The Punisher

Die another minute

In just over seven months, the team behind the Red Faction games has built a polished and immensely promising looking action-adventure very much in the Dead To Rights/Max Payne mould but carved out with a graphics novel style of its own that instantly sets it apart from other half-hearted licenses. Although it's built on a modified version of the Red Faction 2 engine, its brighter, cleaner palette and entirely different visual style makes it practically unrecognisable, and the addition of the latest Havok ragdoll physics drags it into the realms of the cutting edge. And no-one's talking about Geo-Mod, thank the lord.

In the playable, nigh on finished version shown off at E3, Volition gleefully took the time to show us some of the gruesome treats in store. And whatever you may have read already, nothing can really prepare you for quite how full-on stomach churning the whole spectacle is. Even if it is often comically presented and tongue-in-cheek in a warped kind of way, it's surprisingly realistic (or as real as you can imagine someone's body being chopped into bite sized chunks by a machine designed for wood).

Quite what the BBFC would make of all this is anyone's guess, but Volition admits it might have to tone down some of the more extreme animations in order to get a European release. Maybe Americans have stronger stomachs for obscene amounts of gore, but THQ will have fun trying to get this one past the German censors unchallenged! But don't get us wrong - we've seen every vile video nasty going, and gibbed for Britain - but this is a game that gives the player the choice of how far they want to go during their interrogation.

While Manhunt rewarded the player for pulling off extreme kills, The Punisher makes it quite straightforward to suss out which NPCs need to be taught a lesson. Firefights are pretty much engineered so that the perp you need to interrogate won't be firing at you, even when his partners in crime are. When you approach them, they beg for mercy and slump to their knees, but it's not in Frank's nature to show subhuman scum any respect, is it? You can, though, wimp out and just interrogate them, human shield-style, and a menu pops up to allow you to do that, but you can go so much further than that. Oh ho ho.

Max Dead To Payne

Roughing your victim up is easy, with some softly softly tactics enabling you to kick, punch and scare them witless by popping the barrel of your gun in their mouth in order to get the information you require. If you're just feeling especially ruthless, simply pull the trigger and watch in horror as their head explodes like an egg in a microwave.

Other particularly wince-worthy moments allow you to grab your victim and hold him upside down and threaten to 'kerb' them and smash their teeth in. The mechanic is essentially the same for whatever vile act you're about to commit to their person; swinging them backwards and forwards with the right stick gives you the responsibility of how far you go with your punishment, and if you're feeling especially sadistic you eventually get to witness exactly how vicious this game can be.

The Punisher doesn't disappoint with the sheer number of sadistic opportunities - a skull icon appears when there's a specific place where you can use the environment to conduct your questioning. We were given just a taster of what to expect, such as the deep fat fryer, and the aforementioned Piranha pool and wood chipper. With dozens of death moves promised, you're unlikely to experience the kind of overkill that crept into Manhunt very quickly. In addition, there's actually a point to getting the balance of interrogation right, with health, info and bonus items given rewarding the right approach.

"Can you just do that death scream again for me?"

You can, of course, get all of the info out of them, all of the bonus items and then kill them in spectacularly grisly fashion, but that's left entirely up to you. Perhaps it's this kind of gratuitous sadism that had us shifting uncomfortably as we watched, especially given how much effort Volition has gone to replicate the sounds of pain and death, and the unique animations that make the whole spectacle look incredibly convincing. Even in the regular fire fights, the ragdoll physics show off the impact of bullets very well indeed, and it's hard to believe that this is essentially the same tech behind the solid but rather generic Red Faction 2.

Rather like a logical extension of the location-based damage system pioneered in Soldier Of Fortune, limbs (and even the head) can be blown off with jets of blood gushing out, enemies will do a little ragdoll dance with the force of multiple shards of hot lead raking their bodies, and the force of these blows sends them reeling back convincingly. For the arch gaming sadist, you couldn't really ask for more, apart from perhaps real blood squirting out of your TV.

Then there's the game's bullet time mode, of course (well, every game's got to have one these days, right?). Frank has a slaughter bar, and once it's full up the screen goes monochrome and you get to wade around in slow motion, with targeting locking on to several baddies at once, allowing you to take out heavily populated rooms and potentially save innocents that would have otherwise copped it in the fracas.