The Punisher should have been called The Punishment. If one can excuse the poor AI and the asinine control scheme, The Punisher can be moderately entertaining—stress moderately. Not necessarily a bad game, but one’s money is definitely better spent elsewhere.
Gameplay: 6
The Punisher is brain-dead. More specifically, the AI is brain-dead. It’s very heavily scripted- you can frequently outflank an enemy who is perching around an item of cover, and walk up behind him as he is facing the direction he is coded to face. The enemy is completely unable to handle anything other than what the programmers expressly told it to expect. There are more tactical considerations to make in Whack-A-Mole than in The Punisher.
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The Punisher also requires a ridiculous amount of keys to control. You’ll need to program separate keys to reload, pick up weapons, do actions, open doors, move in the four cardinal directions, initiate “slaughter mode,” dive, crouch, holster weapons, initiate a fine-aiming mode, and select weapons with three different keys. In all, this is sixteen individual keys, only six of which are frequently used. This forces the user to mash keys furiously trying to find the correct one when something other than standard combat occurs. Run out of shotgun ammo? Which of the ten extra keys will reload? Accidentally fat-finger a key and you’re more likely holstering your dual shotguns than readying another weapon. |
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"The interrogations are frequently creative and viscerally entertaining, allowing you to dispatch of your victim in the most gruesome manner possible." |
One of the most innovative aspects of The Punisher is a reward system based on “style points.” As you perform exceptionally well in defeating your enemies, you are awarded style points used for upgrades like expanded magazines or body armor. This interesting twist on development gives the player an incentive for playing well.
Contrasting the style points system is the dumbest health system that has been implemented in an FPS. To regain health, you’ll enter “Slaughter Mode”, giving you an endless supply of knives to chuck into your enemies heads, but also initiating a strange, blurry setup to fight in. The environment becomes so disorienting that you’ll never really use it.
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Another saving grace is the interrogation scenes. At certain points of the game, areas are highlighted where the player can interrogate witless enemies into giving up strategic information. Each time is different and entertaining, but the control—moving the mouse with various degrees of force—isn’t well defined and frustrating at times. Eventually, you’ll “break” your subject, and he’ll spill his guts. The interrogations are frequently creative and are viscerally entertaining, but aren’t enough on their own to excuse the other, deep flaws. If you use force afterwards, you’ll end up dispatching your victim in the most gruesome manner possible. Unfortunately, in a methodology borrowed from the underachieving “Manhunt,” the screen goes black-and-white and blurry during these sequences. |
Graphics: 6
The Punisher is ugly. The textures are decidedly lo-res and the physics bizarre. Bodies lie in contorted states that look like they are floating in air. Basically the game looks several years old.
Though the character animations are smooth, everyone seems to be out of touch with their environment. The Punisher will try to dive over an obstacle but instead make contact with it, slowly sliding, fully extended, to the other side.
Your enemies, while somewhat varied; seem to turn up over and over again. You’ll dismiss the same jump-suited fool multiple times throughout a particular level.
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"Though the character animations are smooth, everyone seems to be out of touch with their environment." |
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The environments, while varied, are pedestrian. No level is particularly well done. There are no shadows in the game, and the lighting is programmed just enough to show a phong on an opposite surface. Object animation is missing, and interactivity within the game world hasn’t been thought of. You can empty magazine after magazine of ammunition into a window, television, box, or ticket booth, and nothing happens more than some unconvincing bullet hole decals appearing. There are very few buttons or switches to press, and no lights to break. The entire game feels to be on rails, as the player has no capacity to change the environment whatsoever. |
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Sound: 8
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"Ambient sounds make The Punisher’s world feel alive." |
The voice acting, while sometimes screwy, is generally well done, and contributes to the atmosphere. The weapons generally sound good, but where The Punisher really shines is with the ambient sounds. Your environment, particularly in the zoo level, is alive with sounds that are extraneous to the gameplay. This makes The Punisher’s world feel more alive than the gameplay makes it out to be.
Multiplayer: N/A
The Punisher does not have a multiplayer component.
Replay Value: 7
The Punisher comes with different modes of play, including a challenge mode, which encourages the player to play through completed levels a second time to achieve greater bonuses. Other than this, there is not a good reason to endure The Punisher more than one time. In fact, the overall stupidity of the game works against the player wanting to play any particular part more than once, because the bonuses that may be obtained aren’t worth the yawns that one would have to invest in completing a particular level more than once.
Overall, the replay isn’t any better or any worse than any other non-multiplayer first person shooter currently on the market.
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Bottom Line: 6.4/10
The best thing that can be said is that The Punisher isn’t horrible. It isn’t a complete waste of money, although it may be a complete waste of time. The Punisher feels very old in gameplay and in graphics, and it definitely won’t find a permanent place on anyone’s hard drive.
