The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication Review
Release Date: May 9th. 2024 (PC), October 24th, 2024 (Consoles)
Developers: SOFTSTAR ENTERTAINMENT
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S (Reviewed), PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch
Price: $24.99 (PC), $39.99 (Console)
As a longtime fan of horror, one can typically find themselves wanting to experience something that either pushes the envelope or tries to explore the unknown in a deeper way once the medium begins to blur into each other from project to project and property to property. Even some of the most beloved passions, hobbies, and interests from an individual can begin to feel stale when the perception of repetition sinks in, bringing with it that mundane feeling that "everything is the same". One thing that's always been appreciated, however, is the idea of bringing folk tales, mythologies, beliefs, and legends into fruition on the screen that would otherwise have remained either a bedtime story or a news article at a point in time.
When I originally watched The Bridge Curse back in 2020, I thought it was a fine film, but its basis on an actual bridge and haunting at Tunghai University in Taiwan kept me invested more than I thought it would, and it periodically comes into my mind from time to time when thinking about legends and hauntings from around the world. Fast-forward two years later to 2022, a surprising video game adaptation in the form of The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation was released, and I was pleasantly surprised by what it offered and how it helped flesh out the story a bit more from a first-person perspective now that we were in control of a character rather than watching one play out in a film. It felt far more personal and terrifying, experiencing the events alongside these students who wanted to capitalize on the story for their film club, only to find out that the haunting is very much real and powerful, leading to a night of torment and horrors unlike anything they expected.
The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication goes well beyond the films and first video game by going fully supernatural. While the overall theme and premise of its school (this time at Wen Hua University in Taiwan) and haunting are still in play here, they serve as more of a flavoring to help provide a deeper, more complex narrative that sees a cast of characters - one reporter and three film club students - experience supernatural events that take them to different dimensions, ward off monsters and spirits, and solve puzzles in an ever-changing environment with a powerful lantern called the Anima Lamp to help keep them safe.
The environments are nothing to write home about, but they're detailed and well-designed enough that it is extremely rare to find yourself lost or trying to figure out what to do next. The game hands you a map to help make sense of your surroundings, but I found myself seldom opening it up as everything felt like a proper campus or set piece that was intuitive. This was hugely appreciated as typically lower-budget horror games have a tendency to create illogical puzzles with little to no environmental storytelling to provide hints or logic to a set of steps that need come next, but The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication did a great job at keeping things concise and within a proper radius of the puzzle needing to be solved, getting rid of any potential running around and going from room to room for X amount of time until you trial-and-error your way out of an event or obstacle like some others do. The only real frustrating moments stemmed from some scripted chase sequences where even a millisecond of turning the stick slightly in the wrong direction or slowing down would cause for an immediate capture - and this is while, in some cases, you'll have to maneuver and dodge debris, interact with objects, or complete QTE scenarios.
Horror games wouldn’t be what they are without its most important element, though: sound design. The Bridge Curse 2 both excels and is downright embarrassing in this department, but its pros far outweigh the cons if you can look past exactly what these cons entail. From the beginning of the game all the way until the credits roll, you'll be taken through a variety of environments that go from something out of White Day, to Paranormal HK, to DOOM. It's such an insane shift in surroundings that it can almost be disorienting, but the sound design that follows each location is fantastically done, especially if you can experience this with surround sound either through headphones or a home theater system. From the dust falling from the ceilings to the cracks of concrete as they're being walked over, the echoes of an empty hallway, the flickering of a light, bugs flying around, fire from pits below, incoherent voices, or out of tune instruments in the distance, the sound is meticulously crafted to be very much part of that world and help make it feel alive. The sound was so good at times I would typically find myself just standing in the middle of a room just to hear everything I possibly could and pinpoint locations. It became such an inherent part of the game that, for better or for worse, I welcomed any new sounds that were meant to startle as I wanted to see what sort of aftershock it would cause to the proceeding events and surroundings I found myself in.
Where this sound fails tremendously, however, is the abhorrent noises coming out of the characters mouths that were purportedly from voice "actors" of some sort. The first game was nothing to write home about either, but the voice "acting" in this game felt like more of a mockery of the craft than anything else. I understand not having the budget to get more high-profile actors, but I know for a fact that there is a ton of talent out there willing to do just about anything until they get their big break who would have done this for damn near free just to give a character a chance to shine. Hell, if there's a third entry, just contact me - someone who has NO experience - and I can make it worthwhile without even trying because that's how horrendous the voicework was here. While the female characters were fine for the most part (though far from good), it was the two guys that had the mental capacity of Ed, Edd, and Eddy (and even that I feel bad for saying as to not offend those dudes) that really irked me to no end.
Though I have no doubt this will vary from person to person, as someone who has grown rather fond of the artform over the last decade, it legitimately felt like two pre-teens were given a script that they were forced to do, and did so in a sarcastic tone throughout that unfortunately brought down the entire product. If you've recently played The Casting of Frank Stone, there is a character there named Stan who is irrefutably a next level cretin with no redeeming qualities. Here, you get two of them, and to make matters worse, they're the ones that get the most gameplay out of the whole cast as you'll be otherwise rotating from character to character throughout the game. The security guard, Sergeant Huang, was pretty terrible too, but at least he made me laugh from time to time, so he was somewhat forgivable.
The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication will take players anywhere between 5-10 hours to play through, and I don't think that's such a bad thing as the game is well paced to accommodate for all sorts of different play styles and schedules. If you're thorough, chances are you can get all of the collectables in one go, but thankfully with a chapter select system after completion, one can go back and pick up anything that they missed, also finding some easter eggs trickled throughout.
By no means will The Bridge Curse 2 be particularly terrifying for a lot of seasoned players, but it's still well worth experiencing, especially as we ease into Halloween in the coming days at the time of this review. It's entertaining from beginning to end, and though some of the dialogue will inevitably find itself cringy, it’s a formidable contender as one of the more interesting AA horror titles, especially those that adapt itself from prior material.
PROS:
- Environmental design is fluid and detailed enough to know exactly where you are and how to explore, giving a big sense of freedom without misdirection.
- Sound design keeps The Bridge Curse 2 immersive no matter where you are at in the story
- The pacing is extremely well done, making the game difficult to put down and extremely palatable to wide audience with varying levels of availability.
CONS:
- Arguably some of the worst voice acting the industry has seen in quite some time
- Chase sequences can feel annoying as they present a level of jank that is otherwise not there throughout the game.
A huge thank you to SOFTSTAR and PQUBE for providing us a copy of The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication for the purposes of this review!