The Punisher: No Mercy is one of those games that does some things right, but also does some things wrong. It’s a PSN exclusive, and the trailer was exciting enough to make me want to buy it, though mostly I was just hoping to forget CellFactor. Using the Unoriginal engine – oh, sorry, I mean Unreal engine, and supporting both a campaign and multiplayer, No Mercy seemed to hold some promise. The game’s development was perhaps inspired, though not based on the most recent Punisher movie Warzone, and seems to stay true to the Punisher comics’ universe.

No Mercy is planned to be released as episodic content, so the game ends with a ” to be continued”, but don’t worry because it will hardly leave you in suspense anyway. The plot of the game seems to be “Kill people because they bad”, and there isn’t much more to it. There isn’t really a beginning or end, you just get thrown into the middle of things, leaving you feeling a little lost in the midst of everything. Each level is preceded by a comic book-style cutscene that’s always very short and hard to follow.

Its not that the story is complicated or confusing, everything just lacks any significance and so its hard to see why the Punisher is running around killing everyone other than that he has some extra bullets and woke up on the wrong side of the bed. As you might expect from episodic content, the story is very short, and you can run through it in about 30-40 minutes or less which is probably a good thing, or you might get bored from doing the same thing over and over.

There are eight maps in the game, and each is horribly designed. Regardless of where you go you will always be surrounded by the baddies with little to no cover. With no proper pacing, No Mercy lacks a lot of strategy that isn’t made up for by the gunplay, mostly because the gunplay is bad anyway. There are some cool looking weapons like the crossbow or the grenade launcher, but you have to do some very challenging tasks in order to unlock them and in the end the amount of time it takes isn’t worth the reward.

That seems to be the case with most of the game, in fact, because if you want to get any trophies or unlock any extra content you need to put a lot of time into a very specific task, like killing a specific number of people with a specific character while using a specific weapon, and all just to get one thing. No Mercy seems to think its high profile enough for people to want to waste lots of time doing things that aren’t fun just to unlock things that might be fun. The guns that you are left with are generic and poorly handled, so you’re kinda stuck. Hopefully the next game will be a little more rewarding. Grinding is never fun.

Saying whether or not a network game is worth your money can be challenging. There is a lot of content in No Mercy, including a campaign and multiplayer, as well as tournaments and customization options. With a little bit of forcing, you can get into the multiplayer, so it’ll keep players busy for a long time. However, most of that content is shallow and not very rewarding, and most people may not find No Mercy to be worth their time. If ya got the spare ten bucks and feel in the mood for an FPS, The Punisher: No Mercy might be the game for you. However if you’re looking for quality, hold on to your money and just keep playing Killzone 2 (or, if you’ve not got it, go out and buy it right now).

5/10

Filed under: Games, P