Some games are great ideas. And some are even better ideas when they combine silly control schemes with awesome rail-style shooting. This week on Old Games That Don’t Suck Thursday, it’s Typing of the Dead.

I played this game on the PC in 2004 by recommendation of a friend. It’s truly ridiculous, mostly because it takes an established game and turns it on it’s head with an obscure control scheme. Like a rail shooter, you follow a set path in which you must kill enemies before they have time to jump up and attack you. Instead of shooting a gun you type words. Each letter you tap fires a shot, and each time you complete a word you get a hit on the enemy. Missed letters are missed shots, take too long and you get attacked.  As the game progresses words turn into sentences and the game requires faster typing and reaction time.

I really like the voice acting in this game.  Given that your shooting with spelling words on a keyboard the game can’t take itself too seriously.  The voice acting seems intentionally terrible, off-key, and mistimed.  I hope it is.  Either way, it is really, really funny, and I enjoyed it way too much.

I beat the game.  Hopefully you can too.  Copies of this game are floating around on multiple platforms at the moment, including Windows.  Check it out, it’s worth at least one good run through.