Bridge Strike Review for Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Project R3D
Published by: Drageus Games S.A.
Categories: Shooter, Action
Release Date: 06.05.2020

On an aesthetic level, I’m rather fond of Bridge Strike. The sprite work reminds me of NeoGeo Pocket Color games. It’s colors are warm and pleasant to look at. Sprites are small, but detailed enough for you to always know what you’re looking at, much like a classic Sim City game. There’s even random weather effects, it could rain in a level (with lighting storms) or you could find the environment covered in snow. There isn’t much music in the game and you’ll hear the same few songs again and again, but what music is there is all good and would have fit right in at home on a 16bit shooter. This all leaves an immediate good impression from the moment you even turn the game on.

FROM THE HANGER

Bridge Strike plays like an incredibly simple vertical shooter played with a single button and your control stick, a self admitted River Raid clone if you must. Your goals range from shooting every enemy down, to doing like the game’s namesake, or even rescuing people stranded in the river bellow all while keeping your fuel in mind. The game doesn’t do much to differ in gameplay outside of the handful of challenges, with them often repeating with greater and great numbers as the goal. When playing Campaign, you’re given four operations with ten missions each, all of them being mix of the previously mentioned goals. This is when the game starts to starts to lose me. While the core gameplay itself isn’t bad, by the second operation, I found myself getting bored of doing the same missions over and over again, just longer each time. Different stage layouts or hazards didn’t seem to alleviate this issue either.

GRINDING AWAY

Throughout each mission, you’ll end up picking up coins by destroying enemies or bridges, you can either use these on continuing if you happen to fail, or to purchase new air (or in the case of the final vehicle, hover) craft. Regretfully, the number of coins to get any aircraft after the AH-64, which is the cheapest) cost in the multiple thousands to buy and that would require quite a bit of grinding to unlock. In my playtime, I manage to afford and purchase the AH-64. Which played exactly the same as the default Fighter outside of feeling slower. Playing Campaign to get these feels like a fools errand, so Raid Mode, which seems to be a big long stage, an amalgamation of what Campaign showed off. In a way, the Campaign mode almost seems like a tutorial that overstayed it’s welcome. Not getting interrupted so often makes the game flow much better. I kept on wanting to get further and further with Raid Mode, but I was getting bored and sick of Campaign not even halfway though it.