I’ll be honest, I don’t know a lot about Buddhism. If Buddhists have a Hell then it’s news to me. But if there is a Buddhist Hell, this looks like a pretty good approximation.
The basic idea of this region is that naked people are getting chased around and tortured by these scary-looking giants. It’s a lot of cartoonishly gruesome animated eye candy, really. Every which way you look, someone is getting crushed by a spiked hammer, impaled on something, burned up in a vat of lava… you get the idea.
Note that the region is damage-enabled, so if you are anxious to have the Full Hell Experience, just step into one of the lava streams. Frankly, the screams of the people getting tortured are enough for me.
There’s not much to do other than look around, but there’s a lot of looking around to do. It might be a tad more entertaining if you could, for example, sit on a poseball that put you among the people getting crushed between rocks. It’s a small nit, but it’s one of those great lost opportunities for richer interaction.
I mean, after a while, you’ve seen everything, right? One interesting note, though. I’d swear the giants were… enjoying themselves. Better than being on the other end, I suppose.
The one interactive thing I did find were some pose balls hidden among the birds circling overhead. Sit on one and it will dangle you above Hell.
August 19, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Garth – you were in too much of a hurry to get out of hell! If you look closely there are speeding poseballs that have you dashing franticly along with the screaming naked people. Catching those poseballs is a bit challenging, as they really do move fast. I enjoyed Jingoku, as much for watching the really warped avatars that seem to hang out there as for the scenery.
August 20, 2008 at 8:14 am
The Buddhist Hell region is pretty awesome to explore, but I agree, it could have been way better had there been more opportunities for interaction. And I tried to die so hard but nothing there actually causes any damage. I tried standing in the fire, swimming in the lava, impaling myself…nothing worked. Still, I enjoyed my visit.
August 20, 2008 at 5:14 pm
There really is a Buddhist hell, although it’s traditionally called “naraka”. Jigoku is more of a Japanese version of the Chinese underworld. Naraka is usually broken into cold and hot hells, rather than things like being crushed with rocks, which is what the Chinese hell is like (although really creative, like having to climb a tree of knives). A lot of western Buddhists gloss over naraka because it’s not one of the fluffy gentle bits of Buddhism.
I discovered that falling will take off points, but I couldn’t get injured in other ways there.