Postal 2 Review

"Here I am, just minding my own business, exercising my second amendment rights, and you people decide to freak out on me." - The Postal Dude

So, throughout the past couple of weeks, my time has been occupied by a most unusual game, a game that's garnered a fair amount of controversy in the community, and yet is one of the most entertaining things I've ever played. That game, is the infamous Postal 2, made by Running With Scissors.

Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a good game. It's barely even a functional one, and yet, it's entertaining like watching a massive highway pileup of clown cars, complete with burning clowns. Postal 2 is a mess, yes, but despite what its detractors might say, it's really the sort of mess that every gamer needs to experience once, sort of like the movie The Room. So, without further ado, I'm going to dig into Postal 2, a game that doesn't just cross the line, but burns its house down and pisses on the remains of its children.

Storyline
 "[after finding that it's the apocalypse in the newspaper] Hmm... Normally, I'd expect a fancy cinematic to explain a such crucial story element. The font is nice, though" - The Postal Dude

Postal 2 barely has a storyline, and despite that, what little it has is quite funny. The story concerns The Postal Dude (I'm serious, that's his actual name. His dad is called Mr. P. Dude Senior), who is tasked to perform a series of errands for his nagging, unseen, trailer-trash wife. After his killing spree in Postal, the Dude has moved to Paradise Arizona, quite possibly the shittiest small town in America, that seems to be populated entirely by highly armed and incredibly unreasonable assholes. Nearly every citizen in Paradise is armed to the teeth, and for good reason, because a startling amount of people seem to start enormous gunfights over the smallest possible slights.. The Dude needs to navigate the immense deathtrap that is Paradise, and complete his daily chores, which are simple things, like returning a library book or buying milk, and these become more complicated than you'd think, when each task accidentally attracts the attention of even greater amounts of armed psychos.

What really carries this paper-thin plot is the personality of the Dude, who I genuinely grew to love as one of my favorite video game characters. Combining a dry, sardonic wit and a sense of vulgar humor that would rival Duke Nukem, the Dude is an endless fountain of cruel, black comedy, that lightens my tiny obsidian heart. The Dude, despite his obvious sociopathy, seems to be the sanest guy in Paradise, and will clearly remark on the insanity that unfolds around him. All he's trying to do is go about his daily business, and he responds accordingly when craziness unfolds around him.

Gameplay
"I know what you're thinking, but the funny thing is, I don't even like video games." -The Postal Dude

Now, this is where the bread and butter of the game is at. Postal 2 is all about allowing your inner spree killer to go wild, in a way that few sandbox games other than Prototype encourage you to do. The emphasis of the game (with the exception of its expansion pack, Apocalypse Weekend),  is complete freedom, and a player can faff around Paradise, lighting as many things on fire and ending as many innocent human lives as you feel like. The world feels organic and alive, and even features gunfights opening in the street without your involvement, with NPC's moving and going on with their lives. The combat is fairly fluid and intuitive, and plays out a lot like an old first person shooter, such as Doom or Half Life, before they lost their way and became all about 'realism'.

This isn't perfect however. The town of Paradise is very big, and the game annoyingly features nothing like a minimap, so expect to be returning to the map screen quite often. It's also split into dozens of separate zones, each of which take a while to load, and even on modern machines, it often crashes. The real nail in the game's coffin is the physics, which are downright atrocious. This is a game that features enough bugs that I genuinely had to use a cheat code in order to progress, because my library book got inexplicably fused with a table. Grenades and Napalm are often downright useless, and trying to aim with them in an intense firefight will much more than likely end up with your limbs raining from the sky. A lot of objectives in the game don't have a clear way to be interacted with, and that really can cause some frustration for first-time players without much patience.

Finally, there is a surprising amount of first person platforming, and I really don't think I can bitch about this anachronistic feature enough. A lot of puzzles, especially the platforming will instantly kill you if you fail, and while the game provides the ability to save as many times as you like, the puzzles are not merciful and at times downright unfair.

Atmosphere
 "The gene pool is stagnating, and I am the minister of chlorine." -The Postal Dude

This is where the game excels, and in my opinion, makes the game enjoyable, despite its flaws. RWS were obviously not very happy with the allegations that Postal was a 'murder simulator', and so clearly went out of its way to make the atmosphere of Postal 2 as hilariously misanthropic and over the top as possible. The humor reminds me of an R-rated Invader Zim. Billboards advertise in block letters 'HEY KIDS! YOUR PARENTS ARE GOING TO DIE! BE SURE THEY'RE INSURED!' The milkman is very obviously a terrorist in a terrible disguise, and each errand requires you to wait in an absurdly long line populated by people who are basically custom made to annoy you. The great thing is, and I cannot stress this enough, is that the game really is only as violent as you are. It is completely possible to actually perform a pacifist run of this game, not harming a single person, and still complete it, which I thought was really clever. The game is a wonderful parody of violent video games in general, but still offers the players a choice. The world actually features a lot of things that are surprisingly interactive, showing that the development team really spent time making sure that the game would feel organic and fun.

The level of self referential humor does, at times, feel a little bit too childishly vindictive. The Postal Dude works for RWS, the company that makes the game (even if he gets fired on the first day), and some of the tasks involve getting a petition signed to force politicians to play violent video games, and being attacked by 'parents for decency.' Now, blowing the heads off whiny conservatives is funny the first time, but the joke is stretched a bit thin. Still, it doesn't become grating and even at the end of Apocalypse Weekend, where the main goal is to blow up their competition with a nuke, there's still enough general craziness and madcap fun to be had.

Offensiveness
"I suppose it would have been more politically correct to kill the women and minorities first." - The Postal Dude

Surprisingly, for a video game designed to be as offensive as possible, by today's standards, it really isn't. All the vulgar content comes off as so absurd and over the top that no one could possibly take it seriously unless they had a serious mental disorder. This is a game that weaponizes gonorrhea urine. It's a game that lets you use a neighborhood cat as a silencer for an assault rifle. It's very much Saints Row before Saints Row came out, and I applaud the balls of the developers for it. A lot of stereotypes come off as straightforwardly offensive, with Arabic terrorists being a prominent enemy, as well as the army, the police, and rednecks, but all of them are stereotyped and parodied to such a ludicrous degree that I genuinely feel that it comes off more as an equal-opportunity insult than hate toward a specific group.

I'm a big believer in freedom of speech and mature content, and I firmly believe that everything can be laughed at, no matter how dark. Political correctness bugs the shit out of me, and it's hard to find a game that (literally) pisses in its face more than this. No one is portrayed as being singled out, and the Postal Dude is just as pathetic and stupid as everyone else in Paradise, and is certainly not a role model to be aspired to. Overall, it comes across as a giant clusterfuck of heavily armed idiots fighting, and to me, that is pretty hilarious.

Conclusion
The game is flawed, yes. If it had less of a humorous angle and was just a generic shooter, I would never have even picked it up, let alone taken the time to review it, but Postal 2 is a much cleverer game than it would seem on the surface. There's even one part that does quite a fun and affectionate parody of Silent Hill (featuring demonic Gary Colemans), and overall, the gameplay and atmosphere combine for a cathartic, pulse-pounding, and genuinely fun ride. It's a throwback to the days of shooters that didn't take themselves seriously, and I applaud that sort of attitude. Realistic war games have their place yes, but I don't like how they've become the mainstay of the FPS genre. Games like Modern Warfare and Battlefield come off to me as more offensive than this, as they're essentially playing the discrimination game completely straight, without a hint of irony. I miss shooters like Painkiller and Doom, that remember that for all the realism in the world, games are meant to be fun, and that's a sentiment that Postal 2 puts front and center.

Rankings
Gameplay: 3/5
Stability: 2/5
Fun Factor: 5/5

"I regret nothing." - The Postal Dude

- Kephn