House Of The Dead 2 vs.Typing Of The Dead
Well it's been a while since or founding father, mentor and patron, Sir Teeleecee, walked out of the 'Yard with a knotted hankie on a stick, slung across his shoulder, to embark on his Confidential Mission... to save the world from the Axis Of Evil. And I don't know about you, but the 'Yard seems kind of empty without him.... (Sniff!)
Still, it is the sworn duty of myself and the Gagaman(n) to maintain the place in his absence. And so, without any further ado, I will embark on my next epic post (for the second fucking time, seeing as Blogger just wiped out about an hour and a half of fucking typing, by kindly 'updating' itself...)
BASTARD! (and now it seems to be underlining my text and changing font sizes without me wanting it to...
Take a look at this!
It's my new super-duper-fan-fucking-tastic 'Microsoft Wireless Desktop Elite' keyboard! (Wahey!) Everytime I run my fingers over it's bouncey, responsive keys it makes my 'third leg' stand to attention!
Each time I check out it's 'space age' contours, with different tactile materials...("Grunt! Gasp!"... Hard plastic keys, spongey, foamy exterior...) my swollen testacles start to tingle. Check out the fucking buttons and gizmos! AWLRIGHT!
Keyboards... originally found on the humble typewriter, then later ascribed to fledgling computers, they've made life easier for us all.
In Dreamcast terms the keyboard was originally intended to enhance it's users experience of accessing the internet. (I did that a few weeks back and it was frankly wanktastic...56K modem? Dial up? Fuck me sideways...) For some gamers it allowed them to remain in a PC comfort zone...playing games like 'Quake 3 Arena' and 'Outtrigger' using Keyboard and Mouse to point and shoot.
But which fucking genius decided to use the keyboard as a peripheral to experience the established 'light gun classic' House of TheDead?
Someone at developer 'Smilebit' apparently... and if I ever meet that guy, I'll gladly suck him off...
Sorry! I meant to say "Shake him warmly by the hand"....
'House Of The Dead' Father? That tired old title has oft been discussed within the 'Yard... why drag it's sorry ass back up for another probing?
Well it needs to be re-inspected and compared to it's lesser known cousin 'Typing Of The Dead'...
'Cos like many a great DC title release, we Europeans were passed over! I've never understood why corporations like Sony (bawk!), Sega and Nintendo (feeling of warm acceptance...) feel the need to selectively deny Europeans, Japanese or Americans access to the same gaming experience, at the same time....
This inevitably ends up with commited gamers like myself, having to trawl eBay years later to find hidden gems... Our American cousins were denied Shenmue 2, and that's just wrong.
We on this side of the pond were denied the 'Sega Smash Pack' and 'Caution Seaman'.
Why? answers on a postcard please...
Anyway, back to the games... lets compare them...
House Of the Dead 2
A classic franchise, first experienced outside arcades by Sega Saturn owners as 'House of The Dead'. (Still retailing in Gamestation for a pricey £24.99 due to it's cult clasic status and rarity) A light gun classic, but in retrospect grainy, pixellated and rushed. It was poorly presented, had an unimaginative storyline and was badly voice-acted. Certain features that Sega were apparently keen to keep apparently...
So lo and behold, along comes House Of The Dead 2, one of the flagship titles for the Dreamcast. Back in the day, the game+ lightgun would have cost you a harsh £75.... Current 2006 price for game and peripheral? £8.50... OK so we've already got a reason to check it out... but the Dreamcast release had addressed the failings of the original Saturn game... Here we had sumptuous graphics, great frame rates, little pixellation, and a near perfect arcade port.
The voice acting was still terrible and the storyline equally weak, but to your average gamer, light gun at the ready, it was just an excuse to waste animated corpses, spilling green, YES GREEN blood..
O.K. Weak story line? What is it?
You play as James Taylor (no not the easy listening hippy ex-husband of Carly Simon- ignore that if you're under 40) but the AMS agent assisted by colleagues Gary Stewart, Amy Stewart and Harry Harris... (I kid you not....) Harry fucking Harris? Pur-lease...
You're fighting aginst the evil machinations of the mysterious Goldman... which have resulted in.... axe wielding, chainsaw toting, barrel tossing zombies!
Overthrowing the un-named city and presumably the world. And if you're not quick enough on the draw they're gonna bite you. Oh yes.
As if that wasn't enough there's zombie monkies, fish, frogs, owls and bats want to bite your sorry ass as well.
Depending on your zombie ass kicking skills you will be shown a variety of routes through the city. Play poorly and you'll arrive at something of a dead end. Save civillians and you'll be rewarded with extra lives... Kill 'em and you'll have lives taken away- fair enough!
There are four modes in the game...
Arcade, Original , Boss and Training. Play on Original and you get to save items like coins, gems, gold frogs, (no I have not been ingesting psychedelic mushrooms...recently...) air guns and unlimited continues that help you complete the game.
Complete the game? I wish! Never have and probably never will...
'Cos apart from items that you store in your car boot/trunk, you can't save shit on this mother fucker! (Why am I posting like an extra from 'Shaft'?)
'One bullet away from killing the last boss, and completing the game... and YOU DIE!
Then start all over again.
And incidentally, that's why I named it my most frustrating DC game on Tom's most magnificent recent post... I love it/hate it!
Ok I'm rambling...And you might have guessed already that I'm more in favour of the
later release....
Typing Of The Dead...
OK no need to go through any of the features of the original 'cos it's exactly the same as this one.
Except that the graphics and even the voice acting seem a bit more polished.
And ( now heres the rub) Instead of a gun you use a keyboard!!!
As do your charcters...
Instead of 'poppin' caps' you have to type like a bitch ass secretary on speed to repel the zombie hoarde. The basic scenario is this... The game is exactly the same but instead of shooting zombies you have to read set phrases and then type them.
Easy? NO! If your a good typist, no problem... If you've got poor keyboard skills (like me) then watch out. You just have to copy familiar (or increasingly non-familiar) words and phrases thrown at you by the game. "Hospitalised brick"? "Rasta"? "Uncle Slam"?
They're the easy ones... try "I lay my hand on yours my sweet, and then let out the nastiest fart you'll know".
Try that whilst zombies are threatening to chomp a chunk out of your face...
Having said that, compared to the light gun version, they actually wait around a little bit... patiently(!)... Whilst you complete your typing.
Unlike the original, they kind of lay off, lurking not too menacingly whilst you fumble over your typing errors.
To make things less horrific, they carry sink plungers, rubber mallets and sausages to throw at you instead of knives and axes. Plug two keyboards in and play against a friend. I did and it was some of the most gaming fun I've had in ages... You can pick up keyboards for peanuts these days...
Now back in 2001 two keyboards would have cost you £40.
In 2006? Two quid each for two keyboards if you look around...
(I was given one keyboard free by the wonderful Summit Games, Bangor, N.Wales because I bought a couple of rare import games from them-Heads Up! Respect!)
The two biggest gingers played them solid at the Lighthouse last weekend... in favour
of Tekken 5 Dark resuurection on the PSP.. Even the younger ginger generation are into
the gameplay...and BONUS! they're improving their typing skills!
IGN 2006 gave 'Typing' a 9/10 in the face of reviews of games on the 360, PS3 and Wii...
Planet Dreamcast in 2001 gave 'Typing...' an 8/10.
The original light gun HOTD version got a paltry 7/10.
And I endorse their conclusions... ergo Typing Of The Dead.... A clear winner!!!
So check this.... score a DC (£20 max) Score HOTD2 (£2.50 max) Score TOTD (maybe a bit more but probably under a tenner) (Score a couple of keyboards for the DC (Guess...£20 max) add it up... maybe (max) £55 and you get yourself a shit hot console, two games and the necessary peripherals for less than a next gen game.
I rest my luddite case m'lud!
Good night children... wherever you are...here's a little gift to make you sleep easier after looking at all those zombies....
Excuse me while I crack another one off...
It's been a fucking nightmare trying to write this post y'know. Since I no longer have a net connection at my humble (and very nearly decrepit) abode, and since I am no longer working due to my imminent departure from this world, I have been forced recently revert to other means of getting online. Said means have consisted mainly of:
What's the best roller coaster you've ever been on eh? By 'best,' I mean fastest, longest and with the most "fuck, I've just shit myself" moments chucked into the price of the ticket. Mine is probably a toss up between the Pepsi Max Big One at Blackpool or the Corkscrew at Alton Towers, both of which are probably pretty lame when compared to the 'Coasters the Americans have got littering their theme parks. Shit, they've got rollercoasters that temporarily fall out of this dimension and send you on an wierd adventure through a mystical land full of magical dwarves and evil wizards. Apparently, it's called 'Dungeons & Dragons,' or something , and when I've saved up enough for a plane ticket, I'm booking a flight over there just so I can check it out.
Well, those of you who own Coaster Works can, anyway. Costing the princely sum of about £2.50 off eBay, I picked this little beauty up out of sheer curiosity. Like Floigan Brothers last week, I've never seen Coaster Works on sale in a shop and only saw the one review of it - and that was an import review, so naturally thought the PAL release had been shelved. Obviously this wasn't the case, as last night I spent a few hours ripping my hair out at the expense of building (and I quote) 'The ride of my life.' Actually, the ride of my life would probably involve Shakira and a tub of Nutella, but that's a different post, on a different site. Cough.
The 'construction' screens are at first a little daunting: the default view shows a screen split into four equal squares, each with a different perspective on your creation that help you to judge the pitch, angle and degree of banking with considerable ease. To further simplify things, all of the button commands are displayed at the bottom of the screen, so you can never really forget what each button does. Nice.
Once you think your ride is up to scratch, it's possible to take a ride on it. The ride itself switches the game from the rather dull, grey dominated wireframe model screens and plonks you in the front seat of the ride. A press of the 'A' button sets things moving and you're then treated to fully rendered, first person trip around your newly created steel leviathon and depending on how good/inventive you are, it can actually be rather a thrilling experience as the the carriage picks up speed and throws you around corners with an alarming amount of screen-juddering realism.
Like Ronseal, it does exactly what it says on the tin, and for that there can be no complaints. However, once you get past the first few stages it becomes apparent that there really is very little else to Coaster Works. Games like V-Rally and Re-Volt feature track creation sections that are just as intuitive as Coaster Works, but are only included as extras - not the whole game. To be fair, there's not a lot else Xicat (the people also behind the lamentable survival horror title Carrier) could possibly have added to the Coaster Works equation, but if I was expected to pay £30-£40 for it and not the actual £2.50 I did, I'd probably be a bit pissed off. As it is though, and for the asking price, Coaster Works is a relaxing diversion for those Dreamcast gamers who need a break from kicking the arses of unfeasably fit manga babes (DOA2); running away from cartoon fascists with stubble-covered lantern jaws (Jet Set Radio); or saving the world from aliens who like nothing better than getting down to the cheesiest and most cringeworthy muzak in the known galaxy (Space Channel 5).