The streets are full of gang members; cops are just venal cowards, not upholding law and order in the city. Degenerate officials live on bribes and won’t lift a finger to make things better. Like it? Hey dude, I’ve got news for you – one good, and one bad. The bad news is that just a few minutes ago your car got hijacked. The good news is that it’s time to go berserk and take things in your own hands. Justice will be served!
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In a way this was almost a tough one to rate. It’s such a pitiful wad of nothing that it's hard to get genuinely offended by it, but at the same time doesn't deserve a score high enough to make people think it's more mediocre than it is tragically pathetic. With its isometric perspective a first glance will give you the impression that this is a throwback to the original 1997 title which started it all. That may have sort of been the intent, but the gameplay loop is entirely different. Rather than massacring everyone onscreen you're instead trekking to some point on the map, clicking through mundane dialogue boxes (I think the writing is trying to be funny and/or satirical, but misses both marks by a mile) once you get there, and then usually shooting the NPC you just got done talking to. Repeat ad nauseam for a brief handful of levels and with all the speed of a PowerPoint slideshow presentation.
To be clear, you CAN go on a rampaging killing spree in any of the fairly open and sizeable environments whenever you want. Cops will even spawn in to give you someone to fight back against. There's just absolutely no reason to do so other than I guess getting a higher score at the end of the stage (whoop-de-freaking-doo). Still, I could see that providing some mindless distraction while sitting in a waiting room or something, were it not for how bad the combat is. All you do is move forward until a green box indicating you've locked onto something appears and hold the fire key until it falls down or limply explodes. It's simplistic to an unexciting fault. Did I mention the only sound you'll hear is a single grating track played constantly on loop?
This is especially unacceptable and embarrassing for the developer when you consider that it came out back in 2010. Yeah, the year we got stuff like Spider-Man: Total Mayhem. I get that it's more than a little unfair to compare a Java game to one that came out on iPhone and Android, yet even on the J2ME scene there was a fully 3D Quake spin-off released around the same time. It wasn't exactly great either (an FPS on a keypad? No thank you!), but at least that was impressive for what it attempted given the technology. Postal's second outing on cellphones is a lifeless, dull, and ultimately empty experience not really worthy of so much as passing curiosity from the fanbase, however. The sole trace of depth comes in the form of the perks and guns that unlock as you go, which you can use to create your own loadout before each chapter. With that being a basically pointless feature though considering how little you do across the minuscule campaign I feel like at the end of the day even the mobile version of Metal Gear: Acid had more going on than this.
4.9/10
To be clear, you CAN go on a rampaging killing spree in any of the fairly open and sizeable environments whenever you want. Cops will even spawn in to give you someone to fight back against. There's just absolutely no reason to do so other than I guess getting a higher score at the end of the stage (whoop-de-freaking-doo). Still, I could see that providing some mindless distraction while sitting in a waiting room or something, were it not for how bad the combat is. All you do is move forward until a green box indicating you've locked onto something appears and hold the fire key until it falls down or limply explodes. It's simplistic to an unexciting fault. Did I mention the only sound you'll hear is a single grating track played constantly on loop?
This is especially unacceptable and embarrassing for the developer when you consider that it came out back in 2010. Yeah, the year we got stuff like Spider-Man: Total Mayhem. I get that it's more than a little unfair to compare a Java game to one that came out on iPhone and Android, yet even on the J2ME scene there was a fully 3D Quake spin-off released around the same time. It wasn't exactly great either (an FPS on a keypad? No thank you!), but at least that was impressive for what it attempted given the technology. Postal's second outing on cellphones is a lifeless, dull, and ultimately empty experience not really worthy of so much as passing curiosity from the fanbase, however. The sole trace of depth comes in the form of the perks and guns that unlock as you go, which you can use to create your own loadout before each chapter. With that being a basically pointless feature though considering how little you do across the minuscule campaign I feel like at the end of the day even the mobile version of Metal Gear: Acid had more going on than this.
4.9/10