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Postal Plus (Win95)By: The J Man
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The original Postal came out in 1997, while anti-game violence sentimentality was still high, Lieberman was still preaching from the Senate floor, and before the wave of school shootings would have made this particularly tasteless in the U.S. (and as the developer is based there, would have seriously complicated its release). The Special Delivery pack came out in 1998, and as its only contribution to single-player was a meager addition of 4 maps, there's little point in reviewing them separately. Hence, Postal Plus; the definitive collection of the original game, and the version you'll likely find packaged in any current or future combo packs to come. First, let's just lay it out on the table. Postal is not a great game. I'll get into why later in the review, but essentially, the execution is somewhat broken. The idea itself... well, you are essentially playing the same violent shooter from before and after this game's release - the difference is that here, the wholesale slaughter of innocents and cops draws attention to itself. You're actually looking at the violence this time, whereas if you were blasting aliens, or mercenaries, or "the enemy," you wouldn't even think twice about the content. In that sense, perhaps Runs With Scissors has accomplished making a noteworthy statement.
So that's the game plan. Take an isometric shooter, insert a lot of everyday characters, remove any rules, and channel the whole disenfranchised, angry, ICP-listening vibe that was floating around 90s teens. The shooting of regular people tries to pass here as "lighthearted fun" or "a stress-reliever." This reminds me of some of the more notorious user-created flash games on Newgrounds in the late 90s (far more brutal than anything in this game), and I could see it attracting the kind of people who would make testimonials on message boards like "I'm so glad this game exists because if it didn't, I'd actually grab a gun and go on a real rampage!" because it sounded hard. These little pricks never would, of course, but rage was fashionable then. The less of a fuck you gave about anything, the more credibility you had. That's part of why Postal isn't a brilliant game. Of the people who would actually play it, it's either going to be an angry game (come home and play it after getting pissed off at school/work), or it's not going to be that big of a deal ("it's just a game, what's the problem?"). This is because it doesn't try to be anything more than an anarchy simulator. Postal 2, maybe by virtue of details afforded by the improved technology, at least has clear satire throughout. You had a mission where you actually had to go and piss on your father's grave, fercrissakes. Postal 1, however, rarely bothers.
The manual implies some semblance of a story. Your character, the "Postal Dude," is evicted from his home. It's the last straw in a Falling Down-esque series of bad days, which further convinces him that the town is infected with some kind of virus. He fights his way through 17 levels of woods, trailer parks, factories, and the city to get the outlying military airbase, where he believes he'll find the source of the infection. His nonsensical ramblings on the load screens, as well as subtle hints in the levels themselves (is there something to the strange music in the woods?) set up a slight "is he crazy or is this real?" side plot. This never develops directly throughout the game, but does get answered tidily in a final cutscene. Graphics, surprisingly, are striking. Backgrounds are all hand-drawn artwork of cities and outlying areas, beautifully colored, somewhat stylistically drawn, but overall, very sharp. There were talented artists in that group. Characters are loose collections of 3D polygons, while the engine cuts out parts of the 2D background to define depth. The characters are clunky and merely functional, but the benefit of this setup is that it doesn't mandate a specific perspective. The characters can be rotated, per level, in relation to the background and camera, and look fine in any situation. So, as you progress through the game, you'll switch around from 3/4, almost-side, and overhead perspectives. It does work to keep the game fresh. Rounding out the graphics are some basic lighting effects that brighten the characters as they run by lamps, and some impressive explosions and fire. The carnage you create is intentionally outrageous. Civilians fall easily, but police and soldiers are a little sturdier and take more time, or stronger weapons, to drop. After an absurd amount of ammunition (such as 4-5 point-blank shotgun shells), they will fall to a defeated animation where they writhe around in pain, or drag themselves along the ground, trailing blood. They eventually expire on their own, but you can speed this process with the use of the "execution" key. You have to kill a set percentage of hostiles before you can continue, and they're not considered dead in this defeated state, so there actually is a limited practical application of executing soldiers to meet your quota if you're about to die. Similarly, a "suicide" key is a handy way to restart the level after it becomes clear you've taken too much damage to proceed.
Controls share the blame too. You can't easily tell where you're aiming. A crosshair will appear on the enemy you're currently shooting, which is only somewhat helpful since the blood splatters make that fairly obvious anyway, but you'll get no other help in lining up shots. The best you can do is see what direction Postal Dude's gun is pointed in, fire off a few test shots, and use those to correct your aim - but good luck if your target is moving, or if you're using a heavy weapon with rare ammo, like the rocket launcher. Because of these issues, I found myself playing almost the entire game with the default, infinite-ammo machine gun in a spray-and-pray mode. It works, but it's pretty boring, and it subjects you to attacks you can't help feel that you could have avoided with a better targeting system. Limited controls also make it difficult to keep from getting hit. You can hold down a key to strafe, which helps in getting the drop on guys around corners, but you're not fast enough to get back out of the way. This means most of your fights will be drunken gunfighter shootouts, where you simultaneously plug away and take damage until someone falls. These won't kill you outright, but they'll set you up to get clocked by a rocket guy, or anyone shooting a napalm gun/Molotov. That's the stuff that will really piss you off - you're just a few kills away from beating the level when an explosion takes you out. A "duck" key is included to have you duck under incoming rockets, but it does dick for the homing variants, and won't stop a wall of fire. And if your timing is off, you can look forward to Mortal Kombat-style combos where rocket after rocket bounces you through the air until you die. It's these issues that caused me to quickly jump to the next level as soon as my quota was met, rather than strive for 100% kills (for which you receive nothing at all anyway).
The Special Delivery add-on offers little value for single-player, with only 4 new levels. While it does add new civilian characters and new dialogue, these are limited to just the new levels and not carried retroactively across the original (a bummer for those playing Postal Plus). If there was ever any moral message or plot in the first, it gets completely thrown out for the Special Delivery levels. Postal Dude will hit such highlights as gunning down the masses in a Wal-Mart knockoff for refusing to stock Postal, shooting apart a shantytown, and laying waste to a resort, complete with senior citizens and naked sunbathers. If you loves you the Postal, then you'll be right at home. The real value is for multiplayer, with some cooperative, capture the flag, and deathmatch games available. You also get a series of single-player challenges, like timed modes, or capturing a flag under a gauntlet of computer defenders. Your scores are reflected on an arcade-style hall of fame, and these modes, plus a full-featured editor for those interested, manage to eek a little more value out of the price. On a final, modern note, use caution if you're intending to spend money on this. Postal Plus will run on WinXP, but with a series of (currently unpatched) bugs - bodies spin around in place when they fall, you cannot turn right with the keyboard (even if you change the keys), and the mouse slings you around even more inaccurately than it should. These are not supposed to occur if the game is running correctly. Even running a virtual copy of Win98 wouldn't work; I had to go back to the Win98 box with the actual 1990s hardware for accurate play. If you're thinking about going after something like the Fudge Pack, and really want to play the original Postal, it's definitely worth an email to RWS to see if they cleaned it up for XP/Vista support. Or at the very least, grab the original demo and see how it performs on your system first. Postal's not very clever, it's not very impressive, and sometimes it's not very fun. I would have enjoyed it more if the controls were cleaned up, and it had more attempts at satire. Instead, it's pretty much what it sounds like - a sandbox of senseless violence and unchecked destruction. If that interests you, you'll still have inaccurate aiming, constrained movement, and a lot of repetition to contend with. All morality aside, it's worth a play if bundled with a collection, but too flawed to seek it out exclusively. -reviewed 6/15/08 - game copyright 1997/2001 Runs With Scissors
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