The Punisher Arcade Game Review

Pretty decent beat em up, it's nothing special and I'd say it's about on par with the X-Men Arcade game and much better than Marvel Superheroes War of the Gems. My only big issues with the game comes from my usual issues with 2D beat em ups like how there is no dedicated evade command, and moving around feels like awkward and rigid since you can move up and down as well as left and right and partner this with the lack of a dedicated evade command and a quick way to move around the arena outside of double tapping the d pad to run I feel more like a tank than someone agile and nimble. Weapons and item pick ups are mapped to the attack button meaning I could punch someone instead of picking up the weapon and item I want and enemies are huge damage sponges, you can unload massive amounts of bullets to these guys and they still won't go down. Bosses have two health bars and feel very spongey.

I do think the game letting me respawn right where I died which the Marvel vs Capcom collection does alleviate potential frustration I could have like with many older games styled after this.

Some positives is that the story and presentation are pretty decent, it's not going to be the most indepth Punisher story in the world but it provides decent context for the beat em up gameplay and I like Wilson Fisk as the final boss since he's one of my favorite Marvel villains. It's also interesting to see an on screen Punisher in the 90s that predates the 2004 movie, War Zone and the MCU and all the on screen versions after the 80s movie was this and the 90s Marvel animated universe so the game is intriguing regarding that.

To this game's credit, it does have more enemy variety than the Volition game does like ninjas, bigger thugs and robots all though the latter game is better as a whole.

Overall, not a lot to say, it's a typical superhero 2D beat em up made in the era, it does what it does well enough but it won't make me change my thoughts on the 2D beat em up genre as a whole.