As someone who recently started appreciating horror games in a new light, I can say The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication was so scary that I ended up finishing it to find out how the story ends. Though I never played the first game or watched the film adaptation, I didn’t find it very difficult to follow the story.

The game is essentially divided into four chapters where you play four different characters. Each of these characters’ points of view adds to the story, and by the end, they get interconnected to form one big climax. Since it is a first-person horror game, the jumpscares are so terrifying that some moments have me shaking and sweating.

The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication Review - Cinematically Haunting - - News | | GamesHorizon — The four playable characters. Image by GamesHorizon

The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication had its moments, and in fact, there was a chapter that might be one of my top horror gaming experiences. However, there are also some things I wish the game could’ve done better.

Four Stories, Four Characters

The story opens with Sue Lian, a reporter and well-known TV anchor, investigating a potential supernatural presence at Wen Hua University in Taiwan. She enters the university to interview a bunch of students from the film club who are making a film about the famous murder that occurred on the campus years ago. However, things don’t go according to plan, and she discovers that something even more evil and sinister is going on within the walls of Wen Hua.

I could feel the tension building up as I navigated through the quiet and spooky corridors and classrooms of the university dead at night. Chapter one roughly lasts for an hour at most, with Sue trying to investigate and also interviewing the eccentric security guard who knows more than he lets on. As a player, this was such a great introduction to the game.

With Sue’s point of view ending in a major cliffhanger, the game smartly transitions to another set of characters – the three film club students whom Sue was to ideally interview before she got sidetracked. We find Richie Chen, the upcoming director of the movie, along with his friends and fellow co-actors, A-Hai and Wu Zi-nan, aka Doc, hard at work in trying to make their movie possible. The first impression of these students is how young, enthusiastic, and carefree they look until something bad happens, and all three of them get split up. Where do they end up? We find out as the story progresses by playing as each of them.

Overall, I had no issues with the story. In fact, the structure mostly reminded me of Until Dawn, where, as a player, I got to experience a different point of view from each character. I think, by concept, this is fantastic, especially for the horror genre such as this, but in the case of The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication, sometimes the pacing fell off given how the game is very cinematic, and at every turn, the player’s control is taken away for a cut scene.

Sometimes, I would get so invested during a certain mission only to be interrupted by the game telling me, “that’s enough exploration,” by having a cut scene. It felt as if the game depended more on its cinematic aspect (which is excellent, by the way) than on having me feel the stress of the character I am controlling.

Repetitive Yet Challenging Gameplay

When I started getting into the scary moments in the game, there was only a single thought going in my mind, “I need a gun.” But do guns even harm supernatural beings like demons and ghosts? I guess not because, after all, you can’t kill what’s already dead unless it is a zombie or a vampire.

Now imagine a scary first-person game where you only stealth and run away from anything that tries to attack you. The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication is just that. When playing as Sue or A-Hai, you get the support of a lamp that helps from demons attacking you directly, but it doesn’t kill them. Also, the lamp needs some time to recharge after every attack against an enemy, so you only get one attack chance in a short time, which isn’t great. But this is a true survival horror, and I felt the impact of barely surviving against certain enemies.

Most of the enemy encounters were either evading, hiding, or running away. As I kept doing this each time, it soon started to get repetitive, but it also kept me on my toes to have my character keep moving and never stay in one place too long.

Apart from maybe one enemy encounter, there wasn’t anything extraordinary about the gameplay, which honestly disappoints me because I wish the developers had explored a bit more variety when it came to taking down certain bosses.

It is also not survival horror without puzzles, and The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication has plenty of them. These puzzles weren’t mind-numbingly hard or anything, but towards the end, once again, they felt overdone. But at least there was a variety in this case.

Inspired By Taiwanese Urban Legends

When you add a piece of culture to a video game, it is not just a game anymore; it is art. Every detail in The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication is inspired by Taiwanese folklore, which makes the game feel unique, along with its gorgeous visuals. Every collectible, puzzle, and character adds another layer to the rich, lore-filled environment within the game.

The characters are decently written, and though the game doesn’t go deep into their backgrounds, they still feel like characters with hearts and souls. Sue Lian is a determined reporter who at once is ready to help a stranger she just met. It still fits even if Richie, A-Hai, and Doc are college students whose mannerisms and interactions feel silly, goofy, and a bit cringe. I played the game with English voiceovers, and it surprised me how good the voice acting was for each of these characters.

Final Thoughts…

My time with The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication made me realize my threshold for horror games is still low. It scared me and made me almost throw my controller, but most importantly, it gave me a new sense of appreciation for the people who make such games. In the end, what I didn’t like about it didn’t matter; instead, what I took from my experience playing this game was two things: 1) I still get very scared by playing certain horror games. 2) I hope I can sleep tonight.

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