Postal 2 is a deceptively difficult game for me to articulate my thoughts on since it has left me with a surprising amount to think about. The fact that a game as boring and hollow as Postal 1 (at least based on Redux) was followed up by something as strange and complex as Postal 2 is nothing short of miraculous.
Postal 2 is unique in how its systems and design intertwine with its comedy. When I say comedy, I’m not talking about the juvenile, poorly aged memes or the inclusion of Gary Coleman. In my eyes, that stuff is a byproduct of RWS’s general sense of humour, and while that does indeed contribute to the game’s identity, it’s not what makes it funny or amusing. At the heart of Postal 2 is the contrast between the absurd and the mundane. It’s the fact that in a town as ridiculous and depraved as Paradise, your only goals are to just do everyday chores. It’s the idea that you are a normal person in the city even though you can use cats as silencers on your shotgun. It’s the irony of the “peaceful” pastors excitedly defending the church with firearms. There were several moments in Postal 2 that caused me to laugh out loud, which is a very hard thing to get me to do. And a significant reason why the jokes are often so effective is because they’re frequently played completely straight.
Paradise itself feels a bit like a twisted museum. Around every corner is a different exhibit of slapstick sardonicism. A giant billboard advertising life insurance to kids; a chinese restaurant with a murderous butcher as a chef; a voting booth on the 2nd floor of the restaurant; a marching band walking around a field with elephants; a room decorated with nothing but toilets, there is something weird and absurd to see everywhere you go. Yet, the absurdity of those aforementioned spaces and places is never acknowledged by the game. Most of those areas are completely optional and easily missable. The fact that you can just do most of the assigned chores completely by the books and miss most of these ridiculous “exhibits” makes them even more amusing than they otherwise would be. When coupled with the near complete absence of non-diegetic sound or music to flavour the play experience, Paradise has a surprisingly grounded atmosphere which enhances the act of exploring its derangement.
Exploration and discovery are core to Postal 2’s game design. It can obviously be played as a regular first person shooter; there are dozens of weapons and items that all have different purposes in combat settings. However, the real magic of its mechanics comes from all the unobvious ways they can be combined together, as well as how they interact with the gameplay systems. Using a match on gasoline/petrol will clearly cause it to ignite and burn whatever is caught in the flames– that much is tutorialised– but the fact that your piss can extinguish it is something that can only be learned through experimentation. Catnip can be dropped to attract cats to use as silencers, but if you accidentally smoke it yourself, you will discover that you can slow down time just like in real life. And sure, you can cook and throw a grenade when you’re cornered during a busy firefight, but if you really think outside of the box and experiment with the tools at your disposal, you can easily speed up the process by drop-kicking your explosives into enemies. There are so many ways to combine and mess with the mechanics that you likely won’t find most of them in a single playthrough.
These mechanical options wouldn’t have much value if there weren’t equally diverse responses from the game’s systems. Fortunately, the A.I. systems in Postal 2 are quite reactive to both the player’s actions and the surrounding world. NPCs talk to each other, cops eat donuts you drop (and throw up when you piss on them), people pick up money left on the ground. Even by simply walking around, you will happen upon character interactions that are as peculiar as the town they inhabit. In fact, as I was writing this review, I quickly booted up the game for 5 minutes to double czech something technical. In that short amount of time, I went to a random house for the hell of it. As soon as I opened the door, I was greeted by a man running in circles after his dog while lit on fire. In my entire playthrough, I never saw that interaction before, as it was completely unscripted. Moments like this are commonplace in this game, and they’re a significant part of what makes it feel different from so many other games.
I’ve praised Postal 2 a lot, but it is very far from perfect. The shooting mechanics themselves are very rough around the edges, with their sounds being quite hit or miss and their accuracy leaving a lot to be desired. The weapon accuracy is actually a rather frustrating problem because it’s not the result of recoil that’s hard to handle (there’s no recoil in the game), the crosshair just doesn’t accurately showcase the bullet spread for each gun, so hitting a target often feels like it comes down to random chance. It doesn’t help either that hostile NPCs can spawn directly in front of you, which makes the fights feel overly frantic or mindless depending on how prepared you are for them.
It’s truly a shame that the gunplay is as janky as it is, since the player isn’t pushed nearly enough to think outside the box for most of the chores. While the broader world of Paradise is an open-ended sandbox for depravity, the chores are structurally formulaic and get a bit stale towards the end of the week. In theory, accomplishing mundane tasks injected with unexpected twists can make for an interesting gameplay loop that’s also thematically consistent with the rest of the game. But unfortunately, the twists in Postal 2 generally boil down to being ambushed by crazy mobs wielding weapons. Considering that the most direct way to face these mobs is by shooting back at them, the fact that the guns have so many problems is a big downside, especially since the more interesting, rewarding combat options aren’t taught to the player. There are still some chores that break the formula a bit, and those are generally the most memorable ones, or at least they were to me. However, the repetitive nature of all the other tasks weakens the broader play experience at a base level, and thus puts a lot of pressure on the presentation and comedy to carry the game forward.
And while I’ll defend the self-contained comedy of Postal 2, it goes without saying that RWS’s sense of humour can definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth, especially when their jokes don’t land or run stale. Many of the gags have admittedly not aged terribly well, especially some of the needlessly racist caricatures and the 2003 memes. I believe that aspect of the game is the primary cause of many people writing it off, and with good reason. It follows that RWS aimed to make their second title even more provocative than the first, considering how both the controversy and lawsuit of Postal 1 contributed to its commercial success. Perhaps this approach was effective at grabbing attention back when Postal 2 released, but the cost of making something so blatantly edgy is that it invites people to make judgements of value based on their morals rather than the quality of the content itself.
To this day, many people consider Postal 2 to be a terrible, worthless game largely due to its comedy. There are also some who consider it to be a piece of shovelware. Lots of games are better at some of the things Postal 2 does, but to completely write it off as a lesser version of them is reactionary at best and ignorant at worst. Beneath the crass, prickly exterior lies a genuinely sophisticated sandbox that’s clearly built by a passionate, competent team. If there wasn’t something of value here, people wouldn’t still be talking about it and it wouldn’t still be getting patches, content updates, and merch to this day.
There is truly nothing else quite like Postal 2 and there likely never will be. In both subject matter and design, it is a time capsule of the early 2000s. But beyond that, it has an atmosphere and identity all its own. More than anything though, Postal 2 holds up over 20 years after release because it’s unique in how it combines its systems-driven, emergent gameplay with the twisted presentation of its world to create a playable black comedy.
Postal 2 is unique in how its systems and design intertwine with its comedy. When I say comedy, I’m not talking about the juvenile, poorly aged memes or the inclusion of Gary Coleman. In my eyes, that stuff is a byproduct of RWS’s general sense of humour, and while that does indeed contribute to the game’s identity, it’s not what makes it funny or amusing. At the heart of Postal 2 is the contrast between the absurd and the mundane. It’s the fact that in a town as ridiculous and depraved as Paradise, your only goals are to just do everyday chores. It’s the idea that you are a normal person in the city even though you can use cats as silencers on your shotgun. It’s the irony of the “peaceful” pastors excitedly defending the church with firearms. There were several moments in Postal 2 that caused me to laugh out loud, which is a very hard thing to get me to do. And a significant reason why the jokes are often so effective is because they’re frequently played completely straight.
Paradise itself feels a bit like a twisted museum. Around every corner is a different exhibit of slapstick sardonicism. A giant billboard advertising life insurance to kids; a chinese restaurant with a murderous butcher as a chef; a voting booth on the 2nd floor of the restaurant; a marching band walking around a field with elephants; a room decorated with nothing but toilets, there is something weird and absurd to see everywhere you go. Yet, the absurdity of those aforementioned spaces and places is never acknowledged by the game. Most of those areas are completely optional and easily missable. The fact that you can just do most of the assigned chores completely by the books and miss most of these ridiculous “exhibits” makes them even more amusing than they otherwise would be. When coupled with the near complete absence of non-diegetic sound or music to flavour the play experience, Paradise has a surprisingly grounded atmosphere which enhances the act of exploring its derangement.
Exploration and discovery are core to Postal 2’s game design. It can obviously be played as a regular first person shooter; there are dozens of weapons and items that all have different purposes in combat settings. However, the real magic of its mechanics comes from all the unobvious ways they can be combined together, as well as how they interact with the gameplay systems. Using a match on gasoline/petrol will clearly cause it to ignite and burn whatever is caught in the flames– that much is tutorialised– but the fact that your piss can extinguish it is something that can only be learned through experimentation. Catnip can be dropped to attract cats to use as silencers, but if you accidentally smoke it yourself, you will discover that you can slow down time just like in real life. And sure, you can cook and throw a grenade when you’re cornered during a busy firefight, but if you really think outside of the box and experiment with the tools at your disposal, you can easily speed up the process by drop-kicking your explosives into enemies. There are so many ways to combine and mess with the mechanics that you likely won’t find most of them in a single playthrough.
These mechanical options wouldn’t have much value if there weren’t equally diverse responses from the game’s systems. Fortunately, the A.I. systems in Postal 2 are quite reactive to both the player’s actions and the surrounding world. NPCs talk to each other, cops eat donuts you drop (and throw up when you piss on them), people pick up money left on the ground. Even by simply walking around, you will happen upon character interactions that are as peculiar as the town they inhabit. In fact, as I was writing this review, I quickly booted up the game for 5 minutes to double czech something technical. In that short amount of time, I went to a random house for the hell of it. As soon as I opened the door, I was greeted by a man running in circles after his dog while lit on fire. In my entire playthrough, I never saw that interaction before, as it was completely unscripted. Moments like this are commonplace in this game, and they’re a significant part of what makes it feel different from so many other games.
I’ve praised Postal 2 a lot, but it is very far from perfect. The shooting mechanics themselves are very rough around the edges, with their sounds being quite hit or miss and their accuracy leaving a lot to be desired. The weapon accuracy is actually a rather frustrating problem because it’s not the result of recoil that’s hard to handle (there’s no recoil in the game), the crosshair just doesn’t accurately showcase the bullet spread for each gun, so hitting a target often feels like it comes down to random chance. It doesn’t help either that hostile NPCs can spawn directly in front of you, which makes the fights feel overly frantic or mindless depending on how prepared you are for them.
It’s truly a shame that the gunplay is as janky as it is, since the player isn’t pushed nearly enough to think outside the box for most of the chores. While the broader world of Paradise is an open-ended sandbox for depravity, the chores are structurally formulaic and get a bit stale towards the end of the week. In theory, accomplishing mundane tasks injected with unexpected twists can make for an interesting gameplay loop that’s also thematically consistent with the rest of the game. But unfortunately, the twists in Postal 2 generally boil down to being ambushed by crazy mobs wielding weapons. Considering that the most direct way to face these mobs is by shooting back at them, the fact that the guns have so many problems is a big downside, especially since the more interesting, rewarding combat options aren’t taught to the player. There are still some chores that break the formula a bit, and those are generally the most memorable ones, or at least they were to me. However, the repetitive nature of all the other tasks weakens the broader play experience at a base level, and thus puts a lot of pressure on the presentation and comedy to carry the game forward.
And while I’ll defend the self-contained comedy of Postal 2, it goes without saying that RWS’s sense of humour can definitely leave a sour taste in the mouth, especially when their jokes don’t land or run stale. Many of the gags have admittedly not aged terribly well, especially some of the needlessly racist caricatures and the 2003 memes. I believe that aspect of the game is the primary cause of many people writing it off, and with good reason. It follows that RWS aimed to make their second title even more provocative than the first, considering how both the controversy and lawsuit of Postal 1 contributed to its commercial success. Perhaps this approach was effective at grabbing attention back when Postal 2 released, but the cost of making something so blatantly edgy is that it invites people to make judgements of value based on their morals rather than the quality of the content itself.
To this day, many people consider Postal 2 to be a terrible, worthless game largely due to its comedy. There are also some who consider it to be a piece of shovelware. Lots of games are better at some of the things Postal 2 does, but to completely write it off as a lesser version of them is reactionary at best and ignorant at worst. Beneath the crass, prickly exterior lies a genuinely sophisticated sandbox that’s clearly built by a passionate, competent team. If there wasn’t something of value here, people wouldn’t still be talking about it and it wouldn’t still be getting patches, content updates, and merch to this day.
There is truly nothing else quite like Postal 2 and there likely never will be. In both subject matter and design, it is a time capsule of the early 2000s. But beyond that, it has an atmosphere and identity all its own. More than anything though, Postal 2 holds up over 20 years after release because it’s unique in how it combines its systems-driven, emergent gameplay with the twisted presentation of its world to create a playable black comedy.