Postal 2 - Ambitious Garbage

[Abyss]

Not everything needs to be a big social commentary, in Postal 2 the "It's only as violent as you are!" is more of a joke on how it is possible but not expected (and not because the players are sadists but because the game wont let them get it the easy way).

Its still a fun game, and an interesting at that where you have the most mundane tasks turned into shit by the most retarded reasons. The "dont give a fuck" attitude also helps the crudeness of the game to make it stand out in how honest it is about itself.

Its a retarded game for retarded fun.


After this and the Duke Nukem 3D review it seems like somehow the political correctness overdose of the 2010's was expected to exist 10 years ago and everything that tries to be somewhat crass is seen as bad.


I wonder what the review of the original Postal or GTA 2 would be like

The one part I agree with him is that the game at times does force you into a fight, whether you want it or not. Otherwise, the game does a good job in having it so that the player can choose to live life (mostly) normally, or become Death the Destroyer of Worlds. Although the game is full of over the top stereotypes of leftists and Middle-Easterners/South Asians, I think that those stereotypes are intentional. Next to that, there are right-wing stereotypes put in too. The protagonist is partially a dark parody of an ambiguously far right-wing nut, as well as a dark parody of the first person game hero. While past first person heroes fought against Nazis or Demons, this shooter hero is fighting against the general public. Only this context, the general public of this desert town are all mentally ill in someway, and there's usually the sense that something sinister lurks underneath the cartoonishly crude facade. It takes elements from GTA and the Blood series, combined with Unreal's technology, with a little bit of Morrowind's aspects, and nearly succeeds. The weapons just needed to be more powerful, and the options for the player needed to be increased. Like full blown Deus Ex 1 or Morrowind increased. That's what Postal 3 should have been. Running with Scissors had the Source engine and Postal 2 as a template: how could they screw it up?

I do concur that Stew Shearer's review of Duke 3D was narrow minded. (Including his review of SHOGO). He writes the game off for the wrong reasons, like sexism or labyrinthine level design. He seemed unaware of the influences of Aliens and Evil Dead, and it seemed that he wanted the game to be even more than what it was. He only listed the Duke Burger level as a example of how much more he wanted it to be, and that was only a level from the expansion (I myself wanted the Plutonium Pak to be more than it was even back when it was out, but that's beside the point). Political correctness only seems to be part of his complaint, and his main complaint is that he wanted them to be even more than what he played. I think he perhaps misunderstands the context from those games came from, but I don't he's too far gone. Shearer has good taste in games (like Sword of the Samurai, Ultima Underworld, etc.), and I like his writing style. He's someone I'd like to debate if I ever had the opportunity to.