The Punisher - Review

Added January 27th, 2005 by Kisan Parikh

Introduction:

Based on the comic book, The Punisher allows you to control Frank Castle, a man also known as the Punisher. Castle’s family was murdered and he has taken it upon himself to rid the city of the type of scum that took his family from him. The Punisher attempts to improve on the basic third-person shooter by adding innovation and spectacular effects. One of the hot topics about this game is the fact that The Punisher is going to be considered as one of the most violent games to date. We’ll go into the details and extent of the violence further along in the review.

Gameplay:

The storyline of The Punisher is based on the comic book instead of the movies, and it follows the anti-crime killing spree of Frank Castle. The story is revealed as the police, who ask him about each of his missions, interrogate Frank. His three-week long killing spree has come to an end, but the police want to know all the details. As Castle is asked about individual missions, you load up the next mission you are to play. This is a pretty unique way of telling the story, and I feel it helps establish a decent flow to the game.

Gameplay revolves around a pretty basic third-person shooter system in which you control the character’s movement with one control stick, while controlling  the character’s view with another control stick. Initially, your weapons include pistols, shotguns, and bats, but you will soon be presented with SMGs, rifles, grenade launchers, and other similar weapons. Not only can you control your aim from the basic, distant third-person view, but you can also zoom and use the precise aim feature. This basically puts you over the Punisher’s right shoulder so you can aim down the sight of your gun. Of course, when you are dual wielding pistols, shotguns, or rifles, you can only aim down the sight of your right hand gun. In case you are wondering about how the dual wielding of shotguns and rifles is balanced out, the answer to this is that after you are done with a clip, you have to discard one of the guns to reload.

In cases where there are an especially large number of enemies, you can access Slaughter Mode. In this mode, everything slows down and becomes black and white. Upon pressing and holding the right trigger, the Punisher locks onto enemies and hurls knives at them with deadly accuracy. This mode is pretty cool, but you have a limited amount of time until your blue Slaughter Mode bar runs out.

Shooting people and throwing knives at them is cool, but they are not the only ways to take out enemies. If you get close enough to an adversary, you are presented with the option of quick killing. Quick kill unleashes a cool animation of the Punisher eliminating a bad guy with his knife, his bare hands, the butt of his gun, or a combination of those. This leads to numerous cool and violent kill sequences. Your other option, grabbing the enemy, allows you to use the enemy as a human shield, quick kill him from the grabbed position, or interrogate him. Using an enemy as a human shield is quite useful, but be careful that your enemy doesn’t get killed by his comrades and leave you open to fire. Also, while in the human shield position, an enemy can be thrown. Not always lethal, these throws are mainly put in for fun. Quick killing an enemy from the grabbed position usually consists of pushing him away and firing a bullet into his chest. Certain areas are marked on the ground to show areas where special kills can be made. These kills consist of throwing people out of windows and the like.

The interrogation feature is the most innovative and possibly the most impressive part of the game. After grabbing an enemy and choosing to interrogate, you are presented with the interrogation mode. In this mode, you can choose one of four basic styles of interrogation (punch, face smash, choke, and gun tension).. After choosing your style, you use the control stick to be more or less forceful with your opponent. You try to keep your cursor in the orange area for a certain amount of time in order to “break” your hostage. Being too forceful will kill the hostage, and being too gentle will produce no results. Breaking a hostage reveals information and also allows you to use a hostage to manipulate enemies to look in the wrong place, drop their weapons, etc. Useful enemies are marked with a skull above their head, so you don’t waste time interrogating every enemy. There are special interrogations to be used as well. A spot on the ground indicates these and allows you to use your environment to obtain the information you need. This includes holding someone out a window, near a spinning blade, up to a raised area of concrete, etc. After you break an enemy on these special areas, you can also eliminate them. These gruesome scenes are presented in black and white and are actually quite fun to watch.

Whether you are killing or interrogating someone, you are either earning or losing style points. Head shots, successful interrogations, and quick kills are rewarded with style points while killing a person during an interrogation leads to lost points. These points can be used to buy upgrades, such as larger clip size and longer Slaughter Mode times.

From reading the review thus far, you can see that the Punisher features some very violent aspects. This being said, you must understand that this is a game targeted towards the mature gamer (18+), and is not intended to be serious. The Punisher has been called “worse than an R-rated movie”.  But, in comparison, this game is nothing too far out of the ordinary. The presentation of the violence is so well done that once you get into the game, you can drop an enemy off a second story and hardly think twice about it. With the option to toggle blood on and off and the fact that  innocent people are not allowed to be killed, I don’t see why this game would be considered worse than an R-rated movie. The over-the-top violence is intended to be more humorous than nasty. While I wouldn’t let a young person play this game, I think that the violence is suitable for anyone who can sit through a violent movie.

Overall, I enjoyed the gameplay of The Punisher, but I felt that this isn’t a game that is enjoyably played for hours on end. The game just gets too repetitive after a while, and it’s just not  a very challenging game (on normal mode). I feel that it has the fun factor and innovation needed to make a good game, but I had hoped for a little bit more to keep me hooked.

Graphics:

The visuals in the Punisher are quite satisfactory.  I especially enjoyed the character models. Frank Castle looked extremely fitting as the same Punisher from the comic book. Not only was the main character detailed, but every character, including enemy thugs, were nicely done as well. The environments could use more detail, but they are pretty varied and get the job done. Another disappointment was that some of the animations felt bulky and unnatural.

The use of nice visual effects was present throughout the game. My favorite effect included the flashbacks that appeared in the form of a still comic book type page flashing on the screen. Other cool effects include Slaughter Mode and the black and white kill sequences. These kill sequences were actually put in the game to prevent an Adults Only ESRB rating. Cut scenes and interrogation sequences also show notably improved visuals when compared to the rest of the game, and they look fantastic.

Audio:

The audio in this game is pretty amazing, especially when it comes to voice acting. The Punisher’s voice fits his attitude well, and a large reason for this is that the voice acting is done by Thomas Jane, the actor in the 2004 movie. The many people the Punisher meets on the way each have fitting voices as well. The dialogue between The Punisher and these characters is often quite hilarious, especially when you are in the crack house. The soundtrack is well done, but isn’t really noticed while playing the game. I did feel that the gun sounds could be improved, but I don’t think it was bad enough to detract from the gameplay.

Controls:

I have no complaints about the control scheme of The Punisher, and I’m sure a few gamers will love the fact that both left/right and up/down can be inverted. Also, crouching can be switched to a toggle to give further options. All in all, the control scheme can be modified in these ways to ensure that you will enjoy this third-person shooter.

Replay:

The campaign is relatively short, but, as stated earlier, you won’t want to finish it all in one sitting. The game features menu options such as pulling up criminal charts and newspaper clippings. These can be interesting, but the main replay value of the game lies in how much you enjoy the game. If you enjoy it, your replay will include playing favorite levels, and carrying out favorite interrogations.

Summary:

Overall, The Punisher is a solid game that I enjoyed for a while. I would recommend it as a definite rental for anyone who enjoys this type of over-the-top violence. If you rent it, you will find it easy to determine whether or not the game is right for you. I predict that most gamers who liked Max Payne will fall for this game as well. Also, if you hear that this game is too violent, keep in mind the target audience and the fact that the violence is intended to be outrageous. The aim of the violence in this game is to produce wows and laughs from gamers.