Postal

The Good
I've always had and always will have a love for dark, violent and edgy videogames. It started during my youth when I played games like DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D and Mortal Kombat. I still play these games today and along with more recent games like Hotline Miami and Max Payne my appetite for extreme (and not to mention violent) entertainment gets well satisfied. With the latest video game controversy magnet called Hatred being released on Steam this week, I decided to review a game that's pretty much the same as Hatred in terms of story, setting and gameplay. I'm talking about the cult classic POSTAL. Just to mention, I'm reviewing the Steam version of this game, which is basically Postal Plus optimized for modern systems and with achievements added.

Let's start with the game's story. You're a simple, unnamed guy the developers and fans of the game call the "POSTAL Dude." He's a depressed, sadistic lunatic who, one day, discovers that the entire world wants him dead. Whether this is true or just a serious mental delusion is certainly debatable, but what is true is that the game starts off with the Postal Dude's house surrounded by cops, locked, loaded and with intent to kill. Therefore, he starts a relentless rampage throughout the country, killing everyone and everything in sight. No matter if they are police officers, hobos, soldiers or just regular folks minding their own business. In between the levels, you get to read a little, disturbing entry in the Postal Dude's diary. These entries feature plenty of black humor. My favorite of these phrases is this one: "I will don the eviscerated organs of my enemies as party hats, wear their shredded entrails as neckties, and oh, how I shall dance!" Yeah, very wicked, isn't it? The title screen is also pretty sick, as you see a hellish environment with the POSTAL Dude standing on a "island" of human skulls! Imagine a kid growing up in the 90s (like me) watching this, nightmares for the rest of the week definitely guaranteed!

POSTAL is a 2.5D top-down isometric shoot'em up wherein you go through a variety of locations including a trailer park, a military air force base, city slums and even an elementary school. In order to progress, you need to kill a certain percentage of the area's hostiles (mostly 80 up to 95% of them). In other words, you only have to kill people who are shooting at you. Killing unarmed civilians isn't required for completion but the game does give you a few moments wherein killing these people gets very tempting. For instance, there's a level early in the game that features a fanfare and yeah, I'll admit, throwing a couple of Molotov cocktails towards them and watch them running around screaming and burning does give me some sadistic satisfaction. Another situation is a scene with a group of protestors shouting and holding signs in front of the Running With Scissors office. Probably they are protesting against violence in video games. So, in a delicious sense of irony, you can just grab your machine gun and drop them like flies!

As for weapons and enemies, you start the game with an M4 machine gun with great range, low damage but unlimited ammunition. As you go through the game, you'll get other death dealing stuff like a sawed-off shotgun, grenades, proximity mines, a heat-seeking rocket launcher and a flamethrower. Enemies are armed with similar weapons. Especially be careful around the guys carrying RPGs, Molotov cocktails and dynamite as these guys can eat through your health like candy.

Music-wise the game only features ambient noises adapted to the level you're playing in. If you're in the train level, you will hear train bells and in the mine level you can hear mine carts rolling around the place. Other frequent ambient noises include dog barks and wolf howls, fitting very well with the game's creepy atmosphere. Sound effects are pretty good, the guns sound nice (although I've already heard better ones in games such as Blood and Duke Nukem 3D). The enemies, civilians and the POSTAL Dude himself have some dialogue in the game. POSTAL Dude is voiced by Rick Hunter who also voiced the character in the sequel and he helps giving the character a sarcastic personality. Kill some people and he'll say "only my weapon understands me" or have him throw a Molotov while he's shouting "shake it up, baby." When someone's lying on the floor (ready to be executed or to be left to die, your choice), they mumble some silly phrases like "I'm have a really bad day," or "must get first-aid." I've got to say that the dialogue in the game does give it a little bit of humor among its dark and ultra-violent content.

The Bad
One missing thing that could've have made POSTAL's gameplay better is crosshairs. The game doesn't have that and that makes aiming your gun and throwing grenades or Molotovs very difficult. Speaking about throwing weapons, your thrown projectiles always travel the same distance. Usually, you hold down the throw button if you wish to throw the grenade farther. Not in POSTAL, so more often than not, your grenade gets thrown too close or too far from your targeted enemy.

The enemy AI can be very dumb. Don't be surprised to see enemies just run towards or past you without shooting at you, making it pretty easy to kill them. They are, however, smart enough not to run into fire even if you're right behind it. They'll wait until the fire is extinguished and then continue to chase after you.

When you look at the game aspect to aspect, POSTAL is pretty mediocre. Aside from the aforementioned aiming difficulties and questionable enemy AI, the game also has low-detail graphics (yes, even for 1997), no soundtrack and almost no story whatsoever. But POSTAL has a unique charm to it, it's hard to describe but it's one of those love it or hate it type of games.

The Bottom Line
POSTAL is a great example of the philosophy that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It may not have great graphics, deep gameplay, a compelling story or a memorable soundtrack, but the game has a unique style and atmosphere that make POSTAL rise above the average gore fest into the cult-classic series that it eventually became. POSTAL isn't a game for everyone (and definitely not for children), but if you can take the game's dark and violent content, you'll find it to be a fun guilty pleasure.