The Punisher has never been a widely known, or loved comic book character, but he has been around for some time. Trying to throw this character back into the superheroes scene director and screenwriter Jonathan Hensleigh brought about the lackluster 2004 released film "The Punisher." The story follows that of the movie and comics before it (not directly however). You play as Frank Castle, an ex-marine who witnessed his family's murder at the hands of drug dealers. Sworn to punish all criminals, Frank goes to war against the underworld.

The game takes place several years into the Punisher's so called "career" and features some of the Punisher's greatest foes, including Bullseye and The Russian. The game features an exorbitant amount of violence, and a story written by comic writers Garth Ennis and Jimmy Palmiotti, this is as authentic a Punisher game as you may ever see.

"The Punisher" is a very simple game. If broken down, besides the interrogation system, all it is a go to point A to point B killing all who oppose you, but I’ll get into this a little later on. The game contains over 20 weapons (all of which you obtain gradually). Pretty much all of these weapons can be dual-wielded. This means you can control double shotguns, double M-16s, the traditional dual pistols, etc.

What makes this game at all unique, is the very-well-done interrogation system. The game gives you the ability to grab any enemy you get close enough to. Once you have control of an enemy, you can do one of several things. You can straight up slaughter them, using the quick kill feature, you can use them as a human shield, which not only is fun but can be very effective.

Then there are the interrogations. Besides special interrogations, you have several types that you can choose from, the main three involve choking, punching, and head smashing. You control these by using either of the thumb sticks, if you can keep the restrained enemies fear at a certain level, then the character will "break." Once an enemy breaks they will either give you valuable information, or might even help you through a room, forcing the other characters to put down their weapons.

Then there are the special interrogations, a long with special kills. Whenever you see a white lighted area, you can do a special interrogation if you have an enemy in your grip. There are over 100 of these located throughout the game, and range from sticking an enemies head in a tank of piranhas, to sticking an enemy in the wood chipper, or slamming a window down on their heads. These can get very gory however, so gory the ESRB forced Volition to make them in a black and white style view, making it hard to see what’s going on. This is a bit of a disappointment, but nothing serious. As sick as it may sound, doing these special kills will likely bring about an evil smirk to your face, because frankly, its fun to murder these evil animated scumbags in such unique ways (and I’ll tell you, there are some really unique ones in here).

The Punisher is not meant to be taken seriously. It's over-the-top for a reason. That's likely why Volition included an arcade score. The odd thing is, killing someone after an interrogation costs you points. I guess it's not particularly nice to murder those who've cracked under your influence.
Since every room you enter isn't filled with these interrogations, you must resort to straight up shooting them.

"The Punisher" controls somewhat like Max Payne, having you use dual analog sticks to control Frank, and using the right and left triggers to control your right and left guns. Though going from room to room killing enemies can be fun, it gets old faster then you'd think, and despite the interrogations, there is little to nothing that separates it from any other 3rd-person shooter available on the Xbox, and with games out their like the Max Payne series, you expect a little more. This isn't to say it's horrible, however, and the shooting element of the game is definitely done well. Another downfall is that the game contains 16 different missions, and unfortunetly, they are all very, very similiar to each other, and theres little to no variety.