Postal 2
Released April 2003
Developer: Running With Scissors
Publisher: Whiptail InteractiveEvery so often, I get incredibly bored with my computer and the games that are available. Nothing against Quake, Quake II, Q3A, Unreal, UT, UT 2003, Unreal II: The Awakening or any of the other games I've played over the past several years, but as much as I love first person shooters, I find I need something off-the-wall to get me re-hooked on computer gaming. It's like eating chicken for lunch every day. I don't care how many ways you cook it, it's still chicken.
I'm an Unreal-engine guy, so the mods that come out for UT and UT 2003 help in this regard, the whackier the better. U4E was a god-send, as was Minions of Destruction, Excessive UT, Strangelove and ChaosUT. I love that weirded-out, comic book strangeness. Whether you're firing teddy bears, riding a rocket or tossing out dimensional vortexes to suck your enemy into another space-time continuum, it's all good, and serves to keep the base game fresh, and guys like me interested in playing.During lulls in gaming, I've even relented and played Animal Crossing with my kids. I consider this particular activity as 'electro-shock therapy' for my FPS blues. Ok, so now I've built the biggest house I can, got the golden statue outside the train station, caught virtually all the fish and insects.... I'm bored again.
Out of the darkness comes Postal 2 from Running With Scissors and Whiptail Interactive, a publisher not 25 miles from BeyondUnreal's home office. I initially hesitated buying this game, reading too many of the online previews for it and worrying too much about some of the more negative comments. Still, I needed something completely different to try, and one thing everyone seems to agree with is that Postal 2 is different. So, buy it I did, and the following pages are my feelings about it, without ruining too much of the game for you.Oh, keep in mind that, since I've already completed it, this review has passed through a brain that has been thoroughly exposed to Postal 2, meaning of course that there are now holes where there used to be neurons firing. This will likely result in some mental misfiring that is totally outside of my knowledge and control...