Fear, anxiety, and laughter are the symbol of youth. Experience the true paranormal haunting with your friends from the first-person perspective and stay alive. An adaptation of a horror film, includes Taiwanese urban legend and an intriguing backstory.
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For some reason, I’ve been in the mood for horror games for a while now, so I took a look at my backlog, and gave this one a try. It’s a game based on a movie based on an actual Taiwanese legend of a haunted bridge, so it sounded quite interesting.
Well, first of all, the English localization is terrible. I can’t even imagine how it all reads and sounds for native speakers, if even I, a non-native found it abysmal. The voice acting is mostly lifeless (with no lip sync, of course), the subtitles and audio are out of sync, there are overlapping and missing sentences, characters talking at the same time, grammar and spelling mistakes, and so on. So yeah, do yourselves a favour and set at least the audio to Chinese.
Now, the gameplay. As a survival horror experience, I’d say it mostly worked. The walking simulator parts, the puzzles, searching for clues – these elements were all OK, in my opinion. Nothing groundbreaking, but the atmosphere was spot on, the jumpscares and creepy sounds were genuinely scary, even the lore was exciting (although the story got a bit confusing for me towards the end). The graphics were mediocre, nothing special there, and the characters were all pretty bland, maybe one or two of them had actual, complex personalities. I’m still not sure if it was a good idea to switch between them so often, some of them hardly contributed anything to the main plot. The real problem, though, if you ask me, was the chase/stealth sequences. They were unforgiving, just one small misstep and it’s game over, you have to know the layout of the map perfectly to be able to survive, and right at the beginning of the first chapter they drop you into one of these “fun little hide-and-seek activities”. I almost broke my controller several times during these parts. Also, it didn’t help that some locations were unnecessarily huge, and simply finding out where you’re supposed to go can be a challenge in itself.
So, the potential is there, somewhere deep within this mess, but as it is now, it’s mediocre at best, and I can only recommend it to hardcore horror fans. And sorry, but I have to deduce an additional star for the poor localization.
Well, first of all, the English localization is terrible. I can’t even imagine how it all reads and sounds for native speakers, if even I, a non-native found it abysmal. The voice acting is mostly lifeless (with no lip sync, of course), the subtitles and audio are out of sync, there are overlapping and missing sentences, characters talking at the same time, grammar and spelling mistakes, and so on. So yeah, do yourselves a favour and set at least the audio to Chinese.
Now, the gameplay. As a survival horror experience, I’d say it mostly worked. The walking simulator parts, the puzzles, searching for clues – these elements were all OK, in my opinion. Nothing groundbreaking, but the atmosphere was spot on, the jumpscares and creepy sounds were genuinely scary, even the lore was exciting (although the story got a bit confusing for me towards the end). The graphics were mediocre, nothing special there, and the characters were all pretty bland, maybe one or two of them had actual, complex personalities. I’m still not sure if it was a good idea to switch between them so often, some of them hardly contributed anything to the main plot. The real problem, though, if you ask me, was the chase/stealth sequences. They were unforgiving, just one small misstep and it’s game over, you have to know the layout of the map perfectly to be able to survive, and right at the beginning of the first chapter they drop you into one of these “fun little hide-and-seek activities”. I almost broke my controller several times during these parts. Also, it didn’t help that some locations were unnecessarily huge, and simply finding out where you’re supposed to go can be a challenge in itself.
So, the potential is there, somewhere deep within this mess, but as it is now, it’s mediocre at best, and I can only recommend it to hardcore horror fans. And sorry, but I have to deduce an additional star for the poor localization.
The Bridge Curse was developed by the Taiwanese team that also made the Sword and Fairy and the Xuan-Yuan Sword games. I believe this is their first attempt at a horror game. It's also an adaptation of the same name movie (which I haven't seen).
Probably because it was adapted from a movie, the plot pretty much feels like an Asian horror movie one. A couple of college students engaging in a horror ritual and get caught up with some supernatural ghosts.
The story was an enjoyable one even it wasn't anything amazing. Reading the past incidents through journals and letters kept a lot of my interest. Some of the character mysteries in their background were also good.
I'm mixed on the characters though. It might be because there's a lot of humor sprinkled into the tone and atmosphere, but they feel like they act all over the place. In one moment they're concerned about the strange supernatural elements and the next they are worried about some trivial parts of their lives.
The gameplay is a miss mostly for me. The game changes character perspective frequently and it's all shown through first person as you move around. There aren't many locations in the game so there's a lot of backtracking. There's a few puzzles in the game, but most are simple.
The game starts with a chase/stealth segment which was annoying to deal with. There isn't much of that until near the end of the game when it becomes annoyingly more common.
The horror elements are pretty good. The setting and backgrounds get pretty creepy. Although, it's immersion breaking when the characters ignore all of the weird stuff happening in front of them.
Overall, it's a decent horror game, but the stealth and chase segments weren't very fun. It's somewhat short and took me roughly 5 hours to complete.
Probably because it was adapted from a movie, the plot pretty much feels like an Asian horror movie one. A couple of college students engaging in a horror ritual and get caught up with some supernatural ghosts.
The story was an enjoyable one even it wasn't anything amazing. Reading the past incidents through journals and letters kept a lot of my interest. Some of the character mysteries in their background were also good.
I'm mixed on the characters though. It might be because there's a lot of humor sprinkled into the tone and atmosphere, but they feel like they act all over the place. In one moment they're concerned about the strange supernatural elements and the next they are worried about some trivial parts of their lives.
The gameplay is a miss mostly for me. The game changes character perspective frequently and it's all shown through first person as you move around. There aren't many locations in the game so there's a lot of backtracking. There's a few puzzles in the game, but most are simple.
The game starts with a chase/stealth segment which was annoying to deal with. There isn't much of that until near the end of the game when it becomes annoyingly more common.
The horror elements are pretty good. The setting and backgrounds get pretty creepy. Although, it's immersion breaking when the characters ignore all of the weird stuff happening in front of them.
Overall, it's a decent horror game, but the stealth and chase segments weren't very fun. It's somewhat short and took me roughly 5 hours to complete.
fave part of the game is when some dude and the girl he's been flirting with are being haunted by a murderous ghost and instead of sticking together he goes to take a shit and the game developer has him pull out his phone to look at the dev's website and talk about how cool they are. truly fantastic
very weird advertisement for computer parts.
Honestly, though: It's a solid horror title. Not very scary or deep but fun for a couple of hours.
The animations look smooth and the environment is quite detailed. I truly loved the designs of the enemies. Simple, yet effective.
Unfortunately, the visual aspects are overshadowed by the gameplay mechanics. Exploration is slow and rather boring, not much happens except for casual conversations on the way from one point of interest to the next. There are also chase sequences scattered about but they proved to be more frustrating than terrifying since it's hard to figure out where to go while running from an enemy.
Furthermore, the plot and the characters' personalities are all over the place and do not make much sense. The main characters seem to have the memory of a goldfish: They freak out when something supernatural happens but they usually forget about it a few minutes later.
This was based on a movie of some kind - I have never seen it. Mayhaps this might be a lot more interesting for fans of the film.
Honestly, though: It's a solid horror title. Not very scary or deep but fun for a couple of hours.
The animations look smooth and the environment is quite detailed. I truly loved the designs of the enemies. Simple, yet effective.
Unfortunately, the visual aspects are overshadowed by the gameplay mechanics. Exploration is slow and rather boring, not much happens except for casual conversations on the way from one point of interest to the next. There are also chase sequences scattered about but they proved to be more frustrating than terrifying since it's hard to figure out where to go while running from an enemy.
Furthermore, the plot and the characters' personalities are all over the place and do not make much sense. The main characters seem to have the memory of a goldfish: They freak out when something supernatural happens but they usually forget about it a few minutes later.
This was based on a movie of some kind - I have never seen it. Mayhaps this might be a lot more interesting for fans of the film.