Genesis

The Punisher

Nick Fury's pathetic presence doesn't make a difference in the end though; The Punisher is still a frenzied, action packed adventure, exploding with diverse weapons, intense enemy-filled stages, and some of the most crushing grappling moves to appear in a beat-'em-up. This excellent game should serve as an example to other developers of how you put a comic character into a video game and manage to keep his personality intact as well as making the game fun and compelling to play.

The graphics have a certain comic-book quality and overall, it's a decent exercise in vigilante mayhem.

More comic book games? Punisher packs a wallop with loads of enemies to kill and plenty of action, but the feeling of the comic book isn't here. The colors seem drab and the game gets repetitive.

Fans of the skull-on-the-leotards hero will definitely groan when they see what's been done to their vigilante. The only satisfied gamers might be Streets of Rage fans who haven't had enough.

Although the blood and brutal tone of the arcade version is absent, this version of The Punisher is still pretty thin despite an appealing character. One of the big problems is that the characters are too small on the screen and there is little or no skill involved in defeating the boss characters. (They are more like wars of attrition that anything else.) On the plus side, there are plenty of weapons and moves to learn, but the whole game comes across as routine and bland.

Don't be fooled, this is an old game with a new paint job (and a bad one at that). Chances are, Punisher fan or not, you already own this, and in a better incarnation.