Finally a faithful version of The Punisher!
The Punisher is the ultimate bad ass - of that there is little doubt. Just think if the Punisher was around in Sydney – there would not have been any riots because all those muslim fuckheads who are solely to blame for it would be dead and not causing trouble and the world would be a better place for it.
As I have said elsewhere, The Punisher would have to be hardest comic property to screw up. A Vietnam vet sees his wife and kids murdered in a mob hit and snaps on goes on a killing spree to punish criminals all over New York City. Simple. Violent. Brutal.
And yet, all we have been given movie wise is Dolph Lundgren’s “I like to
meditate naked in the NY sewers” Punisher and Thomas Jane’s “I’m too friendly
looking” Punisher.
But THQ and Volition have gotten together and gave us a game which is the definitive Punisher. This is the Punisher from the comics. This is the Punisher I grew up reading.
After an awesome opening movie with Frank killing a bunch of Yakuza, he walks out of the building to find himself surrounded by police. Cut to Ryker's Island with Frank being interviewed by a couple of detectives. He begins telling his story in flashback At the start of each level you get a cutscene back at Ryker's, some banter with the detectives, before it’s on to the game.
This is actually a really good way of doing it, I thought. It is something different as when the back story is complete, the final level takes place in Ryker's.
Gameplay is relatively simple – go round and kill criminals with a variety of firearms (sometimes two at once – even machine guns and assault rifles, save the odd hostage, get to the end of the level and/or boss fight.
What makes this special is the little touches, the Punisher touches. You have four main ways of interrogation techniques – a gun pressed to the head, a good old punching session, choking (which seems to be the most reliable way to get information without killing them), and my personal favourite, smashing their face into the ground (complete with juicy smash sound effects).
Some enemies will have Punisher icons above their heads, meaning they have special information – a code for a door, keys to a weapons locker, etc. There will also be Punisher icons spread around the levels and these represent special interrogation techniques that can be used. Some examples are
- threatening to shove someone into an electric eel tank
- threatening to shove someone into a piranha tank
- threatening to feed them to a shark
- dangling someone over a meat grinder
- locking them in a cremation oven and turning up the heat
- holding them under a drill and slowly bringing it down to their face
- holding their face near an aircraft propeller
- threatening to run them balls first over a circular saw
- doing burnouts with a forklift on them
- putting their face on a ledge and stomping on it (ala American History X)
- trying to dip their face in frying vats full of boiling oil
There are heaps more all through the game. One downside is that if you go too far and kill them in these ways (even after extracting information) you lose Style points. (Used to unlock extra content and buy upgrades for your weapons and abilities) That is a downside but what really sucks is that if you kill someone in these ways, the screen goes black and white until it is over – no doubt to reduce the violence level. That sucks as I wanted to see it in full colour when I drop them into a meat grinder.
On the other hand, after interrogating someone and getting back to using them as a human shield, I was able to throw him into the propeller and watch him explode into little chunks of red. No black and white shit there. And I was able to throw others into the piranha tank and see them attack him as well.
There are also special kill zones, with things like pushing someone’s head into an active bear trap mounted on a wall, dumping them in a coffin and tossing a grenade in there, or feeding them to a giant snake, to be used around the various levels.
And now we come to my favourite Punisher touches. Occasionally when interrogating someone, they will say something which will trigger a little flashback and you are treated to a frame from a comic.
First they will often start mouthing off about how they aren’t going to talk or how they’re going to kill you, then as you start interrogating them they might come up with "You’re sick, you know that?" or as I got from a Yakuza member "Are all Americans this violent?"
And once they break, they will say something which may trigger a flashback. What comes when you kill them is a little retort from the Punisher. For me, this is what cements the game in the Punisher universe.
For example, some crim cries "I have a family!" triggering a flashback of Frank’s
family. Hit the quick kill button, Frank spins him around and says “Everybody
does” as he shoots him in the face.
Others are
"Please! I have kids!"
"So did I." BANG!
"I ain't ready for a coffin!"
"No one ever is." BANG!
"Have mercy!"
"Death is a mercy." BANG!
"I just had a baby!"
"Not going to save you." BANG!
"You did your own grave!"
"I dug mine long ago." BANG!
That is the Punisher I wanted to see in the movies. Brutal and completely merciless when dealing with criminals. Which brings me to the next thing. Although Thomas Jane is too friendly looking to be the Punisher, his voice work in this game is perfect. Seriously, there is not a line of dialogue uttered by him that could have sounded more like the Punisher. Take a bow, Tom.
Another nice touch is the appearance of others in the Marvel universe – King Pin, Bullseye, Iron Man and a few others all appear in differing capacities.
And I had to laugh at the level where you crash a Mafia funeral. You meet up with the mortician who thanks you for all that you have done for his family over the years. "All your handiwork has put my kids through college."
The game won't take you too long to finish but to go through and unlock everything (if you are one of those completionists that has to do everything in the game there is to do) will take some doing. And despite its relative shortness, the fun you will have being the Punisher and torturing criminals and ruthlessly executing them like the leftist scum they are is more than enough to compensate for it.
This game has given me some great ideas on what to do with the next lot of leftists I run into....
© by Tiberius Alatheus 2006