The Punisher is a generic third person shooter that qualifies as above-average more than anything else.
THIRD-PERSON SHOOTER
Release Date: 01/18/2005
Published By: THQ
Developed By: Volition
Marvel's hard-hitting, crime-busting comic character marks his entry into gaming with this good-looking shooter from THQ and Volition. The Punisher is a highly visceral third person shooter that heavily draws on concepts from Max Payne and its sequel, from its core shooting aspects to The Punisher's stylized model and overcoat. The similarities end right there as The Punisher introduces some subtle twists in the gameplay and gory interrogation sequences that make it stand apart from Max Payne but still on its own it is just good for a rental.
In The Punisher, you play as Frank Castle whose family has been brutally murdered and who has become The Punisher to avenge his family's death. At the beginning of the game you are sitting in Ryker's Island, a maximum security prison and being interrogated by two police officials about your vigilante operations. The game begins as you start relating the events of the past three weeks, how you began by raiding small time Gnucci drug operations and ended up being caught by the police. The story is just what you'd expect from a game of this kind, it is not overly complicated as in Half-Life 2 or doesn't take a complete backseat as in Painkiller or Serious Sam, the game gives you enough information about the happenings around you via nicely rendered comic-book style cutscenes so you can go about your business without any problem.
The gameplay is similar to any other generic FPS; you have a variety of weapons and have to kill everyone in sight almost all the time, with a few exceptions. However, there are some neat little variations that keep the gameplay fresh and exciting atleast for one play through. First of all, you cannot carry every weapon you see lying down, you are limited to carrying only one heavy weapon like a rifle and one hand-weapon like a pistol or a SMG. At the beginning of the game you have access to only smaller weapons like the pistol (which you can dual-wield), the shotgun and a variety of rifles. As you progress through the game's levels you unlock stronger, more powerful weapons like the sniper rifle, rocket launcher and even a flamethrower to kill your foes with. Though you gain access to powerful weapons, the core shooting gameplay will leave something to be desired. Each weapon doesn't have a different feel to it and the standard shooting gets repetitive as the game progresses irrespective of the weapon you are carrying and you feel like you are just killing tons of enemies and racking up points after points all the time.
The interrogation sequences, on the other hand, are an entirely different matter and as a matter of fact these sequences may be the reason why many people stick with the game till the end. Though you are clearly shown as to who would give you useful information with a white skull on top of their heads, the basic interrogation mechanic is spot-on and neither is it too complex nor too easy. There are a variety of standard interrogation procedures like gun-threats, choking etc. and other special interrogation places which are clearly marked by white skull splashes and you can use only these areas and not any of your own. These don't offer much satisfaction because in way of censoring the game, once you successfully interrogate your victim, if you choose to kill him in one of these special interrogation areas, the screen turns black and white and the scene of you eliminating your victim is not shown in its full glory. This is actually funny because in other areas of the game you are seeing your enemies' heads burst into bits on the impact of your sniper bullet and definitely cutting out these sequences is not going to make a highly violent game seem less violent.
The other reason for interrogating a helpless victim will be to regain your lost health. The game restores your health on each successful interrogation, however, the amount of health restored depends on whether the information obtained was actually useful or not. You will never be forced to restore your health in this manner because you are not going to lose it in the first place. This is because your enemies' AI is not the most advanced and is quite simply average at most times. They are smart enough to duck behind tables and other obstacles and shoot from cover but at most times are easy targets for you to take out. Their shooting is also quite erratic and most bullets will not seem as if they hit you.
Even the more powerful, fully armored enemies you meet later in the game will be easy to take out because of the game's quick kill feature. To use this feature you simply have to walk near an enemy (even if he is firing at you) and with a simple keyboard stroke, you unlock an animation of you killing your enemy. This and the fact that The Punisher can take unimaginable amounts of damage before dying makes the game super easy, all you need to do is walk near an enemy and use your quick kill feature. There are also some special kill areas in the game that are again clearly marked by orange splashes in the environment (again you cannot use your own areas) similar to special interrogation areas and can be used for disposing your foes in different ways, though these also get quite stale as the game progresses. The save system also needs a mention here, there are absolutely no manual saves in the game, the game saves your progress each time you complete a particular area in a level and restarts you from the last completed area when you die. This made me quite frustrated at some of the tougher levels because when you die just as you are about to complete a particular area, the game restarts from the beginning of that area, which can be annoying to most people and certainly the game doesn't feature areas which can be played through a lot of times.
The points you rack up are also useful because you can use them to add extra bonuses either to The Punisher or to his weapons like added armor or scopes, though I didn't feel as if these bonuses had much in the way of impacting or improving my playing style. The game also grants you three different medals depending on the score you achieve in each level and you also unlock a challenge mode for each level when you complete it. The Challenge Mode sets a challenge for you in each level and you get extra bonuses like added concept arts, comic covers etc. when you beat the game's levels in Challenge Mode. The harder difficulty modes don't offer any replay value as you are still mowing down the same bunch of enemies, if a bit smarter, with the same bunch of weapons.
Graphically, the game is quite good looking especially on a high-end system capable of running it at higher resolutions. The game features comic-book style graphics that look part cel-shaded similar to graphics seen in Ubisoft's XIII but still look more colorful and vibrant. The game's character models are quite perfect especially for The Punisher whose face and flying overcoat looks spot on. The facial animations also look good and the lip-synching is very well done. The environments are also neatly rendered and most of them look really vivid and the textures on some of them look great while, on the other hand, some of them look spotty and repetitive. But, the overall quality of the game's graphics is good and the system requirements are forgiving and even on my lower end system, the game ran smoothly without any noticeable bugs.
The game's audio and sound is one of the highlights of the game. The weapon sounds are very good and each weapon sounds distinct from the shotgun to the rifle to the bigger weapons later in the game. The voice-overs are perfect especially for The Punisher with Thomas Jane reprising his role from the movie. The background score is also very good with nice music and rich effects but it seems to be too short and you hear the same score looping throughout the game even though it is good to hear. Also, even though the characters lip-synch in the game the voice-overs and the lip movements during the custscenes don't synchronize properly and this again represents the game's low-quality production values.
The Punisher is a game that can be recommended to die-hard fans of the comic or to people who have been waiting for a good action game based on one of Marvel's superheroes or anyone looking for an average third person shooter. The game's lasting appeal is not that great as the first time play through will take you anywhere between 12-15 hours depending on the difficulty level and the game doesn't have much in the way replay value once you complete it the first time through. Overall, this is a game that is more above-average than anything else and will not leave much of an impression on you once you complete it.
Posted on: 05/22/2006 by Balaji Sivaraman