how Newton's "folly"
awakes the strand of nightmares;
validates the bridge
Additional Comments:
The Bridge is easily one of the best games I've come across in a while. Like a few other games that garnered my complete adoration: VVVVVV and Katamari Damacy, to name but two, The Bridge relies on a sole mechanic. Using the triggers, the player rotates each of the stages either to the left or right, up to and beyond a full 360°. Essentially, the game is nothing but a nightmarish stumble through a series of demented tilt-a-whirls somehow encapsulating the works of M. C. Escher and Edgar Allan Poe.
The game came as a recommendation thanks to Limbo. Immediately, the whole black and white presentation grabbed me. I don't know what it is, but the lack of color in some of these modern games adds so much value to the overall experience. For the brief moment we get to see The Bridge's countryside radiate the full spectrum of the rainbow, it's stunning for sure, but breaks the maddening emotion of the game. But then, it's obviously the point as the nightmare fades into the familiar domestication that is reality. A definitive dividing line between despair and comfort must exist, and so exists the bridge between grayscale and beautiful chroma.
While the color, or lack thereof, drew me in, as though I fell under the sway of flagrant advertising, the gameplay played the part of a hard-sell salesman. Despite the obvious ease of The Loft, the very first room in the game, I was hooked. I didn't even have to see that the game was a series of logic puzzles. I didn't care what it was. I was sold. Maybe it took The Library and The Menace to truly lay down the blueprints for what was to come, but it was nothing more than gravy by that point. Shades of VVVVVV crept into my mind even though I knew these two games were worlds apart. It was that gut feeling that The Bridge was going to take a single premise and run it through a wringer until every imaginable application can be established over the course of the game. And the Quantum Astrophysicists Guild managed just that with flying colors.
Even when The Bridge begins introducing additional nuances such as x-axis/y-axis reversal teleporters, positive/negative variants of certain objects including the player, dual personas, or temporal gravitational distortion fields (which I still had a hard time wrapping my head around at times), the game never deviates from its core mechanic. Each additional layer of complexity meshes perfectly with the initial gameplay, unlike most games where a multitude of ideas can lead to muddy or awkward gameplay, not to mention a torturous set of controls. The Bridge, however, keeps it clean no matter how much stuff gets thrown at you: rotate, activate, and if necessary, some time reversal.
My only complaint, which I should note was only an initial complaint, was that The Bridge lingered on the easy side. That is until I opened up the mirrored chapters. I knew they were coming, but wondered what they were actually going to bring to the table. After all, when I see the term "Mirror" I think of the Mario Kart series. It's not exactly an increase in difficulty - more that it feels difficult only because what's familiar is no longer familiar. Naturally, I could only assume padding at this point as it was difficult to imagine some of these levels, especially those that are symmetrical, mirrored. I couldn't have been any further from the truth in my assumptions. The levels start as such, with a minor tweak or two - The Loft for example - but the difficulty quickly ramps with a interesting assortment of tricks thrown together in a diabolical hodgepodge of agony. Chapters Six and Seven were especially nettlesome as there were a couple of rooms in each hall that definitely put me through the paces.
Where some real aggravation sparked, however, was in the wisp collecting and the Inverter achievement which took place on Mirrored Garden. I must have spent a good hour or so attempting completion with only five inversions. Thing is, when I finally managed it, I was dumbfounded by how simple the solution actually was, but for some reason, I just couldn't envision it. Same situation happened when trying to collect the wisp on Mirrored Menace, which I think might have taken top prize for giving me the most grief only because it had to be done without time reversal. Although, when it came down to it, that turned out to be the least of my worries. The first time I did the level, I exited with relative ease. However, when I returned to retrieve the wisp, those five menaces annihilated all hope to proceed. I couldn't even manage the exit door anymore and I think it took me somewhere between 30 minutes to a hour just to pull off that simple feat again. With that much trouble, having to dump all those toothy grins on one side of the triskele proved impossible, or damn near impossible. Still, the difficulty of these tasks never reached the point where I found it unbearable. Perhaps the whole logic aspect kept everything in check which is often the case in puzzle games. No matter how hard a puzzle may get, logic dictates there's always a solution. Same can be said for any game, but health, life or other gameplay mechanics can add multiple variables that often twists black and white scenarios commonplace to puzzle games into experiments in luck. And although The Bridge adds its own dastardly web of variables, it's still just a simple traverse from point A to point B puzzle game. Then again, those gravitational fields possibly add far more variables then necessary when starting to deal with positive/negative menaces. At that point, up, down, left, and right seem to revel in complete chaos.
I have a pretty good idea The Bridge isn't for everyone, but for anyone into puzzle games, or more accurately, platform-ingrained puzzle games, it's a must play. It demonstrates taking a simple mechanic to its extreme with gusto and dresses it all up in some sort of creepy mathematical nightmare. I love it! In fact, I'd love to see a followup. To help enhance the mood, the game is blessed with a perfect melancholic soundtrack. Chance of finding examples are slim to none, so it's all the more reason to just check the game out instead.
Rating: 5 Konami codes out of 5
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