you don’t want to give new moves to characters made for a light gun shooter, it might be more difficult to justify other elaborate twists. The Typing of the Dead still provides a good deal of options and various modes though plus funny discoveries to help it embrace its deliberate strangeness, and the unintentional comedy of Goldman does mean The House of the Dead 2 is bringing more than just pre-existing assets to this absurd adventure.

 

Because it focused most of all on making typing an enjoyable gameplay method without it getting tripped up on teaching you to type, The Typing of the Dead stands above many edutainment games that aim to help you understand home row. Its own lessons in Training Mode may not be that exciting, but the game definitely incentivizes becoming a swift typist, as you’ll need to be a keyboard warrior to keep up with the quick and abundant undead. No doubt The Typing of the Dead helped to inspire most future games that use proper typing as their gameplay method even when they’re not trying to be educational at all, The Typing of the Dead showing that sometimes a task that can be mundane and useful in regular life can be made rather exhilarating with the right context and pressures applied.