Biohazard The Real 2: A Review + Biohazard: The Escape

The reason I started this blog was to tell people about Biohazard The Real, an interactive haunted house attraction in which you get a gun and shoot zombies and creatures from the Resident Evil game series. It was pretty damn awesome, so when USJ announced a sequel for this year, a trip to Osaka was automatically added to our calendars. We were not disappointed.

The process for getting tickets is the same as last year. Even though we arrived around park opening time, we only just managed to get 2 tickets for an hour before the park closed. This might have been because this time the attraction was longer and didn’t contain separate routes, so the number of tickets available each day was lower. It might have also been because it was a national holiday in Japan, and everyone had gathered to see the new Harry Potter addition to the park. Avoid national holidays like a zombie plague.

Officially employees of the Umbrella Corporation!

The attraction itself was so, so much better than last year. For starters, you got a shotgun. A pump action shotgun. How awesome is that? Extremely awesome! There were also green herbs that healed you if you shot them, and the attraction itself was longer. The best improvement for me was the decor. Instead of a narrow corridor painted black and filled with some lazy barrels, these guys went all out. The rooms were wider, to make space for all the shotgun blasting, and the sets were made to look like actual Umbrella labs, including a room with 3 live  Tyrants standing in those glass cylinders looking out at you (best job ever, totally applying for that next year).

Nemesis will always be my favourite!

You were guided through the rooms by members of staff and told exactly where to stand before the monsters would pop out at you, I’m guessing for effective time management. An awesome moment was when a licker crawled across the floor right in front of me. I shot it right in the head. When the staff left us to our own devices though, hilarity ensued. The couple leading our group of 8 went through the wrong door and we ended up in the behind the scenes staff area. This area looked pretty cool too, so it actually to us a while to realise what had happened, and when we did we didn’t know what to do so we kinda stood around for a bit until a member of staff came by, and completely in character asked us what the hell we were doing and told us to be on our merry way. So there you have it, VIP backstage access for the low, low price of stupidity and confusion.

Biohazard themed food served in bloody newspapers for authenticity!

The end of the fun ensures the 0% survivor rate by splitting up the people that have green health (2 in our group, including Becca), and those who were not as fortunate. Becca swapped shotguns with me so I got to go into the special room with some t-virus vials and a keypad asking for a 4 digit code. We could see the other group through the glass, and I was told that the code might have been in their room, but everyone was too busy staring at us, so the guy I was with ended up punching in some random numbers, and… everybody died. It was pretty cool because we got to see fire effect on the glass of the room of our group members, and Becca later told me that the room actually got hot. So I guess they all burned to death? And we got infected with the t-virus? Or maybe we set off an explosion? Who knows! It was definitely an experience that went above and beyond what they did the previous year, and for this I applaud them.

The eye is watching you eat it!

A new Biohazard attraction has already been announced for next year, running from January 23rd until May 10th 2015. Entitled Biohazard: The Escape, this attraction seems to be a little different, in that it is an escape the area under a time limit type of game, which have become increasingly popular in Japan recently. Expect key hunts, puzzles and code doors – if they use some of the puzzles from the Resident Evil series, this is sure to be a blast. Watch this space for more info.