Recommended by STRM as part of this list.
Postal as a franchise has always been historically tied to transgression. The first Postal deconstructed the nature of the Shooter genre and its glorification of the one-man killing machine by framing it as a mass-shooting simulator, and its sequel was a meta-textual response to the very controversy the original Postal stirred up, as well as a bizarre time capsule of immediate post-9/11 Americana. The series has always prided itself on being counter-culture, against the grain, purposefully offensive in an attempt to rile-up their critics and moral guardians, but the thing about being counter-culture is that it's a constant countdown: culture is constantly evolving at rates that no one can really keep up with, and once you lose that pulse, you're out of touch, and the only thing you'll have left is the memories of when you used to rage against the machine.
Postal III is already well known for its abysmal reputation, but I posit that its critical reception wasn't the death knoll for the series' relevancy: it was its very conception. Even discounting the external factors that lead to Postal III's poor quality, such as Akella's numerous lawsuits, the 2008 Great Recession in Russia, and Running With Scissors' loss of control that would lead to the numerous delays and bugs, the very concept of a Postal game, a series made by 12 dudes in Arizona on the cheap for the purpose of pissing people off, being outsourced to the Russian equivalent of EA for a big multi-platform console release was a sign of the series' fading relevancy, and this corporate cynicism is apparent in how generic Postal III is. Trading in it's open-world first-person roots for a brown and grey third-person shooter with cover mechanics, escort missions and a surface-level Grindhouse aesthetic belie Postal III's corporate nature. It pretends to have the same juvenile, anti-authority attitude its predecessors did with its surface-level jabs at soccer moms and environmentalists, but its reliance on celebrity cameos and toilet humor can't even generate the same amount of outrage that the lowest of Postal 2's lows could, and Postal 2 contained multiple hate crimes. It's playing pretend-punk, trying to maintain its aggressive anti-authority edge but still trying to conform to what's popular at the time because you can't just let your publisher not make money on an investment.
Postal III was a modern-day Icarus that Running With Scissors never truly recovered from. Even when RWS took down Postal III and created an expansion to Postal 2 after 11 years that would retcon Postal III from existence in an act of goodwill, the death knell has already been rung: Postal's cultural legacy is dead in the water, and all that's left are cameos from right-wing chuds and an eternal encore of the good ol' days with Postal 4, the equivalent of a washed-up Hair Metal band playing their one famous single for a crowd of the geriatric. Postal III is worse than just being a bad game. It's a pathetic game.
Having a fucking morality system in a series that prided itself on its indifference to player violence. Christ.
Postal as a franchise has always been historically tied to transgression. The first Postal deconstructed the nature of the Shooter genre and its glorification of the one-man killing machine by framing it as a mass-shooting simulator, and its sequel was a meta-textual response to the very controversy the original Postal stirred up, as well as a bizarre time capsule of immediate post-9/11 Americana. The series has always prided itself on being counter-culture, against the grain, purposefully offensive in an attempt to rile-up their critics and moral guardians, but the thing about being counter-culture is that it's a constant countdown: culture is constantly evolving at rates that no one can really keep up with, and once you lose that pulse, you're out of touch, and the only thing you'll have left is the memories of when you used to rage against the machine.
Postal III is already well known for its abysmal reputation, but I posit that its critical reception wasn't the death knoll for the series' relevancy: it was its very conception. Even discounting the external factors that lead to Postal III's poor quality, such as Akella's numerous lawsuits, the 2008 Great Recession in Russia, and Running With Scissors' loss of control that would lead to the numerous delays and bugs, the very concept of a Postal game, a series made by 12 dudes in Arizona on the cheap for the purpose of pissing people off, being outsourced to the Russian equivalent of EA for a big multi-platform console release was a sign of the series' fading relevancy, and this corporate cynicism is apparent in how generic Postal III is. Trading in it's open-world first-person roots for a brown and grey third-person shooter with cover mechanics, escort missions and a surface-level Grindhouse aesthetic belie Postal III's corporate nature. It pretends to have the same juvenile, anti-authority attitude its predecessors did with its surface-level jabs at soccer moms and environmentalists, but its reliance on celebrity cameos and toilet humor can't even generate the same amount of outrage that the lowest of Postal 2's lows could, and Postal 2 contained multiple hate crimes. It's playing pretend-punk, trying to maintain its aggressive anti-authority edge but still trying to conform to what's popular at the time because you can't just let your publisher not make money on an investment.
Postal III was a modern-day Icarus that Running With Scissors never truly recovered from. Even when RWS took down Postal III and created an expansion to Postal 2 after 11 years that would retcon Postal III from existence in an act of goodwill, the death knell has already been rung: Postal's cultural legacy is dead in the water, and all that's left are cameos from right-wing chuds and an eternal encore of the good ol' days with Postal 4, the equivalent of a washed-up Hair Metal band playing their one famous single for a crowd of the geriatric. Postal III is worse than just being a bad game. It's a pathetic game.
Having a fucking morality system in a series that prided itself on its indifference to player violence. Christ.
8 Comments
@Mur96 That's a great way of putting it actually. Thank you for reading, I'm glad I didn't disappoint!
Your Postal review is Backloggd-core, so don't be surprised I always wait for your words c:
This was the best way to discover that they added a morality system to this garbage.
Great review, dare I say, good shit.
@Yultimona Thank you! I aim to please.
Postal traded in it's black trenchcoats and novelty buttons with contradicting slogans for a white polo shirt and a red baseball cap.
@spageddystyle Sad :/
Every blue moon I'll see a Postal 4 screenshot cross my feed and somehow it always feels like RWS is 20 years too late to be saying anything about even the most contemporary of topics. At the very least, I hear Brain Damaged is pretty good.
Every blue moon I'll see a Postal 4 screenshot cross my feed and somehow it always feels like RWS is 20 years too late to be saying anything about even the most contemporary of topics. At the very least, I hear Brain Damaged is pretty good.
Mur96
2 years ago
Great review, I was wondering when you'd drop it.