Universal Studios Japan 2019 Halloween Roundup

If you've been following the Twitter (@Taurinensis) account you'll know that I've just returned from a trip to Osaka after going to see the Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios Japan(a while ago now actually since I got delayed posting this) .  I've talked about these nights before on the blog so this time I'm going to just give a quick roundup of all the attractions I saw this year.

Space Fantasy The Ride: Black Hole

Space Fantasy is one of the roller coasters at USJ and puts riders in a rotating car that will twist as the coaster falls and turns.  Usually the ride is all cutesy but entering it during the Halloween event gives you some kind of story with a scientist that is using a black hole to open a dimensional rift or something.  The ride itself is just Space Fantasy but with all the lights turned off.  The exact same ride only this time you can't see shit and there's a voice in the background saying stuff like "Ha ha! I have you now!" and stuff like that.  Maybe if you had never been on the ride before and had no idea what was coming it might be exciting but otherwise it was just kind of "meh"

Area 51

A walk through "horror maze" that was hosted inside the Backdraft ride.  Starts with a guy coming out telling you that there's an alien invasion and that you have to escape through a forest only for him to be gunned down by some woman who then informs you he's been taken over by an alien parasite and now you have to escape to their base at the end.  Interestingly, only half the backdraft ride is used and you get taken out of a back door for the "maze" part of the attraction which has alien dudes following you around the place.  When you get to the base it turns out that it's been completely overrun and you move through alien infested corridors to the exit.  At the end you mash a bunch of buttons with some randos on a panel and save the earth.  Not bad but even it's attempts at jump scares were kind of weak although this is probably by design since the maze opened early in the morning.

Cult of Chucky

A similar walk through horror house to Area 51 but with the intensity ramped up a little bit since it didn't open until the evening, standard fare.

Blood Legend

Blood Legend was a short horror movie in the same "4D" theatre that they host that Shrek show in, 4D being the gimmick of seats moving around and blasting air at you when certain things on screen happen.  The show starts by recanting the legend of actual serial killer Elizabeth Bathory and then plays a movie about two girls who are on holiday in Hungry.  The two girls end up visiting her estate under the impression its some kind of museum and then get chased around a bit.  Fairly standard stuff but I'm pretty sure Elizabeth Bathory is the main villain in Castlevania Bloodlines although I might be mistaken

Biohazard: The Extreme

This was the attraction in particular that I went all the way to Osaka for.  Before you can ride the thing you have to go get a ticket to book a time slot and what I was surprised to see is that there was a "Leon Route" and a "Claire Route" and then whole thing was very clearly styled after the Resident Evil 2 remake.  We did both routes on this trip starting with Leon.  Once again, it's just a standard haunted house type affair but seeing all the scenes from Resident Evil 2 remade for the attraction was kind of cool.  There's a few zombies stomping around that jump at you as you walk through but eventually you get stopped by a staff member who warns you about a creature that's sensitive to sound so you have to be quiet.  You are then led down a corridor with a Licker in it and once out you come to a corridor with a big glass window in it.  This is where the two routes are different as Mr X comes out on one end and then either Leon or Claire will pop out of the other, yell at you to escape and then have a little tussle with the big lad.  You go through some more rooms with some more monsters until you get told that your going to have to fight whatever is chasing you and you are led into a room with a bunch of light(?) guns.  You grab one and start blasting and the enemy on screen which changes depending on which character you are.  I think you can beat it and escape but both times we did it the group didn't do enough damage so it popped up during our escape sequence and we got a "You have died" message.  All in all, a good bit of fanwank if your familiar with Resident Evil but my wife also seemed to enjoy it a fair bit and she doesn't know anything about the series

It may be a little on the pricy side but the Halloween night at Universal is a pretty good time.  I'll probably go again next year when they have more Resi goodness for me.

Final Fantasy XR Ride at Universal Studios Japan

There's quite a few posts dotted around this blog now about stuff at Universal Studios Japan.  I'm not affiliated I swear, they just keep doing video game related stuff and therefore I'm compelled to go and check it out.

Usually I go to USJ for the Halloween events but this time I went out of season to go and check out a limited time Final Fantasy themed roller coaster they had.

The ride has, for now, replaced the Space Fantasy ride and the whole area has been COMPLETELY changed for the event.  As you come into the vicinity of the ride you can hear the series main theme played on the park speakers which does a pretty good job of hyping one up for the upcoming excitement. 

If you had never heard of Space Fantasy before there's almost no way you'd know it even existed in this space before they changed it for this ride, EVERYTHING has been made over. 

For example this used to be a big talking space face that would move around and all sorts of crazy shit and it's been COMPLETELY gutted to make space for this table with Moogles on it decorated with various iconic Final Fantasy weaponry. 

Once inside the ride itself its the usual Space Fantasy coaster but you are given a pair of "Crystal Goggles" so that you can navigate your way to Midgar and get back to an airship that's waiting for you.  Inside the VR you approach a crystal that has a little picture of Midgar on it and straight away some twat punches it and sends you to the Thunder Plains from FFX.  This happens a whole bunch of times and you fly through a bunch of areas from other Final Fantasy games until you land in Midgar and watch Cloud and Sephiroth have an Advent Children fight for a bit.  The ride ends with a bunch of Moogles telling you that you did a great job despite the fact that all you did was sit in a chair and get flung around a steel track.

All in all it was a pretty good experience.  Nothing out of this world but not bad for a bit of fanwank at a theme park.  I actually wanted to ride it a second time but the wait time became pretty massive in the afternoon so I had to skip it.  Also there was merchandise, I bought a water bottle with a chocobo on it that was pretty cool but they were expecting people to pay about £25 for a fucking ball pen which is just retarded.  Unfortunately it's not a permanent thing and Space Fantasy will make its return before too long but I'm sure once the ride is gone you'll be able to find some footage of it on YouTube or something.

Universal Studio Japan Horror Night 2016

I recently took a day off work to check out the Halloween Horror Night at Universal Studios Japan and while it wasn't Resident Evil themed this year I thought I'd still say a few words on the thing.  I would just like to point out before I start talking about the Halloween night is that the true winners for scariest park attraction were the roller coasters.  I have a fear of heights so while these things weren't making me lose any sleep, those roller coasters more than made up for my yearly dose of Halloween Horror.

The first event that I went to as part of the evening was the Chucky Horror Factory.  This was a sort of standard walk through horror house, lots of jump scares and dudes in costumes screaming at you as you turn around corners.  Nothing special, not particularly freaky but I thought that, and this is true for all the horror houses, the props and effects were pretty well done.

After that we checked out the Japanese horror house which was called Tatari

This was a another haunted house which was apparently cursed and full of evil dolls that wanted you dead.  We were organized into groups of six and made to hold a rope as we proceeded through the area with a bunch of randoms.  The person at the front of the queue was given a little piece of paper at the start and we were told to place it on a thing to get rid of the curse in the house.  From there there was lots of spooky rooms filled with dolls and people jumping out and begging for their lives before they got dragged back into the set to be killed off.  I feel like I've already seen this kind of thing before playing Fatal Frame but it wasn't bad by any means.

From there we we went into the Exorcist and Nightmare on Elm Street houses which were similar to Tatari in the way you had a hold a rope with a bunch of randoms and walk through the area only this time they were themed on their respective movies.  Out of those 2 the Exorcist attraction was significantly better because the set was a bit creepier, the scares were more efficiently set up and there was a little bit of interactivity with the visitors as one guy had to flick water on the girl in the bed.

What's weird is that all these attractions are given a sort of scariness rating.  Tatari was rated 5/5 and Elm Street/Exorcist was given a 4/5.  However, in my opinion the best attraction they had was the Sadako (The Ring) horror show which was only rated 1/5.

This took place in the building they use for the Terminator 2 show and starts out much the same with with a representative from Cyberdyne trying to give a presentation about how cool all their futuristic shit is.  Of course the presentation gets taken over by Sadako and things start to get all fucked up.  What made this superior to the horror houses, at least in my opinion, is because it's a sort of sit down show type thing there's less of a reliance on jump scares and a bit more work was spent on building atmosphere.  After Sadako there was a similar performance based on a series of books/movies called School Horror Stories or 学校の怪談

This was a "4D" thing where the chairs go up and down and the seat in front of you spits water at you when someone gets their shit wrecked on screen.  Not incredibly scary but still pretty entertaining to watch although the horror in this series seems to be a lot more in your face than Japanese horror usually is.  There was one other event that we missed in the Harry Potter area called Death Eater Attack which we missed but according to a friend of mine who caught it said it was highly entertaining.

If you're looking for a genuinely scary experience then Universal is probably not the best place to go but it's still an entertaining day out.  From my experience of living in Japan for a while, the Japanese are a little sensitive to horror themes and I was having more fun at the reaction of the people in the attractions with us than actually being scared of anything myself.  Still, it was a lot of fun and I'd probably do it again next year!

[Mediasplat] Biohazard 2: The Escape

So recently I went down to Osaka and checked out the Biohazard 2: The Escape event being held at Universal Studios Japan!  I wrote about the experience over at Mediasplat so click the link below and check it out!

https://mediasplat.net/identity-gaming-biohazard-2-the-escape/

No spoilers though, I don't want to get in trouble

Biohazard: The Escape

So during my Golden week I went down to Universal Studios Japan and took part in Biohazard: The Escape.  I was supposed to blog about this ages ago but because I'm stupid I forgot to do it.  Just for the record, the people who run the event are very adamant about people not posting spoilers so I'll only be describing what the event IS rather than any of the intricate details.

So one thing that seems to be quite popular in Japan are "Escape Games".  These are games where you are given a bunch of puzzles to solve in a certain time limit and you must solve them all in order to win.  Each game comes with its own plot line to add a little bit more immersion to the whole experience and while they are very challenging (and a little expensive) they are very enjoyable.  The company who run these games do have their own original stuff but sometimes they theme their games on popular anime/movies or whatever.  The last game I did prior to Biohazard was based on a show called Assassination Classroom

I've never seen the show or read it's Manga but that didn't take away much from the overall experience, these things are rather well crafted.

So what about Biohazard?  Well of course, this thing being part of USJ means that it was WAYYYYY above anything that I've done before this point.  At the start all the players are herded into a big room and are given a map, a padlocked box and an iPad.  The basic premise for the game is that you came to a recording studio to see a presentation of a new energy patch put out by Umbrella but during the show the place gets overrun by T-Virus and Zombies.  From there you are told you have 60 minutes to cure yourself and escape the building or, like all classic Resi games, you get bombed to death.

Then the game starts and you are let into a 4 story building in order to solve a punch of puzzles that are delivered to you via the iPad you were given at the start.  If I mention any more specifics from that point onwards I'd be spoiling puzzles so this is where my description ends.  At the end though, all the losers, which comprised 85% of the players were put into a room, told the answers to the puzzles so we could have a collective "are you kidding me!?" moment and then we were bombed to death (room filled with smoke) while I Tyrant ran around the room scaring people.

During the event, there were a number of actors dressed up as Zombies who were lurking around the venue in order to scare the pants off you.  They absolutely weren't allowed to touch you but they did an effective job.  They would move around, hide, act erratically, my hat goes off to the people they brought in to do that, great job.  Overall the whole thing was awesome and it was a truly memorable experience.

I'm already excited for my next escape game, I'm just surprised one hasn't been Layton themed yet.

Bullshit #10: The Universal Studio Gift Bag

Well I've gone an caught a cold again, so here is a short post on some bullshit I noticed during my visit to Universal Studios Japan.

So, anyone who has been to a theme park knows that scattered around the park are various gift shops and such, so you can buy overpriced stuff to give to people when you get back home.  Now, most places that you can go to give you a bag with a handle, but not USJ!  USJ gives you the piece of shit bag which you have to awkwardly clutch throughout your entire stay in the park.

You may be thinking that this can all be avoided if you just buy the gifts at the end of the day, but this doesn't fucking work either since every fucking bright spark does that, and it's impossible to navigate the shops through the sea of people.

So fuck these bags, sort this shit out USJ.

The Universal Studios Halloween Thing

Well after spending about a day recovering from the walk-a-thon that was my trip to Osaka, it's time to start telling you good people about what this stuff was like.

So I figured since this is a gaming blog, and not a Japan blog, I'd start with the Resident Evil themed stuff and do the other stuff later. 

So first lets start with some bad news, I missed the Resident Evil show thing.  Now this doesn't mean I missed everything Resident Evil related, there was plenty of that going on, but they had a show scheduled to start at 6pm inside the building where they do the Terminator 3D movie thing.  So I rolled up about 30 mins early, thinking I'd get in line for it before other people, and by the time we got there, it was full capacity, and they only do 1 show a day.

But, since it's in the Terminator building, I can go and assume that it's a 3D movie, that involves actors on stage, probably fighting a Tyrant.  If anyone knows EXACTLY what goes down in there, put it in a comment or throw me an e-mail or something, I'd like to know.

The closest I got

Well, albeit a little disappointed, all was not lost.  Not getting into this thing meant we were able to hit the queue early for the restaurant nearby that was doing the Resident Evil themed menu!

I'll put up some more pictures of the food at the bottom of the post, but it tasted pretty good.  I ordered both the drinks as well since I had to try everything.  The mixed herb drink was this soda water thing, where the staff gave you a vial of red herb and let you choose between another vial for a green herb or a blue herb.  Being really tired at that point from the day at the park, I went for the green herb and it tasted pretty good, was sort of fruity.  The Berkin G drink was a whiskey highball (whiskey and soda water) that had a piece of liche in it, made to look like William Berkins eye after he took the G virus. (More food pics at the bottom)

This is where the whole eye in the drink thing comes from

Once we had finished eating and got back outside, shit had popped off.  The area of the park near the restaurant had become this Resident Evil themed show type thing, with various monsters such as Nemesis and a Hunter walking around on a stage.  There was also zombies shambling around the crowd, scaring the shit out of unsuspecting onlookers.

Occasionally, the on-stage monsters would hop down and start terrorising people too

The zombies were all over the park, changing attire as you got near the different rides, so near Waterworld they were all in scuba gear and so on.  This idea for a "show" or was actually pretty good, since the zombies were in the crowd, people would start panicking when accidentally bumping into other guests, so the whole thing was really fucking with people.  On top of the zombies, there was a RE2 Claire Redfield running around too trying to gun down would-be attackers of the crowd

The last thing to mention about the Resident Evil stuff was the big projection they had on one of the walls.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be the city area from the start of Resident Evil 3. 

So that's about it really for the Resident Evil stuff, there was some other stuff going on around the park but that was all full capacity too and the wait times for the "horror versions" of the rides were insane, and riding one of them would have resulted in us being late for the Shinkansen.

I'll throw up some more pictures, and right at the bottom I'll put a video up too! Enjoy!

Jill was milling around too

The Berkin Drink

Full HP

Supposed to be a brain

Hunter

Licker, Really hard to get a good picture due to distance and crowd confusion

 VIDEO!

Going to Osaka! and some more Panzer Dragoon!

OK! So tomorrow morning I'm going to be getting up bright and early and fucking off to Osaka for a while.  While I'm gone, I don't think I'll have access to an internet connection so I won't be able to make posts for about 2 days, but when I get back you can probably expect pictures and stuff.

While I'm there I'll be hitting up Universal Studios where they are doing their super scary Resident Evil thing

This should be interesting, so even if you give zero fucks about Osaka, there is still going to be something gaming related upon my return!

Also, I have 3 new parts of my Panzer Dragoon Saga Playthrough but there is some audio syncing problems.  Basically,  FFSplit, the recording software, got an update and started recording in MP4 instead of FLV.  This, for some reason, caused everything to fuck up and now it's all out of sync.  I spent a while working on it to re sync it, but I couldn't get it perfect in the end, I'm just not good enough at editing yet.

Well, here they are anyway, it's not THAT bad.