San Diego Comic-Con attendees were fully immersed in the interactive world of Guillermo del Toro at Legendary Pictures booth on Wednesday night. Hot off last month’s announcement of the official release date for Pacific Rim 2 (and the news of a Pacific Rim animated series), Legendary and filmmaker Guillermo del Toro have been working with tech developer Oculus VR on a first-person experience that allows fans to step into the cockpit one of the film’s Jaegers and engage in Kaiju battle.

I previewed a sneak peek of this experience myself on one of Legendary’s custom-built simulator rigs, as the Oculus Rift goggles were placed over my eyes and headphones over my ears. My field of vision filled with the interior of the cockpit of the Gipsy Danger as my copilot signaled me to prepare for neural interface. A quick mind warp and we were soon underwater, face-to-face with the Category III Kaiju known as Knifehead. Plasma cannon blasts were ineffective as Knifey soon struck the Jaeger, disabling one of its arms. A couple more strikes and soon Knifehead’s knife head was breaching the cockpit and directly in my face, bringing the simulation to an end.

I was nearly eaten alive by zombies, singed to a cinder by Smaug, stuffed & mounted by Norman Bates, and gassed to unconsciousness by body odor, but somehow, I lived to tell the tale… of PREVIEW NIGHT!

Gone are the days where preview night at San Diego Comic-Con was a quiet pre-convention affair for those lucky few to take in the sites and sounds before the throng of geek society overran the show floor. This preview night was as madly packed as I’ve ever seen the convention floor on its most attended days gone by, and that’s a wonderful thing.

I couldn’t remotely get to see everything I wanted to in those few preview hours, but I made the most of my time, and narrowly avoided my demise on more than one occasion.

Check out my preview night photo-journey after the jump.

At this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, part of Legendary’s Guillermo del Toro experience was an immersive walkthrough down a gothic corridor populated with costumes and props from the sets of del Toro’s 2015 Victorian horror film, Crimson Peak. Del Toro himself was on hand on Wednesday night to personally guide us through — you can see video of this here below, along with some photos.

During the guided walkthrough, del Toro pointed out the painstaking attention to detail given to creating the ultimate spook house replica, some of which can be seen in the video below. Wood moldings were deliberately cut to appear blurry, hiding the shapes of bodies in their negative space, butterfly motifs are embedded everywhere within the costumes and props. The family crest hides a skull when seen in the right light. Even the wallpaper itself hides the word “˜fear’ in its repeating pattern. For the actual film shoot, a three-story high, fully-functional house was built on a soundstage, and most of the special effects were done in-camera, shot on stage as practical effects.

As it is every year, San Diego Comic-Con is the perfect venue to showcase any new ventures that Hollywood might have to offer. Case in point: the Batman cowl that Ben Affleck is set to don for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Caped Crusader, fans from all over are being given the chance to see Batman’s new cape and cowl on the convention floor at SDCC before the movie releases. Word has it that this was a surprise for everyone, including DC Comics publishers!

Check out the photos below and make your own judgment call. Do you like the suit so far? I think I do!

Marvel has released a special Comic-Con poster for their upcoming movie Ant-Man.

The poster features stars Paul Rudd (Scott Lang) and Michael Douglas (Hank Pym), as well as the titular superhero in various sizes big and small.

You can check out the Ant-Man Comic-Con poster below.