This was clearly the victim of a very troubled development, and while I want to sympathise with RWS, it still doesn’t excuse how this expansion turned out. It honestly would’ve been much better if they just added small areas and normal weekend days to the base game rather than attempting to construct an entirely new town of a similar scale to Paradise.
Apocalypse Weekend is Postal 2 without any of the aspects that make it interesting or enjoyable. The strange A.I. interactions, the deadpan comedy, the sandbox-styled world, the emergent gameplay, all of it is either gone or bastardised. Instead, Apocalypse Weekend is a half-baked, linear corridor shooter with a virtually incomprehensible story and almost none of the charm of the base game.
The shooting is one of the weakest elements of Postal 2, yet for some reason, this expansion is almost entirely based around fighting hordes of boring foes in lacklustre combat arenas. When it’s not wasting time with its combat arenas, it’s wasting time with monotonous czechlist-based objectives (not like Postal 2’s tasks, more like Ubisoft side missions). The content is blatantly unfinished and padded out, and it attempts to cover up that fact by drenching the game in pitiful, edgy ‘comedy’ that it puts under a spotlight. And on the topic of the comedy, Apocalypse Weekend completely does away with anything resembling the sense of discovery and mundane absurdity found in both the gameplay and world of Postal 2. Instead, it utilises random, ‘wacky’ references and ‘craaaazy’ provocation to disguise its complete lack of vision, substance, and successful execution.
The only decent part is when it makes fun of Postal 2’s publisher, and even then, you engage with it in the exact same way as the rest of the game. By all points and metrics, Apocalypse Weekend is a bad game, and not even in a way that is funny or interesting to think or talk about. It’s not even enjoyable or satisfying to write this review.
That being said, I’m certain RWS’s following game will improve on all these flaws. Surely, it’ll be a truly great follow-up to Postal 2.
Apocalypse Weekend is Postal 2 without any of the aspects that make it interesting or enjoyable. The strange A.I. interactions, the deadpan comedy, the sandbox-styled world, the emergent gameplay, all of it is either gone or bastardised. Instead, Apocalypse Weekend is a half-baked, linear corridor shooter with a virtually incomprehensible story and almost none of the charm of the base game.
The shooting is one of the weakest elements of Postal 2, yet for some reason, this expansion is almost entirely based around fighting hordes of boring foes in lacklustre combat arenas. When it’s not wasting time with its combat arenas, it’s wasting time with monotonous czechlist-based objectives (not like Postal 2’s tasks, more like Ubisoft side missions). The content is blatantly unfinished and padded out, and it attempts to cover up that fact by drenching the game in pitiful, edgy ‘comedy’ that it puts under a spotlight. And on the topic of the comedy, Apocalypse Weekend completely does away with anything resembling the sense of discovery and mundane absurdity found in both the gameplay and world of Postal 2. Instead, it utilises random, ‘wacky’ references and ‘craaaazy’ provocation to disguise its complete lack of vision, substance, and successful execution.
The only decent part is when it makes fun of Postal 2’s publisher, and even then, you engage with it in the exact same way as the rest of the game. By all points and metrics, Apocalypse Weekend is a bad game, and not even in a way that is funny or interesting to think or talk about. It’s not even enjoyable or satisfying to write this review.
That being said, I’m certain RWS’s following game will improve on all these flaws. Surely, it’ll be a truly great follow-up to Postal 2.
FaxMachine
3 months ago