To me, the key difference between first-person games on PCs and consoles are the control schemes, how they map from intentions (move forward) to player actions (press W), and how the buttons, sticks, and etc. interact with the player’s body.

For example, keyboard control requires coordination of multiple fingers for diagonal motion (e.g. hold W and A), whereas analog controls have a more direct mapping of intention to action (the movement vector is the angle and direction of the stick from the centre).

Speed is also different. In Thief, the player using a keyboard has to toggle between discrete sneaking and running modes: there are only two speeds. On the console, the player has direct, analog control of their character’s speed: it’s up to the player how fast or how slow to move.

The keyboard also has a greater management cost: the player has to remember stuff like the keys to toggle modes, the mode she’s in, and has to coordinate two or three simultaneous actions across two or three fingers.

I think in these two examples, dual analog controls are less abstract and more closely related to what the player is trying to achieve in the game world than are keyboard controls. This might be why some players find it easier to pick up and learn console games.

That said, analog sticks are controlled by thumbs—they’re literally “all thumbs.” With the mouse, motion comes from wrist and arm movements. With the mouse, gross movements are easier to make (arm) and fine ones too (wrist, slow movement). Thumbs aren’t as capable as arms and wrists, and that makes the tradeoff between accuracy and speed harder to adapt during play.

The mouse is also not bound by an arbitrary magnitude as are analog sticks (which the player can only push so far). Instead, mouses are limited (at most) by the physical range of the player’s arm (or the mouse wire): I can move it almost as far and as fast as I can. This means that, in theory, I can whip around much faster in Quake, and snipe more effectively in Team Fortress, with a mouse than with analog sticks.

But, in practice, I suck at Halo and Team Fortress, mouse or gamepad.

Do you like zombies? Like arcade games? Want to improve your WPM? Well, there is a way to combine the joy of Land of the Dead, Virtua Cop, and repetitive keyboard drills: Sega’s goofy masterpiece, The Typing of the Dead. The game alters the well-known rail shooter The House of the Dead 2 by replacing guns with keyboards. Zombies advance on you with word bubbles floating in the space ahead of them. To defeat them, you need to type that word as quickly and accurately as you can.

For those of us who are lazy and in front of a computer all day, but still have a nagging urge for self-improvement, Typing of the Dead is a great way to avoid work, the out of doors, and other people. It’s a tounge-in-cheek re-purposing of a badly written old arcade game (the voice acting is atrocious) but there’s just enough Mavis Beacon to it that you won’t feel too guilty for sinking an entire afternoon into it.

But Typing is satisfying in a way the Mavis Beacon tutors never were. Landing a long word without making a single error means juggling a walking corpse with bullets. Your skill isn’t a score or a ribbon, but explosions of green blood, the rush of having destroyed a wave of infected, knife-weilding circus chimps. You get the feeling that the home row can really kick some ass.

Typing was developed by the same company responsible for the excellent Jet Grind Radio. Originally released for the Dreamcast (your in-game character carries one strapped to his back), the game seems to have found an audience on the PC, and was popular enough to have been re-released for the PS2 in Japan a few years ago.

The full game is available at HOTU, as a direct download or BitTorrent. Be warned, it comes with a suspicious, warez-fabulous installer and loud sound-effects.

I recommend disabling the music: go to the folder where the game was installed and, in the sound folder, rename the bgm folder to anything other than bgm.