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Violence, death, killing, bloodshed – I’m a big fan. When it’s in video games. I forget how I discovered The Punisher game but when I did, I admit it’s the violence that appealed to me. I enjoy over-the-top violent and gory games because if done properly, it can result in satisfying and often comical gameplay. I think at this point, everyone is familiar with the Punisher. Even if you haven’t read the comics or seen the movies or series, you’ve probably seen the character’s logo. Hell, I was familiar with the logo long before I knew what the Punisher was just because I would see people wearing the shirts with the logo on it. He’s a pop culture icon or at least that classic logo is. The Punisher is an antihero who uses violent and brutal tactics in his campaign against crime. I feel the source material could make for a great violent and gory action game and I guess game developer Volition felt the same way because that’s exactly what they made.

Developed by Volition and published by THQ, The Punisher was released for PC, Xbox, and PlayStation 2 in January, 2005. For this review, I played the PC version. From what I understand, the gruesome scenes of torture and gore on display in the initial cut of the game resulted in an “Adults Only” rating but the developer censored some of the violence to bring it down to a “Mature” rating. Before playing, I did consult the game’s PCGamingWiki page and installed some mods. I installed The Punisher Gore Patch which removes the “black and white” filter from interrogations and restores unfinished blood effects. I also installed ThirteenAG’s Widescreen Fix so I could run the game in a widescreen resolution.

Most of the story is told through flashbacks by Frank Castle, The Punisher, who is in custody and being interrogated at Ryker’s Island. Thomas Jane who voiced the character in the 2004 film reprises his role here and the plot follows Frank as he travels around New York taking down different criminal organizations. As he takes down one organization he learns of their connection to another and travels to multiple locations, leaving plenty of bodies in his wake. Along the way, he meets up with characters like Black Widow and Nick Fury and they work with him to stop the bad guys. I won’t say the plot is great but Marvel fans should find enough to love here. There are what I’ll call brief cameos by several Marvel characters other than the ones already mentioned and Frank will get to go up against some popular Marvel villains. Despite the story being pretty average, I actually think the game does an amazing job at capturing the gritty and dark world of The Punisher. From the environments to the violence, it’s an excellent reflection of the source material.

I love this game. I admit it’s repetitive as fuck but I really enjoyed my time with it. From Frank’s cheesy one-liners to the extreme violence and gore, it’s all fun and often comical. Even some of the shit the enemies say is humorous. The humor makes for a nice contrast to the dark, violent, and grim world on display and the brutal and often over-the-top violence compliments the action nicely. The Punisher is a third-person shooter where you run through environments, gunning down foes and can interrogate or torture them for information. But the violence and gore is very much what carries the experience. Executions look brutal, interrogations are violent, blood will splatter, heads can explode into gibs, and fire and explosions can result in bodies looking visibly charred. To me, The Punisher feels like Max Payne mixed with Soldier of Fortune but with torture and without bullet time.

The main menu is set in an apartment where you can access missions and view your armory and any extras you unlocked. Before each mission, you can change what weapons you want to bring with you by selecting them from your armory and most need to be unlocked. The gameplay is pretty straightforward. You navigate through the levels and kill the enemies in your way. You can grab enemies and use them as shields, throw them, and knock them out. You can also interrogate them for information which will replenish health and the environments will include spots where you can perform special kills and special interrogations.

Frank can perform quick kills which is always satisfyingly violent. He will use his knives to stab people in the head and slit their throats and shoot people in the face among other things. Executions are also satisfyingly violent. Frank can interrogate people to get information. Frank can use one of multiple violent methods but it’s the special interrogations that are the most fun. These are spots where Frank can use the environment to interrogate foes like by threatening to electrocute them, drop them to their death, throw them into a woodchipper, burn them alive, drill into their head, and many more. The best part is, you can choose not to let them go and actually proceed with the executions.

I think the interrogations is one of the game’s more unique mechanics. You can grab any enemy you come across and interrogate them and it’s the easiest way to replenish health. The game also includes a scoring system in the form of style points and reaching certain scores will result in medals and additional game modes for the levels like the Challenge and Punishment modes. You can unlock cheats, concept art, and comic book covers as well. The scoring system undoubtedly adds some replay value to the campaign which is good considering this is a single player only experience. As you kill people and rack up points, you will fill up the Slaughter meter. You can enter Slaughter mode at the press of a button to become extremely powerful and regain some health. You can also spend points to unlock permanent upgrades.

I like the scoring system but I question the penalties. Whenever you perform interrogations, if you don’t let the enemy go after he gives up the information and, instead, proceed to execute him, it results in a score penalty. It makes sense if the enemy agrees to help you out in some way but otherwise I don’t understand the penalty. It’s odd because you can stop the special interrogation and perform a quick kill instead and will be awarded points as a result. So the game is penalizing you for brutal executions. I do want to mention that there is a mod called PunisherPlugin that removes the penalty. Interrogations can lead you to resources like weapons and ammo and helpful information like where you need to go or what you need to do to proceed. Sometimes an enemy will agree to help you like by luring out foes in hiding or by prevent foes from attacking you.

Frank will get his hands on some awesome firepower and all weapons feel good to fire. It’s a shame the audio side of the game is a bit lackluster but nevertheless, weapons still feel good and some can be dual wielded. You can actually shoot weapons out of people’s hands which I think is a neat detail. In my opinion, the game’s biggest problems are dumb enemies and a lack of variety. Enemies will run around and shoot at you, take cover, and even take hostages from time to time and when you save people, you can talk to them to replenish health. But enemies don’t always react appropriately, they’ll often do stupid things like stand out in the open or run directly towards you without shooting, and I’ve seen them inadvertently kill each other on more than one occasion.

As for the game’s lack of variety, there’s nothing to mix up the run and gun gameplay. No set pieces or scripted sequences. Every level puts Frank against tons of enemies. You run from area to area blowing away and executing bad guys. That’s everything, the whole campaign. Enemies equipped with armor are spongier than others but headshots can drop them quickly. Other than the different factions and character models, enemies don’t really differ or come in specific types nor do they exhibit special or unique behavior. They all seem to act the same. But I will say I appreciated many of the boss battles because they’re more than just “shoot it until dies”.

I did play with a keyboard and mouse and I would say the controls take some getting used to. I found myself changing the controls on more than one occasion in an effort to get to the perfect comfort level so to speak and it took me a few levels to really get into the groove of things. I feel this game would benefit from a leaning mechanic and crouch toggle. Interrogations will require you to move the mouse up and down to get the enemy’s stress level in the sweet spot and hold it there for a few seconds, but too much force will result in the execution which can be annoying if that wasn’t your goal. The whole mechanic can be tedious and is a little finicky. I killed a lot of dudes accidentally because I guess I moved the mouse too fast even though I was sure I didn’t. It’s that kind of thing. It can be frustrating at times and it would be even more so if the executions weren’t so satisfying and fun to watch.

I am a little surprised at how long this game is. There’s quite a few levels and it can take up to ten hours to beat the campaign. I do think it puts up a pretty good fight on Normal without ever leaning into the frustrating category. Getting those Gold Medals is a different story but just beating the levels isn’t all that difficult for the most part. And I’m going to be honest, I didn’t realize there was an Upgrade menu until I got to the second to last level. I don’t know how I missed it but I did. Since I beat most of the levels on my first run without any upgrades, I can honestly say The Punisher is not too tough on Normal. After I beat the campaign, I went back and replayed levels to try for better scores and to unlock more stuff and because I find this game to be a ton of fun despite its issues. It’s the kind of game where cheats can make it even more enjoyable. I could spend hours just fucking around and violently killing everyone with infinite ammo and health. But even playing it without cheats, dying rarely resulted in aggravation. I was always eager to jump back in. It’s just that kind of game. At least to me.

The environments are diverse and most levels will take you to new locations. You’ll shoot your way through a crackhouse, meat packing plant, estate, Stark Towers, funeral home, and zoo among many other locations. The levels are linear with multiple sections and multiple areas per section. The game has to load each section and each section is a checkpoints so when you die, you can start from the beginning of the current section. It’s usually pretty obvious where you need to go and sometimes interrogations will result in enemies telling you where to go or what to do. Most levels come with Challenge and Punishment modes which need to be unlocked. The Challenge mode will require you to finish the level or section of the level and meet specific requirements. Punishment Mode is like a survival mode of sorts. You must survive for as long as you can and rack up style points to a meet a specific goal.

Visually, The Punisher definitely shows its age but I think the presentation still holds up rather well. The environments are detailed and with the mods installed, I would say many of the gore effects look very over-the-top but not all of it comes across as cartoonish. Some just look downright brutal. For example, I can’t say there’s anything cartoonish about Frank stabbing someone in the head or slitting someone’s throat. At least not the way it’s presented here. As for the audio, the sound work is a mixed bag. The sounds of enemies gargling, choking, and screaming in agony as they die helps make the executions feel more brutal and satisfying but I feel like weapons fire and explosions should sound louder or more booming and some of the audio heard during certain cut scenes is way too low. But I do like the soundtrack. It sounds like something you might hear in an action movie or maybe that’s just me. I feel the music fits the gameplay and action well. On the technical side, the frame rate did dip and hitch a few times but I can’t say I encountered any significant problems or bugs.

Honestly, The Punisher has become one of my favorite third-person shooters of its generation. As of this review, I have not played a lot of Marvel video games but right now I’d put the The Punisher in second place on my list of favorite Marvel games, just behind the first Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I fully admit it’s not an amazing game on a technical level but it’s just so much fun to play. It can feel janky and is repetitive but the violence and gore really elevate this for me. The executions are amazing and the interrogations leading to health is one of the game’s more interesting mechanics in my opinion. The game is basically encouraging you to torture people for information and to stay alive. While the presentation does show it’s age now, I can still see some of the violence making some people uncomfortable. Not me, personally, but my point is that the game looks good enough and is animated well enough to actually look and feel realistically (and I use that term loosely) brutal and visceral. A lot of it is over-the-top, no doubt, but there wasn’t a lot of games that could match this type of violence at the time. At least not that I’m aware of. Maybe the Manhunt games. Even today I would still consider The Punisher to be notably violent.

I would recommend The Punisher and the PC version, specifically, just for the mods. I’ve never played the console versions but the mods spoiled me. I don’t think I want to play the vanilla game with the censored content. Without the extreme violence and gore, it would be pretty average. But at its core, that’s exactly what it is. An average game with an awesome gimmick. A gimmick that actually carries it. The violence and gore is why I love The Punisher. If you like that kind of thing, definitely check this out.