Postal²

The Good
You think GTA was bad? Think again. Postal itself is a series of dubious quality, sometimes hit and miss, but often has some unique features to make them differ, yet all games are meant to be boundary pushing, politically incorrect, tongue-in-cheek and explicit. Postal II is such a game, and most of all - it's possibly the most controversial of the bunch.

The game's premise is quite unique. Over a course of 5 'days', you must complete errands to progress. Sometimes you just wanna get it done and over with, or maybe you just wanna cause some anarchy. The game's freedom is mightily impressive, and it shows in the progressively open world that is Paradise, which behaves like South Park in a sense. Things get stranger and stranger, until it all culminates in one hell of an ending. You truly do have a lot of freedom to do insane and bizzare things yourself. You can slaughter the populace with guns, shovels and rockets, use cats as gun silencers, smoke crack for health and piss on people (literally). Some of this is quite entertaining, and can be really funny to boot.

The game's writing is also really funny, but it isn't for everyone. Pretty much what the Postal Dude says is pretty witty, and it's kinda tempting to root for him in a world where everything is batshit insane, though he's still reprehensible in his own right. Of course, it's also in bad taste, but it's funny and there were a couple lines or moments that were gutbusting.

The Bad
Again, the game is in bad taste...and in bad quality. Postal II is violent, vulgar, disgusting, horrific, juvenile and scatological. Racist stereotypes are abound, piss and shit are used for comic effect, the amount of violence and sexual humor, drug use as a gameplay element and occasional animal cruelty. It also has ugly graphics and a disjointed visual style.

No, seriously. The game is ugly in content and graphics. The game looks very dated, especially when the Unreal II engine was used for stronger and more capable games. Character models are jerky, sometimes lazily or sloppily (maybe amusingly) put together. Gun models look broken and cartoonish, and the blood effects look less brutal and more cartoony. Controls were also piss simple and sometimes didn't register, the AI was comically simple and were barely dynamic, and the original version had annoyingly long loading times that were fortunately patched up in Share the Pain, which had a pretty lame multiplayer mode.

The Bottom Line
Postal II is one of those games where it's so bad, it's actually pretty frickin' good. It's one of my guilty pleasures, and while it's not extremely vulgar as many made it out to be, it's still in bad taste nonetheless. If you get easily offended, grossed out, or think that video games are satanic or sexist or racist shit, don't play this game at all.

If it makes things better, the game is meant to be offensive on purpose. Unless if that makes things worse, then uh...eh, whatever.