Highly Compressed The Punisher PC Game ~ GamesNHacks

Hammad Ansari on Sunday, September 05, 2010

The Punisher | Genre: Modern Shooter | PC Game | {248 MB}

The Punisher is not a particularly complex game. Each of the 16 missions features the same basic concept: Go from point A to point B and kill every single thing in your path. You can heft two weapons, crouch to gain some protection, and nab bad guys to use as body armor while unleashing a hail of bullets on his buddies. If that's all there was to The Punisher, this would be a pretty mediocre effort. Fortunately, Volition was committed to showing the brutal nature of the Punisher.

With this commitment brought the need not only for an excessive number of armaments (more than 20 weapons) but for the brand of over-the-top murder seen in the pages of the comic book. The Punisher's great innovation is in its interrogations and special kills. These grandiose moments often make use of the environment to offer creative ways for the Punisher to force information from criminals or to simply off them with aplomb.

Most people could come up with a few different interesting ways to kill someone in a video game. Put a guy in a wood chipper? Yeah, I saw that move. Hang a guy out a window and drop him? Sure, did that to my accountant once. I don't doubt there's a gamer who couldn't think up a few of these on his or her own, but to do it 100 times? That requires an incredible amount of creativity and probably a few years of living in a basement. It's a joy, a true and giddy joy to come across specially areas marked for death. White skulls hover for special interrogations, gold for special instant-kills.

To interrogate, grab a criminal and take them to the marker, where an icon appears letting you know you can do your business. Each victim is resistant at first, but they all have a breaking point. When an interrogation begins, a meter appears at the bottom of the screen. Using the Thumbstick (if you're using a joypad, which is recommended) or the keyboard, it's your job to frighten the subject and maintain their fear level within the marked section of the meter for three seconds. Some crooks have smaller zones than others and some interrogation zones can kill quickly if you push too hard on the Thumbstick. It's a slight learning curve to get the hang of interrogation, but well worth the practice. The touch and feel just isn't that same outside of a joypad, but it's still a blast either way.

Once broken, criminals give up something, either a plea for their life, some background info, or something truly useful, like the location of a weapons cache. After being broken, you can finish your captive off as a special thank you. Though sawing someone in half is certainly enjoyable (though not too exciting to watch thanks to the black-and-white effect), there are times when keeping someone alive is actually beneficial.