GregHowley.com

I've been shooting a lot of zombies recently. And no, I'm not talking about a mixed drink. Neither am I barricaded in my house and besieged by the undead, although I did have a dream along those lines recently. I'm talking about all the zombie-related video games I've been playing recently. And while a good portion of this weekend was dedicated to Baldurs Gate 2 and Super Mario Galaxy, for just a moment let's focus on the zombies.

Firstly, Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii. It's an on-rails shooter, meaning that you don't control where you move at all - you just point the Wiimote like a light gun and shoot the undead. I've just completed the first chapter, "Train Derailment", which I'm assuming details the events of Resident Evil 0, a game I've never played. Its five sections include three as Billy and Claire - you can play those in multiplayer - and two sections about the origins of the mysterious Albert Wesker. I'll tell you, a lot of these sections are damned hard. It took me eleven tries to beat Albert Wesker's final boss battle. I counted.

The two-player game just allows two people to point at the screen and fire via red and blue targeting reticles. You share a life bar, and the only competition is in who picks up that cool shotgun or grenade launcher first. You can also collect documents that detail more of the backstory of the Resident Evil franchise.

Another of the game's cool elements is that it's incorporated a bit of Resident Evil 4's reaction mechanics. From time to time, you'll have to press A or B or shake the Wiimote quickly in order to duck an attack or dodge an explosion. It works well.

In the end, I'll enjoy the game, but I expect my biggest criticism to be that while Umbrella Chronicles revisits the events of the original Resident Evil and a few of the spin offs, I've heard that it doesn't touch on Resident Evil 2, my favorite game in the series. And of course it won't detail Resident Evil 4, since as I understand it Umbrella had already collapsed by then. I don't even think it covers Code Veronica X, which was a pretty good game, even if it was way too hard.

The second zombie game I recently picked up on the cheap via EBay is Resident Evil: Deadly Silence. It's a remake of the original Resident Evil game for the Nintendo DS. I bought it because having finished Phantom Hourglass, I'm in need of another DS game, and also because I enjoyed the original Resident Evil game so much. Deadly Silence has a "Rebirth Mode", which incorporates a few new elements that use the DS's stylus and microphone capabilities. Yeah, it's a tacked-on gimmick, but I'll take it. I've already gone through one stylus knife fight, which was nothing spectacular, and an added stylus puzzle which was kind of fun. Overall, I'll enjoy the game mainly because I enjoyed the original. I can only hope that the DS gives Resident Evil 2 a similar treatment at some point, although I fear that the game is too big to fit on a tiny DS cart.

Lastly, I've been replaying the demo I downloaded for The Typing of the Dead, which I enjoy primarily because it's effing hilarious. The game is a remake of House of the Dead, but instead of killing zombies with a light gun, you kill them by typing the words and phrases printed across them. The game is firstly hilarious because the voice acting is so comically bad. Secondly, the characters are running around with zombie-killing typewriters strapped to their chests which is delightfully bizarre. And lastly, the actual words and phrases you have to type are sometimes so funny that I'm too busy laughing to type. I've killed zombies by typing "poop" and "in the sack", and a couple of the tougher bosses had phrases like "financial muscle" or "suggestive skirt". But my favorite so far has to be the zombie who popped up with "who shot JR?". You can download the Typing of the Dead demo from this page. Just be aware that it's a really old game and the only way to quit when you're done playing is by using CTRL-ALT-DELETE.

I've just learned that Gametap has a full version of Typing of the Dead available - I may have to go check it out.