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This game is about one thing, and one thing only - fun. And it delivers.

I don’t believe there has ever been a more controversial release than Postal 2's release for the PC. Politicians and dumbasses everywhere were up in arms about the vile nature of the game, and while sensitive people may find the game to be offensive, at least the game itself never loses its sense of humor.

In Postal 2 you play a week in the life of the postal dude. Basically, you run errands for your controlling and bitchy wife. So each day, you receive a list of things to be done such as buying milk, getting people to sign a petition, getting Gary Coleman’s autograph at the local mall, and my personal favorite, urinating on your dead father’s grave.

The game all takes place in the wonderfully detailed town of Paradise, Arizona. The people that populate this blister on the earth are rude, annoying, and more importantly, fun to kill.

While the game is indeed violent, it remains cartoonish and even humorous at times. Personally, I can’t see why anyone would be offended by a piece of software that was created by everyday people that obviously don’t take themselves very seriously. This is what adds so much to the humor of the game. Running With Scissors, the developers, take numerous jabs at themselves throughout the course of the game.

While you go about attempting to complete the objectives on your daily list, you are free to cause as much chaos around town as you please. An assortment of weapons (some typical and some slightly odd) are at your disposal in Postal 2, but there seems to be something of a balance problem between them. This is my major beef with the game, and a very small amount of tweaking on the developer’s part could have solved it quickly.

Some weapons are far weaker than they should be. For example, ten to fifteen rounds from an assault rifle will be needed to drop a pedestrian in the game, while two shots from a pistol will usually do the same job. It simply makes no sense to me, and it creates an imbalance that shouldn’t be there.

While this is certainly an annoyance, it doesn’t hurt the overall fun factor of the game, and this is most definitely a game about fun. It’s difficult for me to remember when I had this much fun with a game that required so little thought. The game allows the player to have fun with its open-ended design by letting you focus on what you find fun.

Postal 2’s graphics are not groundbreaking or amazing in the least, but they are attractive and perform well. Using the Unreal Warfare engine, Postal 2 sports very sharp textures, and nice open environments. While character models leave much to be desired, they are sufficient, especially when you consider that this game chugs enough without the added detail. No matter how fast your system may be, there will be many instances in the game where your frame rate will drop through the basement. I can only hope that the developers are currently working on a patch to smooth things out.

Exteriors in the game are fairly detailed, with cacti, trees, trash, and the like, but interiors come off as being rather bland. Rooms tend to feel empty because of sparsely placed furniture and a severe lack of wall decorations.

The developers made a fantastic decision when they went with ragdoll physics rather than canned death animations. I have a feeling that without the ragdoll physics, this game would not be nearly as enjoyable as it is. You can kick bodies down stairs and hills, and watching a body flop to the ground after a shotgun blast is more entertaining than it probably should be.

Sound is serviceable, with weapons sounding the way they should, characters chatting amongst themselves, and later screaming in terror when you enter the scene, but ambient sounds seem to be a little light. There could have certainly been an atmospheric benefit by including more ambient noise.

Enemy AI is bad, simple as that. But this is not a game that tries to create realistic encounters in that way. People in the game are meant as cannon fodder, and while I’m not saying they simply stand there waiting to be killed, I am saying that it’s easier to kill in this game than most first person shooters. Does this detract in the least from the game’s fun factor?

BANG!

Hell no! Dumb people are the best to kill. Hey everyone, Postal Dude here. I got tired of this guy’s rambling, so I detached his head with this here shovel. Why? Because I can do that. I can do anything. If you don’t like it, I may just track you down and do a repeat performance of what happened here just now. Whahaha! Bite me!

Review by Michael Bordelon.