Games based on comic books (as well as their movie likenesses) are a mixed bag. For every X-Men Legends you get an X2: Wolverine’s Revenge in return, you’ll either love it or hate it. The Punisher, the next game out of Marvel’s game mill, confuses me. I found myself enjoying it on occasion, only to loathe it moments later thanks to the mediocre gameplay, lack of variety, not to mention some average looking and somewhat unimpressive visuals just to name a few. One would think that making a game based off of a character such as the Punisher would be easy, if not tons of fun. Unfortunately, it falls short on almost every front and lands itself in the middle of “blah” territory.

You’ve probably heard the story before, but for those who don’t know, I’ll cover the story of the Punisher. You’re Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, a troubled man who seeks revenge after his family was taken out in a mob hit. The story is told through retrospect while Cage is being interrogated by a couple of detectives. The Punisher is an emotionless, gun-toting vigilante of sorts who is out to clean up the streets for good. You’ll go from cleaning up crack houses to taking out mobs, taking on the Russian Army, and putting corporations out of commission. Along the way you’ll get help from other Marvel characters like Black Widow, Nick Fury, and Iron Man. Of course, all of the villains are here too like The Russian and the Kingpin.

The Gameplay is very Reminiscent of Remedy’s Max Payne games minus most of the fun. You view the action from a behind the back perspective while an onscreen crosshair helps you aim. You can get a little more accuracy by hitting the R3 button when there are hostages involved or when you want to get in a good head shot. You can also perform a dodge with the R2 button, but you’ll most likely careen into a wall or group of baddies. When you’re close to someone, you can perform a quick kill move with the square button to conserve ammo and use your trusty combat knife. One of the more promising elements to the gameplay is the ability to grab enemies and make them human shields, especially if they’re a flak jacket Russian soldier. While you have them in your grasp, you can hit X to interrogate them. While in interrogation mode, you can choose how to “break” your hostage whether it is sticking a gun in their face, choking them, or smashing their face on the floor. You can make them panic or unintentionally kill them if you’re too aggressive. This is represented by a meter where you have to move the analog sick to keep their tension in a certain area for a specified amount of time. Breaking enemies is your only means of replenishing health, which can be a challenge in the middle of an intense firefight. Luckily, the enemy AI in general is pretty dumb; whereas they’ll seek cover, but often times you’ll just find them standing around, oblivious to everything going on around them. While you’re shooting away at the baddies, your rage meter will fill up. You can enter rage mode by hitting the triangle button. The screen will go black and white and you can quick kill everyone around you, all while gaining health from each baddie you kill.

Speaking of offing baddies, interspersed throughout levels are special interrogation and kill zones where you can off your foes in creative ways like throwing them in a tank of piranhas, administer a drill press to the head, and so forth. These reward you with extra health and should be the icing on the violence cake, right? Well, you’re wrong. While you wait in anticipation for these creative deaths, the screen will go to black and white and will frequently cut away from the grisly violence that’s going on. It’s definitely not enough to satisfy ones bloodlust and comes off as plain lame.

 

You can score a certain amount of points to gain medals. These medals can unlock extras like cheats, extra modes, and comic covers. It can be fun to go back and try for silver and gold medals with the new abilities you’ve gained after trying some of the game’s later levels. Speaking of levels, the level design isn’t the most intuitive thing going for this game. You’ll find yourself getting lost and often having to backtrack to get the next swarm of enemies to show themselves.

In between missions you’ll find yourself at your base of operations, that being your apartment. Here you can check out the extras you’ve earned, purchase upgrades with the points you’ve scored, or take a gander at the history you’ve left behind through news clippings and pictures.

If I may be blunt for a second, the game’s visuals are bland. Models look good, but not up to par with what’s coming out today. They all have a blocky look to them. There are plenty of clipping issues going on as well as enemies will sometimes fall into floors, shoot through walls and doors, and weapons will disappear into walls and crates. You can also use this to your advantage as I found myself able to snipe baddies through steel beams and posts. Levels look decent and offer some nice, if not repetitive decor. All of them start to look the same after a couple of levels as you find yourself gunning through hallway after hallway opening miscellaneous doors to the right and left. Luckily, this experience is broken up about midway through the game when you get to an island and fight in more expansive space where your dodge button actually has some use. Said level is possibly the most visually impressive and features a very lush environment – a fancy term for “plenty of trees”. There is also a generous use of ragdoll physics and realistic physics as weapons are dropped…though a few enemies have been spotted having (what I lovingly call) seizures where they flip around in the air and fall over dead. Unfortunately, explosions look weak and will blow off heads and limbs of baddies instead of sending them flying. Boooooooring.

On the sound side of things, the voice acting is great, namely the Punisher and Black Widow respectively. Everyone pulls off their accents well and don’t sound stilted or wooden. You will quickly tire of the repetitive info that goons will provide while you’re trying to gain some health through interrogations however. The game features a somewhat epic score, but it’s quickly forgotten. I can’t remember one tune from the game at all. The guns all sound different and close to their real life counterparts.

I know for certain there is something enjoyable about The Punisher, but what it does great is not without its drawbacks. While the game is an exciting non-stop thrill ride of shooting, the elements that were truly supposed to make the game cool are limited and scaled back, ultimately making The Punisher a run-of-the-mill shooter. Hopefully, like the X-Men, The Punisher will get a game that lives up to the name of the icon of violence that he is known as. Until then, I’ll stick with the old arcade beat-‘em-up of the early 90’s.

- Brad Hicks (Dr. Swank), SwankWorld Media