(boy I wish I could have been there for the meeting that made this game happen)

This is a big winner just on concept alone, obviously, but it's actually a pretty well fleshed-out and useful learning tool, if you can handle some quirks. Not to mention it's funny as hell.

It probably could have used a couple more passes in testing, as there are some occasional rough edges where they awkwardly bolted the typing gameplay onto the original THE HOUSE OF THE DEAD 2 framework, and a few of the UI elements aren't as well thought out as they should have been. But these are minor annoyances at worst.

Beats MARIO TEACHES TYPING, that's for sure.

Aaaaaaaaaaa it's so much fun! For one it's great feeling empowered by a skill that rarely gets to feel cool or flashy. Adding this kind of flair to typing is endlessly satisfying along with the gunshots on each key pressed.

The rail shooter underneath all this typing business is silly and overacted enough to be a great time, but the typing adds multiple extra layers which make it an absolutely wild experience. The game totally takes advantage of the disconnect between its rail shooter and typing game elements...while you're frantically hitting keys trying to keep up, what you're actually being prompted to type seeps in, but with no time for you to linger on it. Sometimes the words and phrases are complete nonsense and sometimes they're quotes, but it really shines when they're used to tell little stories between a few prompts. Sometimes it'll make fun of the player, saying if they finish typing that paragraph, they'll be alone for the rest of their lives, and sometimes it's strangely horny. When they aren't nonsense, the prompts are immature fun.

In addition, they do a great job of switching things up and making this more than just a test of typing speed. For instance, there are these quick thinking segments where you have to answer questions instead of just typing what's shown. The player has to constantly consider target priority throughout the game, which is probably what makes it still feel like a rail shooter at the end of the day. This was my biggest downfall, as I often started typing a sentence on an enemy in the back while several in the front would kick my ass. I love this shit.

First game played on my Thinkpad R52! :)

Are we developing shitposting skills or killing time shredding zombies? The Typing of the Dead series has you gatting zombies and typing out an essay at the same time; every big brain word scratches off another of the mutant undead. Typing Dead chads transcened common knowledge, their IQ expands to triple digits every time "Salad" is typed out in rythymic sequence. It's the definitive typing-learning experience, bundled with carnage and bad voice acting, there is no other combiation of media that will offer you or others the ideal learning enviroment. Throw in mod support and official DLCs, and you have endless ways to save the world by demolishing every word and walker in your path.

Insanely fun, but without enough effort to compensate for the difference in difficulty between typing and shooting (I finished in one try with credits to spare, while I'm not sure I'll ever see the ending of the original game). Mostly, it makes me think of how much I like House of the Dead 2, and notice what's missing here -- the risk/reward of saving civilians, the always legible enemy design allowing immediate enough understanding of their weak spots to allow careful aiming, and how much I miss these things while playing this. The third boss, who asks questions and requires you to type the correct answer from three choices, is a highlight, and an example of the type of gameplay modification this could've used more of.

Whenever I put down the plastic and nearly broken toy gun attached to the House of the Dead at my local movie theatre, I always left slightly dissatisfied. Not because there was any lack of zombie shooting fun, or campy 90s dialog, or really tough boss battles that demanded you dump your lawn mowing quarters into it. No. I was disappointed that I couldn't also hone my typing skills while saving the world from the evil Goldman.

Everyone is well aware at this point that Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing was just not edgy enough for we-the-teens in 1999, so Sega modified the lore of the House of the Dead extended universe to solve for this problem. They posited that the agents in House of the Dead would not be carrying guns, but rather a large apparatus that strapped onto the characters and also would shoot bullets if you typed a word fast enough. Isn't that harder than pulling a trigger? Perhaps for someone without keyboard prowess, but not for Typing of the Dead's titular heroes: James and Gary.

You progress through the game by shooting zombies after quickly unloading words like 'Octopus', 'Flea' or phrases like 'Collect the Stamps'. Long story short, if you can type, you can win.

All in all, this game taught me to type, taught me to love, and taught me to cry. I don't know what else you would need from a video game.

The Typing of the Dead is one of the most ambitious approaches to providing a unique experience in an established franchise, while also managing to reuse nearly all of its assets in order to sell the same game all over again.

The gameplay is so damn unique and has the most exquisite feedback I've ever experienced at the time since . . . well, House of the Dead 2, the game this is based on. Every successful punch of the key was a tiny dopamine hit, especially for someone like me that learned to type without looking at the keyboard at a very young age. I also adore how each boss had a unique gimmick that did a great job changing up how you restrain those itchy fingers of yours!

This game is already nearly perfect for me as it is, but the fact that all the cutscenes have the main characters' guns replaced with keyboards attached to entire Dreamcast consoles strapped to their backs brings this to a perfect score in my eyes. Now THIS was a game!

biggest accomplishment for me during magfest this year was winning the typing of the dead tournament... huge surprise to me a day or two before the proceedings when I looked at the event roster and found they even had a tournament for it at all. great memories from my first magfest a few years back where I crushed a blunt with the squad in the smoke pit and then strolled into the expo hall, sat down at typing of the dead, and rolled through the whole thing in a single sitting with a rotating set of randos next to me. visceral feeling of sinking into the keyboard; this game is real fun to play high because you can roll your tongue around the words in your brain while you play. imo a lot of typing uses similar thought processes as speaking, including the same propensity for tripping over particular letter combinations. your lips might go crosswise at the prospect of uttering "ignominious" and its jarring hard G smashed against a puddle of weak tongue-tip-against-the-palate consonants and squishy vowels, whereas on the keyboard I fall to pieces attempting those left hand-heavy words like "exonerate" or "quarter". my dad gave me a pirated CD-R of Adventures in Typing with Timon & Puumba when I was a child and unfortunately I lost interest around the time they started teaching that qwer stretch of keys, leaving me somewhat awkward even in adulthood when trying to use anything that requires a left pinky.

playing this game competitively adds an awkward layer of tactics on top of what traditionally is a cooperative experience. at the end of each chapter of arcade play both of the players receives a score based primarily on their speed rankings across each individual prompt that they typed, along with an accuracy bonus, fixed points for each citizen saved, and an elusive "base points" value that I do not quite understand. because the prompts are summed in their totality rather than calculating an average speed for each user, the key way to receive points is simply to beat your opponent to the punch on as many prompts as possible. in encounters with multiple targets this goes from a mere race to something more interesting: which prompt will the opponent go for first? generally they'll chase whoever appears first on their side of the screen, which can make for an easy snipe provided you don't need to clear anyone from your side of the screen first. something more exploitable is the tendency to approach the screen from top to bottom, which actually often exposes one to danger given that usually closer enemies will appear lower on the screen; anyone familiar with house of the dead 2 (which this game directly copies its entire layout and encounter structure from) should recognize this. tackling the lowest prompt on the screen before sniping the second-highest often puts you in a good position to lead your opponent from prompt to prompt, provided that you have the edge in terms of typing speed.

tournament itself was as awkward as one can imagine, with ~30 people crowded around two setups, each running those spongey dreamcast keyboards. players shared credits too, meaning that often a less cautious player could tank the other by chewing through the credits and leaving their rival with none to fall back on in case of a death. rather uncomfortable considering that the game throws some rather questionable situations at you, particularly when it comes to thrown projectiles. in the original hotd2 you could divert your aim from a zombie to shoot one of these down in mid-air, but in totd the player is locked into the first prompt they begin typing without being able to switch on the fly, making dealing with said projectiles near impossible unless each player remains idle when the prompts originally appear. lost quite a bit of health in the final level to this, giving my final evaluation near perfect ratings in every other than "Decision making", where I received an E lmfao

the actual typing challenges really sell the game however, transforming what would be a quirky novelty into a legitimately excellent typing showcase. other than basic design like escalating the length and challenge of the phrases as the game progresses, the game often plays with its phrasing to surprising and occasionally hilarious effect. other than the various sexual innuendos that sneak into otherwise-innocuous sessions of play, there lies hidden modifiers that, when shot, will cause a cascade of phonetically-similar yet entirely-bizarre spellings to appear such as "jurasskicked" or "handkerchiever". late-game stuff also takes some real left turns, from odd references like "ecnalubma" to spelling bee bamboozlers like "otorhinolaryngologist" to a prompt that's literally just "www.sega.co.jp" (this latter one the other finalist and I both completely bombed and had a good laugh about afterwards). bosses are generally fine (the magician fight that penalizes any missed letter fucking killed in both semis and grands), but the best of the bunch has to be tower, the hydra villain. this fight presents questions with multiple answers tied to each one of the various heads on the beast, leaving the player scarce few seconds to correctly identify the valid choice. I always felt confident on this one playing normally, but the tournament was ran on Very Hard, leaving me sputtering each time I had to perform the fight. answering "what decomposes?" with "fossils" instead of "crab salad" in front of an audience will forever be a gash in my pride...