How the 2005 The Punisher Game Is a Time Capsule of Old-age Marvel Properties

Last month, GameGrin celebrated the North American release of The Punisher, which was nearly banned in the UK and Australia for its graphic special interrogations/executions; later, a censored version of the game would be available. 

The Punisher is a third-person action shooter based on the Marvel character of the same name, released a year after the 2004 motion picture. Made by defunct Volition Inc. and THQ, the game takes elements from the film, Thomas Jane reprises his role as Frank Castle, and the muscle-bound antagonist, The Russian, shows up in two missions, but ultimately, it’s an original narrative influenced by Garth Ennis’ comic run who also wrote for the game.

The plot follows The Punisher’s lead-filled campaign to kill and interrogate criminals after his family was killed by the New York mafia. One day, he’s shooting up a crack house, and the next, he’s nuking an island occupied by Russian separatists — with each level told as a flashback to set up the final mission on Rikers Island against Castle’s nemesis.

Frank’s apartment is the game’s hub, letting you look over the arsenal unlocked by playing the game, collectables, and upgrading The Punisher’s body armour and magazine capacity using the points scored at the end of each mission. The aesthetic of the hub is almost like you are moving through a three-dimensional comic panel, accompanied by a score pumping the player up before starting the next level.

Before talking about how well the game has held up, I should talk about what everyone remembers about The Punisher: the black-and-white tint with every gory kill. As mentioned before, the game was censored outside of the USA by putting a black-and-white grainy filter over the screen, and sometimes the camera would zoom into Frank Castle to obscure the gore. However, you can still see what’s going on (as well as hear the screams of pain); furthermore, the special executions, like feeding a guy to a boa, are not censored, and your overall score is penalised for killing your hostage when interrogating them.

The gameplay and graphics still hold strong (though some controls and facial animations have atrophied slightly), which is a bonus for a game originally on PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows. As the game is quite fast-paced in firefights between going from A to B, old textures and character models don’t stick out. Even when the camera gets up close in the interrogation sections, nothing looks like it’s made of putty. The ideal way to play The Punisher is to either strategise the perfect run without getting hit too much to get as many points as possible or go all-out guns blazing and necks cracking. 

After accumulating enough kills, you can enter a sort of rage mode where The Punisher begins throwing heat-seeking combat knives, which don’t always kill the target with one shot. After leaving the mode, you may have a stray goon with a knife in their abdomen reacting to it. Following the actions of the various enemies you fight, the AI is quite good, as people will react to how you play and what type of foe they are. Mobsters will come at you openly while special forces and Yakuza will play it more tactically. But, all of them still freak out or run when they get ambushed or flanked, helping you turn them into a human shield.

The one thing I found while playing The Punisher was the comic book campiness spread thick over everything. In the age of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Punisher, this interpretation of Castle is like an MA-rated Saturday morning cartoon character. Grimacing mug with a gravel voice attached to a tall, black leather trench coat, the corny one-liners about how he’s so dark mixed in with monologues, all while causing grievous bodily harm like it’s his full-time job.

The game has inadvertently turned into a time capsule of how Marvel properties were once delivered, not as another instalment of a cash-printing machine, but as a playable comic book. The other Marvel characters that make an appearance (of which there are many) stick to their comic-book counterpart, including a nod to Russia’s favourite superhero: The Thing, or so The Russian says.