Postal 2 has Not Aged Well

When I got my first personal computer about ten years ago, one of my first purchases on Steam was Postal 2. I had heard good things about it and it had good reviews. Ten years later, I found the game in my “Play Next” section of my Steam Library and I figured I’d revisit it now that I have the Paradise Lost expansion, which released after my initial playthrough. I remember getting a few good laughs my first time around, but now that I have considerably more experience with FPS and the game’s been even more polished at this point.

It seems my memory had omitted some of the more tedious, unscrupulous parts of Postal 2. Aside from the abundance of load zones, I had expected the dialogue to be misogynistic, racist, and vapid. Then again, I’m the same person that loves stuff like South Park and Beavis and Butthead, so some laughs were still to be had at the downright outrageousness and over-the-top moments that would have split my sides in the 2000s and even landed in the 2010s.

The problem is, you start to expect the unexpected in Postal 2. Whenever you complete a daily errand, you’re forced to get to the inner bowels of a location. Once said errand completes, you’re greeted with a cutscene and will have to fight your way out of the area against people that are, for some reason, angered enough by your presence that they’ll shoot you down. This wouldn’t be an issue except the guns in Postal 2 are a drag; a slow-firing pistol, a Doom 3 caliber shotgun, and no satisfying reaction to bullet hits make gunplay a snoozefest.

Part of the charm of the Postal series is the forced tedium, though. You’ll have to sit in lines at the bank/church and have no means of skipping this. It’s an intentional mirror of how real-life is a struggling series of events. This then gets juxtaposed by the chaotic events that transpire after you’ve completed your task, which makes sense but doesn’t make the sitting in line any more engaging or captivating. It wears on the gamer’s patience as most gamers play as an escape from real life, not an emulation of it.

My second playthrough of Postal 2 felt like a chore at points. I found some parts so difficult from the enemy’s perfect accuracy and the necessitation of cash to progress, that I slipped in some console commands to make it to Friday. Apocalypse Weekend is where the game’s meta vibes turn up to 11 as Running With Scissors’ fight with their publisher comes to a head, but the challenge gets ramped up to a frustrating point, too.

Despite my experience with the main game, I booted up Paradise Lost, a bit more hopeful as it was unleashed in 2015 and a lot more recent than the original game. I made it about ten minutes in before experiencing a crash. Recent reviews indicate that this expansion is quite unstable, so I left it at that. This is a rare case where I don’t agree with an “Overwhelmingly Positive” review score in the present, but I can acknowledge the waves Postal 2 has made since 2002. Here’s hoping for a better end product in Postal 4: No Regrets!