Let’s be honest here, the initial Bridge Constructor Portal
announcement kind of hit the Internet like a wet fart. Combining a beloved
license with a not so beloved indie game about building bridges wasn’t exactly
what fans were hoping for when rumors of a new Portal game announcement started
swirling in 2017. Now that the game is out on consoles, however, how does Bridge
Constructor Portal actually play? Far better than anyone could have predicted,
I’m happy to say. It combines the humor and twisted science of Portal with
Bridge Constructor’s physics-based gameplay pretty much perfectly to create
what is easily the best Bridge Constructor game yet. And it’s the third best
Portal, so way to go! Continue reading for all of the details on Bridge
Constructor Portal for Xbox One and PS4.
Game Details
- Publisher: Headup Games
- Developer: ClockStone Software
- ESRB Rating: “E” for Everyone
- Genre: Puzzle
- Pros: Trademark Portal sense of humor; great presentation; challenging puzzles; fun overall
- Cons: It’s not Portal 3
- MSRP: $15
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It can’t be understated just how well Bridge Constructor
Portal nails the Portal theme. They got it perfect. You play as a new employee
at Aperture Science where your job is to test bridge building in conjunction
with Aperture’s other technology like portals, propulsion gel, aerial faith
plates, companion cubes, emancipation grills, sentry turrets, and much more.
The aesthetic of gleaming test chambers and glowing portals is absolutely spot
on and Ellen McLain even reprises her role as GLADOS in another solid
performance. The sense of humor is perfect and the tests are twisted and
wonderful. This may not have been the Portal game fans really wanted, but there
is no doubt that this is a real Portal experience and not just some lazily
thrown together cash in like some folks feared.
The gameplay starts out like a typical Bridge Constructor
game with you building bridges on a 2D plane so vehicles can cross gaps. It is
a little simpler here, however, as there are only two types of materials this
time around – metal girders and suspension wires – and you have infinite
resources to build whatever you want, though there are still pre-set mounting
points you have to use. The twist, of course, comes when Aperture Science’s
crazy technology is introduced. The portals – of which there can be several
differently colored pairs on each map – are already placed on the map, so you
can’t just put them wherever you want, and it is up to you to build bridges and
take advantage of other technology to ensure vehicles get safely from point A
to point B.
There are sixty levels in Bridge Constructor Portal that
gradually ramp up in difficulty, The latter half of the game has you
criss-crossing jumping paths and building precisely angled ramps and thinking
about building and maintaining momentum and all sorts of stuff just like we did
in Portal 2. They did an incredibly good job making this feel like a Portal
game, but still maintaining Bridge Constructor’s distinct style of puzzle
solving. It would have been nice to have more freedom to place the portals at
will, of course, but that would have almost certainly made things too easy so I
can understand why they didn’t do that.
The game is pretty accessible as you can “beat” any level by
just passing one car through a level, so you can see the whole game pretty
easily, but the real challenge comes from running a whole convoy of vehicles
through at once and hoping your bridges hold up and the trucks don’t all
collide in midair. You can iterate and test instantly and infinitely, too, so
you can quickly come up with new ideas and build them and test them as much as
you need to. I honestly got bored pretty quickly in previous Bridge Constructor
games, but the puzzles are really good this time around and the crazy tech from
the Portal games makes things interesting enough to keep me coming back.
Bridge Constructor Portal has great presentation overall
that is consistent with the Portal series. Clinical looking menus. Clean test
chambers. Glowing portals. It’s all here. The sound is perfect and the music is
great as well. I played the game on both PS4 and Xbox One and the performance
was fine on both.
Bridge Constructor Portal isn’t Portal 3, but it’s
pretty darn good on its own and fans of both Portal and Bridge Constructor will
find a lot to like here. It’s got the solid core gameplay of Bridge Constructor
paired with the sense of humor and puzzles of Portal in what turns out to be a
surprisingly perfect match. Bridge Constructor Portal is a well put together
mash up that showcases the best of both franchises. Buy it.
Disclosure: Review codes were provided by the publisher.
