Since I’m a lazy bastard, I’m going to post something here that I posted on my previous site. Don’t worry, though, because this was actually somewhat popular. Anyways, here it goes:
To start this off, I think you should see the splash that appears everytime you start the game. Click here. That, in itself, explains a lot. It is quite serious yet it also shows you the element of humor that Running With Scissors likes to put in their games.
Installation of the game is easy. Just one CD, stick it in, it unpacks some files and installs and there you go. I happened to notice that the extensions on some of the files that it extracted were “.fuk”. I don’t know if that was a coincidence or what, but I bet it’s just another little joke from those RWS (Running With Scissors) guys. The game takes about 1 gig of harddrive space.
When you start the game, it goes through some splash screens (like the one shown above) and then you’re at a pretty cool but not annoying menu screen. The first thing I did was customize the controls, graphics, and audio to fit me and my computer the best. The system requirements can be found on this page.
When you start a new game, you watch a little movie that explains your situation. You’re a guy living in a piece of crap mobile-home thingy with a stupid dog and a wife that you repeatedly call, well, a bitch (Yes, there is plenty of cussing in this game including multiple uses of the “F” word, but that’s nothing compared to the violence). Right away, the graphics are a giant leap from the 3rd person original Postal. The game boasts the Unreal engine and I think it is used well.
There are 5 days in the week (Monday through Friday) and each day your wife gives you a list of about 4 errons to do. If you download the demo (which can be found here), the one example erron they give you is to go and get a carton of milk. They alter the map a little bit so it’s possible to do (in the full game the grocery store is outside of where they let you go in the demo).
A great line RWS uses to sell the game is something like “The game is only as violent as you are.” It sounds cheesy, but it’s quite true. You can either do things the legal way by actually paying for stuff, not killing people, and other similar acts of general goodness, or you can literally blow apart people’s heads with shotguns, taser them into a seizure, throw rotting cow heads through windows, light anything on fire with your can of gasoline and matches, and then piss on the stuff to put out the fire. It’s all up to you.
At the time that I am writing this review, I have just started Thursday in my personal game. I have had the game for a week or two and have played it for many hours. You may wonder why it has taken me so long to get this far, but I have an answer. First of all, you may think you’re mentally invincible, but it really gets to you after you kill NPC (Non Player Character) after NPC. Secondly, some missions are pretty hard. It can be easier if you take a break from the game for a while, maybe play a somewhat less violent game like GTA3 (heh), and then go back and try again. For example, I found the church missions pretty hard. I mean, you have to go in and wait in a stupid line for the confessional and then on your way out, a band of crazy Osama bin Laden look-alikes attack the church with machineguns, molotov cocktails, and grenades.
I don’t know what happens when you finish the game, but I’m sure it will be great. Buy the game and find out for yourself!
Pros:
- Wonderfully violent and hilarious gameplay that can go on for as long as you can take it (unlike the demo with a 6-minute time limit).
- Very large map with tons of massive multistory buildings that you can go inside and interact with.
- Hundreds of NPCs just walking around town that you can either befriend, kill, or ignore.
- An increasingly difficult police force that tries to capture you (and if they do capture you, the game isn’t over cause you can break out of jail and continue your missions).
- A wide range of easily accessible and fun-to-use weapons and items.
- Great 3D first person shooter graphics and audio.
- A lot of replay value (similar to GTA3 in that you can just start up the game and kill for no reason whenever the need strikes you).
Cons:
- No multiplayer.
- Graphics are not necessarily cutting-edge (games like Return to Castle Wolfenstein have better graphics).
- A lot of somewhat long load times to load new sections of the map.
- You can’t drive any vehicles.
As an endnote, I would like to encourage you to actually buy the game like I did. I bet it is probably already available on warez IRC servers and various file-sharing programs like Kazaa especially due to how easy it would be to pirate, but RWS is not a huge multi-gazillion dollar company with money to spare. Help support them so they can make more wonderful games (like Postal 2) that no other company has the balls to create.
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