For a while, zombies were the talk of the media world, inserted into everything from films, to TV, to games and even books. From the hit series Walking Dead, to Valve's co-op shoot-em-up Left 4 Dead, to even a reworking of Jane Austen's classic novel entitled Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, it seemed it was nearly impossible to escape them. However, there was one zombie game which some will remember, but largely seemed to slip through the cracks: Typing of the Dead.
Originally a spin-off of the arcade classic House of the Dead, Typing of the Dead was basically the same thing: an on-rails shooter in which one or two players would battle against hordes of zombies in creepy mansions, or laboratories. Only what Typing did was remove the guns entirely and introduce words. The basic premise was that each zombie or enemy would have a word appear above them and when a player typed that word, preferably as quickly as they could, it would kill said zombie.
Now, a new mod has been released for it which takes that concept one step further by changing the words to reflect classic submissions from the Yahoo! Answers community, which is sadly being shut down soon. The modification will preserve the nonsensical and often hilarious questions and answers that users have been posting for years. Some of these have become notorious memes in their own rights, with such hits as, "How is babby formed?" "What is bitcoin and why?" "I saw a man so beautiful I started crying?" and hundreds more like it being added to the mod.
On the one hand, it's a hilarious mod that takes the cheesy B-movie styling of the original game, and the spin-off, and gives it that internet meme vibe. On the other, it almost immortalizes the archives of Yahoo! Answers in a way that only games can. With a House of the Dead remake supposedly in the works, it looks as though the franchise may make a bit of a comeback at some point. The Typing of the Dead may have only been a small modification to the original series, but it certainly wasn't the last, with the likes of Zombie Revenge and The English of the Dead adding new flavors to the games.
Zombie mods are a tried and true method for extending a game's lifespan. Games such as Red Dead Redemption and Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War are popular partly for adding hordes of the undead to their stories. With this new Typing of the Dead mod being released, maybe the world of gaming isn't ready to say goodbye to zombies just yet.
The Typing of the Dead Yahoo! Answers mod is available for free now on Steam.
Source: PC Gamer