The Typing of the Dead

So I make the discovery that there's a typing tutor that includes zombies, um how could that combination possibly go wrong? I need to try it.

As soon as I loaded it, I realized what could go wrong: It's the horrific House of the Dead 2 (complete with quite possibly the worst voice acting in any video game ever made) but modified so that you kill the zombies by typing words instead of shooting them.

Alright, why not? This could still be interesting...

Start it off, same bad intro with the squeaky voiced flying critter I wouldn't be able to understand if it weren't for the subtitles...then the zombies start coming at me. There are words floating over them and the idea is to type the words before the zombies get to you.

Basically, type fast or die. Shouldn't be a problem for me, I mean I've been clocked at 120 words per minute...

But sadly, there are issues. The biggest pain being sequences that involve zombies that throw projectiles. See, there will be a full sentence over the undead monster to type, but as soon it hurls a knife, you have to hit a different letter to shoot it down. The problem there is that if you're halfway through a sentence when the knife gets thrown, you can't hit the letter on the knife to knock it down.

Getting through the first level is pretty easy - though I do feel bad about the woman that died because I typed "U3" instead of "U2." There's no room for error when there are hostages involved.

Oh yeah...and the government agent type characters who are the good guys are rather amusing to look at since instead of having guns, they have keyboards mounted in front of them that feed into what looks a PlayStation with a battery pack attached to their backs. Um...well, it is a zombie game, so I guess they were going for total cheese.

Anyway, first boss fight is pretty simple, just keep typing sentences as they pop up.

Later levels mix up on the boss battles, though. In the second, you can only type at certain times. For the third level, questions appear at the bottom of the screen and you have to type the answer as fast as possible.

After screwing up too many words in the fourth level and getting the dreaded "GAME OVER" screen, I decide to try the game's typing drills.

These are actually interesting. It starts off as a normal "survive the zombie horde" scenario...but with typing.

At the end of each round, however, it shows you your problem keys and asks if you'd like to work on them. I say yes and now have to hold back a new zombie horde who all want me to type in words with the letter U to stop them (that was my problem key.)

Conclusion

Much as I'm loath to suffer through House of the Dead 2 yet again, the concept of typing fast to kill zombies is far too cool for me to not keep playing this one.