POSTAL SERIES
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The original Postal is a hands-down fantastic game. Coming out in 1997, made by developer Running With Scissors (RWS), Postal was a fairly effective piece of art addressing the relevant... if not "new" than still-controversial-phenomena of mass shootings; before they became tragically and admittedly (horrifically) mundane.
You play as the unnamed Postal Dude, voiced fantastically by Rick Hunter in various, occasionally said edgy one-liners, dropped into a suburban neighborhood, located in a town called Paradise, with little fanfare. The gameplay is an isometric top-down shooter. The goal is simple: kill people until you've taken enough lives to move on. You're provided a truly dastardly arsenal of weapons, from pistols to flamethrowers, in which to inflict your suffering. The NPCs you make victims crawl and wail and beg for their lives as you mow them down- even the hostile ones when you finally wear them out. It's all very visceral, even if the graphics are dated, though not without some dark comedy; dying citizens are known to say some rather goofy things with the last breaths, and some of the sets you explore are downright silly. The game has no music, but good sound design. When you load the game the only thing that will greet you is an industrial ambient track, with each sound effect/click being a beating heart or a scream. Levels are only backed by logical ambient noise for the area's theme, and as you move through each one you'll fill it with gunfire, screams, and by the end, silence once more.
As you load into each level, you're met with an excerpt from The Postal Dude's diary, which portray him as thoroughly disturbed, and eager to kill- if not for the joy of the action than some sort of satisfaction once it's over. Some entries are truly jarring, some are downright funny, most occupy a ground between clearly meant to portray madness but aware that if they lay on the edge too thick it'll break the foundation. Alongside the in-game diary entries was Postal Dude's War Journal, some extra reading included with the original release inside the manual. There's similarly an entry for every level, but the text varies greatly, depicting a narrative in which Postal Dude is the only sane person left in what he understands to be a town of infected, murderous lunatics- that he does by no means enjoy the killing and the violence, but sees it as some sort of necessity to stop the spread of whatever has caused this madness to the rest of the world. If you take this at face value, as truth, I find that it sort of undervalues the themes and narrative of the game; however I do not believe it was meant to be taken literally, and is instead a deeper look at Postal Dude's psychosis. Although the War Journal seems more sane than the normal Diary, there are still often clear moments where that sanity slips, and further...
Anyway! You continue on your... quest... until you reach the end of your journey; an elementary school... where you fire your weapons in vain as your fruitlessly attempt to kill seemingly immortal children until you collapse on the ground in defeat. That's right, no kids die. How unrealistic. Postal ends with the player charter's capture and institutionalization, portrayed in a fairly haunting way. The whole game is darkly atmospheric, something I seldom seen done today to the safe effect, and it's hard to describe honestly. Plenty of games give the player the chance to enact all sorts of terrible violence, from AAA publications to cheap flash games made by edgy 14 year olds with too much time on their hands, but none have ever captured the same raw energy as the original Postal, in my opinion. A game notable for trying its goddamn hardest is 2015's Hatred, but I discuss that game on its own page.Click here for the rest of my summary of Postal 1. The dropdown will contain spoilers for the game's finer details. If you wish to avoid that, don't click and simply skip to the next reveiw.
...I believe the narrative of his Journal, that he is to be a savior of some sort, reflects hauntingly on some of the last lines of the game itself (the one's read by the unseen Newscaster/Psychologist), "However much this atrocity disgusts us, he may actually consider himself a hero... In his tortured mind, he may feel he was battling against impossible odds. It is not unusual for some individuals to believe that the entire fate of the world rests in their palm." Personally, I think the War Journal was a brilliant inclusion to really highlight how delusional Postal Dude was, and while by no means are you meant to empathize with him, the added level of humanity makes the whole game that much more haunting.
My Steam Reveiw: Reccommended- "you move to the next level by pressing f1. just saved you a trip to the keybindings menu, youre welcome"
You see all that nice shit I wrote about Postal 1 up there? All the complementary stuff about what a great, atmospheric game it is with something (maybe not important but something at all) to say? Forget all of it for Postal 2. It doesn't matter anymore it's nothing it's not goddamn important. 2003's Postal 2 is RWS's direct response to the (understandable but entirly undeserved) major backlash the first game got as well as the general attitude of the time that many people held towards violent video games (that they were immoral and themselves caused violence (which of course is absurd)), and by "response" I mean they doubled down HARD, making a deliberately strange, upsetting, and offensive game filled with as much potential violence as they could muster. The game is racist, sexist, ablest, homophobic, xenophobic, probably every other type of -phobic; it mocks the poor, abused, addicted, and underprivileged; it takes as many cheap shots as it can at everything it can think of with an emphasis on (2003's) pop culture and political climate. The humor ranges from VERY occasionally begrudgingly rather clever to almost always entirely juvenile and gross-out. To its credit, I genuinely don't think it ever means for the player to find its jokes and jabs actually funny, so much as a spectacle to gawk at; something to pass by, pause, say "that's fucked" and keep moving on your way- this doesn't make its content by any means OK or excusable, but there's some (minuscule, pitiful) value to understanding the intent at least- and more importantly I think it explains why so many people played the game to its end. It's all for shock and shock alone, with maybe its only genuine message, if it has a sliver of one to start with (which is very up for debate), being something like "If people really imitated what they see/do in games we'd've long since been in the Apocalypse by now." Bottom line, the game is offensive and grotesque in a cartoonishly edgy way; maybe it's not as shocking to me today because growing up on the internet as I did I've long since been desensitized, but regardless that's the premise of its conception out of the way, so lets put it all aside (Digest it. Accept it. We're moving on) and actually talk about the game.
Postal 2 is almost an entirely different beast than Postal 1, with the only things they have in common is The Postal Dude (in name only (well actually it's not entirely clear if they're the same man; see Postal: Brain Damaged review for details)), a town called Paradise, and a lot of goddamn violence. The game is... almost like a first person open world combat RPG, I suppose, though so many adjectives in one description make it sound like it has a better grasp on what it is than it does. The player must navigate a week, Monday through Friday, completing various tasks that always go inexplicably, horribly wrong, completing the each day when all tasks are finished and you return to your home. The world is open, and the player is encouraged to explore it to the best of their ability and uncover all its disgusting, vile, dirty little secrets, typically being rewarded with extra game play, a new weapon, or some terrible scene to oogle at 'till all the concentrated Stupid starts liquefying vital internal organs. The player is very very strongly pushed towards the path of senseless violence; being put in combat situations against their will, being given a massive array of creative weapons that all inflict unique damage on NPCs that are entirely dismemberable. However, and this is key, technically the player never has to instigate violence- crime, maybe, but you could hypothetically get through all of Postal 2 never taking the first shot. The game is "only as violent as you want it to be," ...but it wants you to kill. Postal 2 wants you to maim and dismember and desecrate everything you see and let's be real that's the entire point, and you wont have any fun at all if you don't. Combat isn't difficult, NPCs are dumb as bricks, there are no puzzles or points where you have to think, and you will likely never struggle in Postal 2, but Struggling was never really the point, and it loses nothing because of its lack of traditional game play challenges. You have a dedicated "dick out" button and smoke Crack for health- these aren't really that important but I just wanted to mention them.
Seeming to take the suggestions of the War Journal literally and running with them, Paradise is now filled with violent lunatics and inexplicable surrealist happenings; a true over the top, piss-poor parody of an American Suburbia that's rotting from the inside and outside all at once. NPCs are viable to kill each other, or you, at the drop of a hat, engaging in deliberately nonsensical conversations, and are truly brainless, soulless freaks in every way. The player is hardly different, saving maybe having a brain (hard maybe); the Postal Dude, now referred to as just Dude as if that were his name, is reprises by Rick Hunter, who does... look the game is ass but being entirely candid here not only does Hunter do a fucking fantastic job of portraying a slimy man who both knows he's a complete monster but couldn't care if his life depended on it, as well a genuinely insane idiot- but I would happily listen to him just read the back labels of cleaning products for an hour; his voice isn't attractive or particularly unique (at least not to me) or anything, he's just Nice to listen to. What was I talking about? Right, Dude. Reprized by Hunter, Dude completes various inane tasks each day, providing commentary on what he has planned, what specific events occur, the daily paper, and the items he finds. He ends each day with a discussion with an unseen "hateful wife" referred to as The Bitch in their shared trailer home, and he spends each day spouting out hardly funny, very edgy one-liners. This is to say he is much more vocal in Postal 2 than he ever was in Postal 1, even considering the dairy entries as if they were dialogue; and though the game never makes it clear if he is intended to be the same man, the player character in this game is much more of an actual character than ever before, having a godhonest personality- even if that personality is "piece of shit-" hell, the first time the player sees him, they're given plenty of characterization by making him immediately kick his dog, Champ. Kicking the dog is a TV Tropes page- it doesn't get much more on the nose than that. Remember the dog, by the way. He's not important yet but he will be later.
I do wanna go on a quick tangent though right now specfically about the violence in Postal 2; The original Postal got the bad press it did (though is there such a thing in gaming?) because it was violent to the core- maybe it didn't have a presentation that to today's eye is particularly gory or impressive, but the very premise is inherently viscious. And if Postal 2 is RWS doubling down as much as they could, then you can be assured it was a gory as they could get it. Postal 2 goaded vitriol and scorn by being offensive in many ways, but I think its bloodshed is definataly what it again got the most flack for (even if i think the other offensive content is way more distasteful), and i can see why; Every character is able to butchered at every joint, heads can be exploed with ease, and when you do enough damage but dont kill, they'll whimper and cry and beg as they drag their dismembered, dying bodies around leaving trails of blood everywhere. You can burn people alive and their uniquly textured burning flesh will writhe on the ground. And of course, you can shove a gun up a cat's ass to use it as a silencer, which is cartoonish and not even that bad compared and yet I think is worth mentioning beacuse I swear to god that was and is the only thing people unfamilar with the series seem to have ever heard about it? Anyway. You may be thinking that all of this really doesn't sound that strange for a game, and if you know what it looks like you may even be underwhelmed by the violence, but you have to remember this was made in 2003- sure there were other violent games coimg out (I think Manhunt was released the same year?) but it was still pretty new territory for games to make their NPCs with "removable" parts like this, and on top of it all Postal 2 wasn't a horror game or anything close, it rewarded the player for their destruction and desication, and had its own rich reputation of violence already that it was only building on and off of.
Now, I've been pretty dismissive and critical of the game so far, and this whole violence section may seem like part of that, but i need to be perfectly cyrstal here; its not. its a compliment. the bloody, stupid, celebrated violence is why i inexplicable love Postal 2 enough or in some sick, special way to be willing to play through it multiple times. i LOVE absurd violence and cartoonish gore in games, and knowing that every stupid thing i saw that pissed me off could be solved, should be solved, with a shotgun to the face of whatever it was made everything so worth it to me. Further, while the gore is nothing visually compared to the satisfying bloody messes in the modern Doom games and whathave you, the atmosphere of the game, and it genuinly does have this very solid atmosphere (this unsettling, grimy feel to everything, and an inexplicable sense of... not quite liminality but something close) is good enough and fits so perfectly with the crapy NPC models and the disgusting messes you can make with them that it feels just as satisfying, in its own unqiue way, as carving demons into wet piles of viscera in Doom 2016/Eternal or exploding robots into pixled bloody showers in Ultrakill. Part of that satisfaction is admitdly more twisted than other games maybe technically more gory, of course; most people you'll kill in Postal 2 are by all accounst innocent bystandards, and when you do kill them their corpses will stick around as long as youre near them, and can be further desecrated however you see fit- dicing them up more, kicking their bodies around, setting them on fire, pissing on them. You can use their heads like toys to play fetch with dogs or wrangle their body parts to be in site of other npcs to make them scream and throw up. You are by all accounts the villian of this world and the vioelnce you enact that is so satisfying is by no means justified, and in no ways one-done-and over.... not if you dont want it to be, anyway >:]
regardless the point i am trying to make with this rant is that Postal 2's damnation to a lot of people and its saving grace to me is the fact that it is absrudly violent in ways that i personally find cartoonish and hilarious and i absolutly love to play with. there's nothing like luering a cop away from sight with a donut you soaked in piss, watching them throw up after eating it, caving their head in witha seldghamer and then dicing their body up and kicking the gore pile to create a wonderful rain of chunky salsa. and before you think im insane google the models used in Postal 2 and remind yourself they look like really bad knockoff barbies and the blood and gore looks just as cheesy.Click here to see a mini rant!
The base game of Postal 2 ends on Friday; by now, you as Dude have pissed off every faction in town, likely committed a few dozen war crimes, encountered at least three easter eggs that made you really stop and consider how you spend your free time, and have completed so... so many stupid tasks. And also the Apocalypse started today. What luck! You navigate Dude home through a literal rain of cats and even more random gunfights- most of which are directed at you no matter what- than normal, finally making it back to the shitty trailer and shitty wife, where she whines to Dude one last time before he shoot himself in the head. The end.
Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend was the fist DLC released for Postal 2, and it comes free with the base game when downloaded anywhere online (which means Steam. It's not like this shit 's on Ichio). Turns out Dude survived his suicide attempt to wake up in the hospital on Saturday to a slew of bad news (home being repossessed, dog's in the pound about to be put down, etc.). And also some good news, as his wife is leaving him. You've got tasks to do, a medical bill to dodge, and more brain damage than usual. Apocalypse Weekend plays similarly to the base game, but it is much more linear, and there is a coherent (well, that's a strong word-) story to the game this time. It's harder, funnier, and all around a little better than the base game- not by much, but enough that you notice. I won't get into the story much, though it is insane and strange, but I'll touch on two important beats; 1) it's made clear that a bullet to the skull did Dude no favors, and while part of it seems to be legitimately the influence of some sort of supernatural force, the brain damage he received keeps making him jump back and forth between some sort of half-imagined hell dimension and a real world undergoing the actual Apocalypse. Bottom line is he has actually received a notable injury. 2) At the end of the game, he sets off an honest to god nuke in Paradise while escaping to minimum safe distance with his dog, Champ. That's how the game ends.Click here for the rest of my summary of Postal 2. The dropdown will contain spoilers for the game's finer details. If you wish to avoid that, don't click and simply skip to the next reveiw.
My Steam review: Reccommended- "terrible experience honestly, yet i am entranced by its dogshit gameplay, content, humor, and all around quality. its less like witnessing a car wreck and more like poking roadkill with a stick."
GOD FUCKING DAMNIT. check out these promotional images i found on steam. Corey Cruise is the only good part of this game I feel so bad he was given such shit lines to say. I prefer Rick Hunter to him by a long shot, CC sounds too much like a cowboy for my tastes, but id listen to him read the phone book too damn.
Postal 3 is unplayable. Like, literally, in its natural state you cannot even play the game. Postal 3 is so fucking broken that the tutorial will crash you out, and that was before the DRM (HAHAHA DRM? IN A POSTAL GAME?) servers it used were killed in (YEAR HERE), making the game when unmodded impssible to even launch! The good news is, you can't even get it anywhere anymore- it's been taken off all storefronts, something RWS activly celebrated, since theyve long since disowned the game as the freakish disapointment it is. Postal 3 is dead. It was dead as soon as it launched, so dead it too the dev studio with it- yea RWS didn't actually make the game, the studio that did was NAME and like I said, it fucking killed them; NAME put out Postal 3 and immediatly closed shop. Amazing.
So here's how to download Postal 3 and make it.... "playable" in 2023. How I got Postal 3 in 20 fucking 23 because I hate myself. DETAILS COMING
MUCH FILLER TEXT HERE Paradise Lost is the second DLC for Postal 2, and was released in 2015- 4 years after Postal 3, and being the canonical sequal. Paradise Lost is sold separately from the base game, and is actually the length of an entire new game, taking place again over a full week. Postal 3 was so bad, so fucked, not only did Running With Scissors retreat to the very outdated Unreal Engine 2 to lick their wounds and cobble together something to save the series, but they reconnected the entire 3rd game within the first moments of this DLC as some horrible nightmare Dude had after crashing his car on his way out from the Paradise blast zone. That's right, Dude, once again voiced by Rick Hunter(!!!!), crashed his car on his way out, and has been in a comma for *checks dates on google* 11 years. Now, with Champ missing, bullet fragments still lodged in his skull, and whatever additional crap happened to him during the crash, Dude has to wander into the nearest town in search of his dog. Wandering into a post-apocalyptic Paradise, it becomes apparent that something is more fucked than is typical in Dude's head, because we suddenly hear goddamn Corey Cruise in his head, refereed to in-game literally as Alternate Dude. Corey Cruise was the only good thing in Postal 3, and he really was damn fucking fantastic, so it seems RWS scrambled away from that shitfest with only Cruise as salvage, and now Postal 3 Dude is some sort of alt. personality in Postal 2 Dude's psyche, brought on by a combination of his existing psychosis and the bullet wound. Probably also the car crash and the radiation and the demonic Apocalypse he lived through but really who's to say?
My Steam review: Reccommended- "if Postal 2 is roadkill i poked with a stick then Paradise Lost is like someone came along and sprayed air freshener in my general vicinity."
remaster of postal 1 its good
working on it rn
AYYY COREY CRUISE MY MAN