punisher no mercy is one of the best PSN games you basically can't play, it was an unreal tournament clone that came out in 2009 as a download exclusive and is long since gone from servers, but these days thats really not much of an issue if you have access to emulators or, well, other means. its a good, short fun time thats thankfully still playable due to bot matches and a short story mode. like i said before it's a UT style arena shooter, which is a genre thats one of my guilty pleasures, while i'm usually very hit and miss with shooters, i love these kinds of ones when they have some fun weapons and bots to play with, i'll always pick one up when i see one and this is one of the very few on the system and one of the more modern examples of one that i can name other than some indie games and the long dead lawbreakers (rip wish i could have played it) and this one did interest me for years too, but because of its delisting i was never quite able to pick it up, which always annoyed me because i liked the theme and it seemed fun, i enjoyed the ps2 punisher game a lot, i'd even call it one of my favourite shooters ever and this looked good, maybe not as good, but good.

it plays pretty standard, you pick a loadout with weapons you slowly unlock (play the story mode first because by the time you beat it you'll get your first major loadout with the best gun in the game with the RPG) and you get 3 weapons that you can swap between during death plus some perks and a cooldown ability which can range from speed boosts, to my fav which is a free weapon upgrade. you also get a bunch of characters, some heroes like 2 variations of the punisher and silver sable and some villains like bushwhacker and a weirdo irish steriotype who i think has the same VA as the irish guy from ride to hell, i mained silver sable the second i could. the other major gimmick here is the weapon upgrade system, during a match you earn money and kill XP and this will make the guns better, its a fun system that feels really rewarding and the fully upgraded versions always feel super powerful, especially the RPG which gets a cool spray added to it and was my main for the whole postgame because it felt so fun to use (its an instakill if it hits but it doesnt do much splash damage, it kind of feels like a railgun but it can kill multiple people in one go and it makes you feel unstoppable, it's a blast), though some things like the lazer sight the rifle gets end up making it feel weirdly harder to aim? i'm not sure why but it made it feel less accurate, some weapons are also seemingly unavailable offline too, at least they seem locked to multiplayer so i wasn't able to unlock them, but the ones you can use are all super fun, it's also pretty gory if you're into that, but thats not much of a selling point to me and the time to kill is very quick, even faster than UT, like you can be dead in half a second, which makes things feel much faster and hectic, dying is a little annoying though since it sneds you to the weapon select screen, which while useful, hurts the flow a lot, but its not a big deal when you get back into the action pretty much instantly after. you get a short 30 min campaign with a story that makes very little sense, i had a punisher fan help explain it but even then i was lost and so were they and it only has 4 levels with a single boss in one before you're kicked back to the menu with a to be continued and the rest of the maps are only playable in multiplayer or skirmish, it's not a great experiance, but the skirmish mode does make up for it and is where most of the fun will happen because its fun to play with bots and the other 4 maps are the best ones in the game.

the maps vary a litle but really its 8 maps on 4 themes and a second variation with gimmick differences that makes them feel so much more unique and dynamic, like the standard glass plant level is just a larger factory level but its alt version has 2 levels and an elevator gimmick, with a small area with bad vision and flooded with steam, the gimmick levels are always better, you also have places like scrapyards (which has the best look in the game, it's the most ps360 of the levels with blinding white skyboxes and the whole level being weirdly shiny.the waterside levels are also really cool, the latter of which called crossing is another favourite level, it reminded me a lot of one of the levels from dark sector for some reason and the other levels are cool too, like the factory with a foundry spilling with lava that can kill you and the car park that may be the most immediatly fun of the levels, just had a really good layout that facilitated fights really well, for sure the most fast paced level. its a good looking game, if you're into that eras aesthetic, i dont think its unreal 3 but it feels unreal 3 with the shiny textures and bad frame rates (positive), the lighting in some levels really has that skung you want from a ps360 era game, can be a real sight to behold, music is a little boring though, it works, but i don't remember much of it and it doesnt even have any available online.

the game was made by, of all people, zen studios, a name that may not mean much to some, but they tend to make very good pinball games, some of the best in the industry i think, but they've also made other great games like castlestorm which is a personal favourite vita game of mine, and mushroom men for the DS, they didn't make many shooters after this though, focusing on things like a castlestorm sequel and their zen pinball games. the game hasn't had much of a legacy really, it's mostly forgotton, basically unplayable for most and its unlikely to ever see any kind of re-release, and we havent even seen anything of the punisher in games since, which is sad, this and the ps2 game are both fantastic and i think deserving of ports, maybe one day, until then i'd reccomend it if you have the option to, the ps3 doesn't have many games like this and while i'd reccomend UT3 over it, its still a great option if you want something smaller scale and less known.