Postal: Brain Damaged was a surprise for me. Being into Postal 2 and Paradise Lost mainly, I am still not very attracted by Postal 4 and when this got announced I thought it'd be a neat side game but not much else. As it turns out, it's simply amazing.
Color me surprised by how solid this is! The start of each episode is just a tiny bit slow, but once it picks up the game is some of the most fun I had with arena boomer whatever shooters in recent years. First level is too open imo, but all the rest are way more focused on the arena design.
The arsenal is really fun, all the guns have some use AND are just fun in and of themselves, even your basic shovel-chainsaw and not so smart pistol remain viable guns throughout the entire game. It's true, we have guns blatantly taken from other games, like the smart pistol from Titanfall and the SSG from Doom Eternal, but they are really well implemented here so they don't feel off at all (and with better thought than they'd have in Eternal!).
Speaking of the arsenal, I feel like explaining what the Pussy Launcher really is like as even I misunderstood it at first. It feels clunky when you first get it, but once you get how to get into the habit of shooting 3 times behind enemies and then pulling the projectile back towards them, it's basically an infinite ammo gun. I do think it's worthy of being your final gun, as proper use is extremely powerful, please don't overlook it.
This game also has HUGE enemy variety, each map up until around the last 3 introducing new enemies for you to fight. Many of them are variations of each other, but they're still distinct enough so that mixing them up in combat makes for a good balance. My favorites must be the silly asylum enemies, what with the lobotomized ones and gone rogue medical staff.
I guess I should talk about the humor. It's still a Postal game so it's not exactly particularly funny, and it's mostly interesting for the absurdity rather than humor. But I have to say, I don't get why people think this is darker than 2, in my view it simply has jokes and references that hit too close to recent times (mainly 2020-2021) and will age out like Postal 2 did eventually. The dream setting is great though, it allows the developers to blend in way more stupid things without it being inconsistent.
Corey Cruise does the main Postal Dude voice this time, and it's great to hear him be the main character in a good game. Rick Hunter is in here too, but his lines feel phoned in, similarly to 4, makes me wonder if he doesn't like being the Dude anymore.
My only problem with the game was the kinda slow start to each episode, but nothing can be a high forever, and the fact that I encountered a rare save bug that prevented saves from being created until you restart the game. This happened twice and I only found 2 other reports of this so I doubt it's common, but my preemptive measure was simply not letting the game run for more than ~20 minutes or at least rebooting it after each level. I doubt most people will encounter this though, or at least I hope. It lost me around 40 minutes of progress, but at least the gameplay is solid enough to not let that be too frustrating.
Overall this was a fun surprise, it's simply a well designed and engaging shooter with a crazy theme. Personally it's my favorite Postal game now and I highly doubt 4 will take that place whenever I get around to it. It's definitely the most functional Postal game despite that bug I encountered as it at least never crashed or dropped in performance by 105% for no reason, not to mention that it's a more traditional kind of game so it's definitely going to be appealing even to those that hate the usual Postal brand. I recommend this game to any FPS game player that doesn't mind edgy jokes that are already aging in relevancy, really, it's just good.
Color me surprised by how solid this is! The start of each episode is just a tiny bit slow, but once it picks up the game is some of the most fun I had with arena boomer whatever shooters in recent years. First level is too open imo, but all the rest are way more focused on the arena design.
The arsenal is really fun, all the guns have some use AND are just fun in and of themselves, even your basic shovel-chainsaw and not so smart pistol remain viable guns throughout the entire game. It's true, we have guns blatantly taken from other games, like the smart pistol from Titanfall and the SSG from Doom Eternal, but they are really well implemented here so they don't feel off at all (and with better thought than they'd have in Eternal!).
Speaking of the arsenal, I feel like explaining what the Pussy Launcher really is like as even I misunderstood it at first. It feels clunky when you first get it, but once you get how to get into the habit of shooting 3 times behind enemies and then pulling the projectile back towards them, it's basically an infinite ammo gun. I do think it's worthy of being your final gun, as proper use is extremely powerful, please don't overlook it.
This game also has HUGE enemy variety, each map up until around the last 3 introducing new enemies for you to fight. Many of them are variations of each other, but they're still distinct enough so that mixing them up in combat makes for a good balance. My favorites must be the silly asylum enemies, what with the lobotomized ones and gone rogue medical staff.
I guess I should talk about the humor. It's still a Postal game so it's not exactly particularly funny, and it's mostly interesting for the absurdity rather than humor. But I have to say, I don't get why people think this is darker than 2, in my view it simply has jokes and references that hit too close to recent times (mainly 2020-2021) and will age out like Postal 2 did eventually. The dream setting is great though, it allows the developers to blend in way more stupid things without it being inconsistent.
Corey Cruise does the main Postal Dude voice this time, and it's great to hear him be the main character in a good game. Rick Hunter is in here too, but his lines feel phoned in, similarly to 4, makes me wonder if he doesn't like being the Dude anymore.
My only problem with the game was the kinda slow start to each episode, but nothing can be a high forever, and the fact that I encountered a rare save bug that prevented saves from being created until you restart the game. This happened twice and I only found 2 other reports of this so I doubt it's common, but my preemptive measure was simply not letting the game run for more than ~20 minutes or at least rebooting it after each level. I doubt most people will encounter this though, or at least I hope. It lost me around 40 minutes of progress, but at least the gameplay is solid enough to not let that be too frustrating.
Overall this was a fun surprise, it's simply a well designed and engaging shooter with a crazy theme. Personally it's my favorite Postal game now and I highly doubt 4 will take that place whenever I get around to it. It's definitely the most functional Postal game despite that bug I encountered as it at least never crashed or dropped in performance by 105% for no reason, not to mention that it's a more traditional kind of game so it's definitely going to be appealing even to those that hate the usual Postal brand. I recommend this game to any FPS game player that doesn't mind edgy jokes that are already aging in relevancy, really, it's just good.
Mickey
28 days ago