Improved attraction offers Leon and Claire routes, possible combat with new monsters.
There’s a crew of Ghost-type Pokemon hanging out at Universal Studios Japan right now as part of the park’s family-friendly Hahaha Halloween Party celebration. But if you prefer your Halloween theme park events to be legitimately scary, yet still with a Japanese pop culture element, you’ll be happy to know that USJ now also has a Resident Evil survival horror maze, and the management is adamant that it’s not for little kids.
Biohazard The Extreme Plus (Biohazard being the name that the Resident Evil franchise goes by in Japan) just opened on September 8, and draws its inspiration from Resident Evil 2. Just like in the classic Capcom video game, you’re trapped inside the Raccoon City police station during a zombie outbreak, and it turns out shambling undead are only some of the monsters you have to deal with while trying to solve a series of puzzles and escape to safety.
Biohazard The Extreme Plus was also part of USJ’s Halloween festivities last year, but the park says that this year’s version has been expanded to feature new monsters and characters to encounter. For starters, the new attraction’s description mentions that you start by picking between one of two routes to follow, paralleling Resident Evil 2’s game structure: either the Leon route, which has you coordinating with police officer Leon Kennedy, and the Claire route, which begins with Claire Redfield arriving in Raccoon City looking for her older brother Chris.
As for characters, the 2023 Biohazard The Extreme Plus website lists Leon, Claire, mysterious spy Ada Wong, and young orphan Sherry Birkin as figures from the game you might encounter. On the creature side, zombies will, of course appear, and so may lickers, the Tyrant, Ivy/Plant 43, and the G creature (you can see Ivy in the image up above).
Continuing the connection with video game play mechanics, in Biohazard The Extreme Plus your complete success isn’t guaranteed. While we doubt unsuccessful players are actually devoured alive or turned into zombies, you do get an end-of-game ranking depending on how many puzzles you solve and objectives you complete, and the course of the story and the events that take place change depending on how well you do. Also, while not explicitly mentioned in the attraction description, multiple preview images show a player clearly firing a gun at the monsters, so it seems like there will be some sort of option for confronting them directly, not just running and hiding.
It all sounds like a pretty intense experience, as does the fact that Universal Studios Japan says that only guests age 13 and up can play Biohazard The Extreme Plus, which will be running until November 5.
Source: PR Times, Universal Studios Japan
Top image: PR Times
Insert images: PR Times, Universal Studios Japan
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
Follow Casey on Twitter, where he honestly misses the fixed camera angles of the old Resident Evil games.