The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication is a Taiwanese horror game created by Softstar and published by Softstar, PQube, and Gamera Games. Going into this game I knew next to nothing about the “The Bridge Curse” series and now I wish to know so much more! For those concerned by the big number 2 in the title, don’t worry! Despite being a sequel, this game doesn’t have any story connections to the previous game. The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication is a standalone sequel to the first Bridge Curse game,The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation. The Extrication is also a reimagined adaptation of the 2023 film, The Bridge Curse 2: Ritual.

What’s The Game About?

The story is told over 4 connected episodes that unlock as you progress the overall story. The 4 stories take place in different parts of the overall story but still come together in the end. Each story has you controlling one of 4 characters: Sue Lian, Richie, A-Hai, and Doc.

The story begins with Sue Lian, a news reporter who has come to Wen Hua University to attempt to learn more about a ghost story related to a viral movie trailer created by a group of students at the school. While exploring the school, solving puzzles, and dealing with the supernatural, you learn the ghost story Sue Lian is investigating is part of the school’s lore and it goes deeper than you or the characters thought.

Real Life Inspirations

The story is based on a real urban legend about Wen Hua University, which surprisingly is a real school, also has a haunted building named Da Ren, and is haunted for the same reasons concerning Feng Shui. The viral movie trailer created by Richie, A-Hai, and Doc is also heavily inspired by the story of Elisa Lam, a woman who was found dead in the water tank of a Los Angeles hotel in 2013. I won’t link it here, as it is genuinely freaky, but the inspiration regarding Elisa Lam comes from real life footage of her in an elevator at the hotel which was released and went viral during the police investigation.

The Cons

For the sake of fairness, as I’ve done before, I will discuss everything I didn’t like about the game first.

Let’s begin with the voice acting. I personally did not like it very much? A lot of the dialogue felt very flat. There were moments where the tone of the dialogue being spoken did not reflect the intenseness of the situation. Some voice lines had weird delivery (which did make me laugh) for example, Sergeant Huang saying “What the whooping hell!” multiple times got a chuckle out of me for how strange it sounded. Sometimes the voice acting lent itself to the campy nature of the game but other times it felt very underwhelming and phoned in. A-Hai’s VA was the worst offender, somehow throughout the entire game she always managed to sound flat and unbothered. It was very distracting during her chapter and the ending portion of the game. I also noticed the lip sync was off and noted it as a con while playing. However, I have since learned that the game was dubbed over in English so that doesn’t bother me now.

Some of the puzzles were genuinely confusing. Despite this I managed to solve nearly all of them without looking online for help. However, there was a puzzle during Richie’s chapter that was so vague I thought it was a glitch and had to look online to figure out how to proceed. The characters also have no differences besides the women using the Anima Lantern and the men not using it.

There are a few sections where you are being chased and you must frantically find a path to escape. Some of these worked and were actually quite scary. Some however, did not and became frustrating to play. This is because once you repeat an area like this it loses its scariness and breaks the immersion while you try to find the correct path. There’s a section in Doc’s episode that requires you to follow a correct path while being chased and was very intense. However, I had to repeat it so many times that it lost it’s fear factor very quickly.

The Positives!

The game has a campy B-movie vibe that I just love! I don’t know if this was intentional or not but I enjoyed it nonetheless.The scares are also pretty good. There was a minor scare I encountered while searching a cabinet for items that genuinely made me jump out of my chair! The eerie atmosphere and darkness of the school also work here! Exploring the very realistic feeling college building felt almost surreal as they’re usually full of people. Sometimes with horror games the darkness is almost too dark and makes it hard to see. However, here it’s done well and despite the darkness, I was still able to see!

The creature designs in this game were also pretty darn good! There’s one that appears in the later portion of the game that I won’t spoil here but it’s definitely the best designed creature in the whole game! Speaking of designs, the character designs were good as well! There was a ghost dog named Poody who is the best character in the whole game. Doc’s design in particular I really enjoyed! He wears a fake mustache for the filming of their movie and with it on, he reminds me of Papa Louie from the Papa’s game series. I also like to imagine that he had the mustache on for most of the game!

I really enjoyed the Anima Lantern as a mechanic throughout the game. The lantern created many tense moments throughout the game with its charge mechanic. There were many times where I had to alter my path while being chased so I could charge up my lantern to dispel evil energy or evil ghost hands which had me on the edge of my seat!

In Conclusion

The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication was a scary and campy ride from start to finish! The eerie buildings of Wen Hua University were a treat to explore as well! The story, while a tad bit dragged out near the latter half, was still very exciting and had me invested to the very end! Despite my complaints, the game was still a fun, campy time that you should play this Halloween!

The Bridge Curse 2: The Extrication was reviewed on PlayStation 5. A code was provided for this review.

The game released on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series, and Nintendo Switch on October 24th. The game previously released on Steam for PC on May 9th, 2024.