Considering myself a big Postal fan, having beaten the first game, Postal 2 and all expansions, and even Postal 3: Of Course I was going to play Postal 4 its just a matter of when. Well it was in Early Access for quite awhile, maybe a few years, and I never play Early access games So I ignored it until release. Then it got released, and I still waited a little to pick it up on a discount, but finally I got it.
The game has all the same difficulty selection like Postal 2, even having the extreme difficulties that fundamentally change the game and gameplay mechanics such as limited saves, changing what the NPC's have, and so on. But I just played on Normal, it even says "This is what we recommend you start with". The first thing you notice is main "cutscenes" if you can call them that, are simply static comic book-like images which provide the narrative. Maybe it feels a little lazy, but mostly I'm just not a huge fan of the artstyle on them. They don't look that edgy or cool but more childish and kinda lame. Perhaps its just a small nitpick, cause these still image cutscenes dont popup all that often, and there are in-game cutscenes anyway which do most of the presentation.
Once the game started, though, my immediate first impression was mixed. For starters I was playing on Controller and this game has one of the most baffling and confusing control schemes I think I've ever seen and took me awhile to wrap my head around. Each of the bumpers pulls up an item wheel, one for weapons one for consumables/usables. but even switching back and forth between weapons is janky and inconsistent like theres no simple button to go to the next weapon you have to keep bringing up this wheel and then to put your weapon away, bring up the wheel and go to first, and if you want to return to a weapon you have to go through the wheel all over again. Just clunky. Not only that, but I couldn't figure out how to 'use' items. The very beginning of the game has you picking up a piece of cardboard, then a marker, and needing to 'use' the marker to write on the cardboard. I couldn't figure out how to do it. I looked up the controls in the menu and it said it was 'X' to use, but it wasn't working. Turns out by 'use' on 'X' it means, pick up objects, the real button was HOLD dpad up. Ugh, that took an unnecessarily long time to get past.
Not off to a great start in just the first 10 minutes of the game.
The presentation and style of the game is a little different than Postal 2. Obviously Postal 2 was over 20 years ago, so things change. The first thing thats strange is you get a choice between four voice actors for The Dude. The strangest thing is the default voice actor is Jon St John, you know, the Duke Nukem guy. Not sure why they made that choice. Now the Postal guy just sounds like Duke Nukem. Its jarring. I used this voice because its the default one, but thankfully the classic guy is an option, Rick Hunter. All though playing the game with Jon St John, honestly I didn't like his voice. He actually sounds kinda nerdy, dorky, and uncharismatic. Not sure how to explain it. It doesn't fit well. And sometimes it just felt like "Why am I listening to Duke Nukem while playing Postal?" it felt like he was chosen just out of notoriety and fan service and nostalgiabait like "Hey guys, remember Duke Nukem? Well we got him for Postal Dude!" .. but he doesn't fit the role well for me.
In Postal 2, The Dude was decked out in a gothic trench coat, and the world around him felt cold and nihilistic, here in Postal 4 hes wearing a bright purple bath robe, and the world around him feels more vibrant, silly, and whimsical. It loses a bit of its dark gothic vibe, for a more wacky and silly tone. Yes, Postal 2 was silly and immature most of the time, but it leaned more towards dark rather than silly. It feels like Postal 4 leans more towards silly, and the gothic darkness isn't as much a focus. To me its a bit disappointing, it loses its edge. Theres plenty of games that lean towards the so randumb and silly, but not many that lean into the dark and disturbing. Of course its still here in Postal 4, you can still pee on people and light them on fire, there's plenty of "politically incorrect" jokes and scenes, but its undeniable that the tone has shifted.
The game, like the previous ones, takes place on the weekdays. Monday to Friday are the levels. I guess the weekend will be DLC in the future. Each day consists of a handful of tasks to complete, usually no more than three or four. I won't go over every single task in the game, but I will say that many of them left me a bit disappointed and wanting more. Like the very first task I did was this animal control one. Where you go to an animal shelter and have to collect animals to put in a truck that grinds them into meat. Great concept, grim and disturbing. But the execution isn't that fun. You go around throwing treats at cats and dogs, trying to make them follow you, but the AI sucks and is janky. You can just kill them and pick them up and put their dead bodies in the truck, thats fine, but the prompts for doing so are a bit broken as well. A common theme you will see with this game is generally most everything is broken, half-working, and glitchy as fuck.
For example, even just on this first mission is where I encountered how terrible the enemy AI is. Most of the time they stand around doing nothing, ignoring you. Sometimes their animations even break and they just slide around the floor. Sometimes they shoot at you, then ignore you and go back to being peaceful. Other times they snipe you across the map with hitscanning and have perfect accuracy. The AI is a total fuckin mess. To make matters worse, the entire saving/loading/checkpoint system is a complete disaster, broken clusterfuck that makes NO sense. It will auto save frequently, and you can get checkpoints. But when you die, it says "Press button to reload last checkpoint" - Ok great, fair enough, standard stuff. But you press the button, and it doesn't actually reload any previous game state. Rather it just respawns you in the same game state, with your ammo still gone from last attempt, but it brings you back with like 1 health. What it means is the game basically just has infinite respawns and no consequence for dying. But you're thinking that its gonna reload the last game state, so any mistakes you made will be undone since you're going back in time. Like undoing maybe some tasks you messed up, or NPC's you made hostile. But no, it just respawns you in the same game state, confusing the fuck out of you. I didn't realize what was happening until a few hours in, but its just super jarring. Why the fuck does it lie to you and say Press button to reload last save" - when it doesn't do that? Even weirder is the fact that you can indeed just open the menu and actually reload the previous game state. Its just when you die and press the button it respawns you instead of actually loading.
What ends up happening is, you can be in a boss fight, and you can just die over and over and when you "reload last checkpoint" (actually just respawns you) - the boss's health wont reset. So you can just die and respawn over and over and whittle the bosses health down. No challenge, no punishment. Other times its like the game knows this is a problem and tries to get around this with hacky, janky code fixes, but most of the time its just broken and all fucked up
What a mess.
Another new addition in Postal 4 is vehicles. I say vehicles but mostly its just a motorized scooter you can rent from various stations around town. No other NPC's drive, everyone just aimlessly roams around in the middle of the street (Probably just due to bad coding.) The map here is decently sized, its an open world with multiple different zones, but there are constant loading screens which kinda kills some of the open mood. I know Postal 2 had loading screens, and it was understandable 20 years ago on Unreal 2, but plenty of open world games are on Unreal 4 and don't have loading screens, it comes across as a little incompetent, but I mean look at the rest of the game. Incompetence is like the name of the game here. The worst part, though, is you can rent one of these scooters, drive it for 30 seconds, then be at a loading screen again, or worse, it will say a giant message on screen infront of a tunnel "EXIT VEHICLE TO PROCEED" Like why the hell do I have to give up my vehicle to enter the tunnel and proceed through? Its just bad programming and makes no sense.
The actual map and environment its self is just okay. Its very brown and yellow and deserty, at times its not much to look at and frankly kinda ugly. Though its not uncommon to see lots of areas where models are just floating above the ground, including vehicles. Or being able to see unfinished parts of models, much of the game still feels unfinished and untested and very rough around the edges. Even something as simple as walking up stairs can be messed up, making you have to jump repeatedly to actually go up them. Just doesn't feel like it was tested much in some areas and is unpolished.
But the environments does have a surprising amount of details and things to look at. Like almost every building is enterable and unique, many of them having their own set of silly jokes , posters, paintings, and wacky things laying around to laugh at and be amused by. Many locations are filled to the brim with interactable stuff to do, like the fun park, or the mall. Though I feel like the various sections of the world could have more distinctive features. Like maybe instead of every area being the same sandy desert with a few dozen houses, maybe one area could have some reddish sand, maybe one area could even be wintery. How would winter make sense? It doesn't have to, barely anything else in this game makes sense, so it would at least be something different to look at and differentiate its self. If you don't look at the map, you would be hard pressed to tell which section of the game you're at because everything kinda looks the same. Its not like the areas are that big and sprawling either, each map is more like a small kind of Half Life 2 sized maps, stitched together between loading screens.
There is another vehicle you can get, but I only saw it around the end of the game. This dune buggy thing. It was ok, I wish I saw more of them earlier. Too little too late.
The addition of the vehicle is questionable. For one it further makes the tone of the game more zany and silly, you're going around in a Purple bath coat, riding a motorized scooter, listening to the radio songs blaring like "Pull my finger, this ones gonna be a stinker!" over and over. Again, wheres the dark humor? Postal 2 was almost scary it was so edgy. It was all black humor, disturbing. Postal 4 seems to have almost entirely abandoned such black humor for just constant shit jokes and wacky humor. Its a little disappointing. But still, found myself smiling at it and laughing more than once. But also the scooter makes it so you ignore most of the game world. In Postal 2, you felt incentivized to checkout all the different houses for pickups and you were more up close and personal with the game world. In Postal 4, you spend a lot of time just mindlessly driving past everything, staring at the minimap trying to get to the next objective. It kinda takes something away. But at the same time, without it, the game may be too dull with too much walking back and forth. Pro's and cons.
Some tasks are fairly straight forward and mundane, like Sewer Worker where you climb around a sewer, utilizing Unreal Engine 4's physics based props picking them up and jumping up on them to reach certain areas and heights, going around replacing lightbulbs, and whacking piles of shit with a shovel to unclog sewage pipes. Another one you go around a Prison complex opening up jail cells, shooting waves of enemies.
But really this is a poor introduction and first impression of the game. You'd think they would want to front load the beginning of the game with some eye popping and ridiculous things, instead its almost like the worst missions are at the beginning of the game. The sewer segment is way too long and dull, all you do is change light bulbs and attack some goofy cartoon looking rats and smack piles of shit with a shovel.
Speaking of the shooting, how is it? Most of the guns from classic arsenal is back. Desert eagle standard pistol, Shotgun, AK47, M4, to the weird Pigeon mines, throwing scissors, among others. The game features aiming down sights, unlike Postal 2, which is a new addition to the franchise. But really it feels like a standard Unreal Engine 4 shooter, but more rough around the edges and janky. Bodies tend to fly back with ridiculous forceful physics, especially when dropkicking them. But like I said earlier, the half-broken AI can ruin otherwise enjoyable shooting mechanics. The gun models, textures, animations, are all impressively done and feel fun and powerful to use. Just the AI can bring it down when it feels like you're shooting at dumb lifeless targets. Though, the games gore system is great. You can shoot off each limb, hands, and legs, they run around screaming holding their hand stumps slowing bleeding out. Its shocking, graphic, but makes the combat feel impactful and chaotic. Throwing a grenade and seeing gibs flying all over the place, bouncing around, all the ridiculous over the top screams, the combat is a highlight of the game, unfortunately the previous issues mentioned really bring it down a notch. The bad AI, and the confusing and misleading respawn system. On top of these issues, its not uncommon to go up against what seems like infinitely respawning enemies. In which case it makes engaging with the combat feel almost pointless, and running past them is the more viable choice. You can find yourself in a situation where you're dying and respawning, but your ammo keeps dwindling, so you can be really stuck in a hard place just because of confusing and janky game design, ontop of infinite respawning enemies.
The variety of enemies are entertaining and frequently hilarious, though. The game is funny. Its so over the top blatantly immature it wears stupidity on its sleeve. Its actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the game and why I kept playing. It loves the "so bad its good" vibe. It thrives in it. You'll be getting attacked by various moralizing groups, from Anti-gambling protestors, Environmentalists protesting toilet paper in praise of Bidets, raging progressives who attack you for spray painting over some gang graffiti because its "ruining indigenous culture", among others. Between satirizing basically every group imaginable, and the constant potty humor, sex and dick jokes plastered everywhere, even to the text objectives like "Culmination" instead of "Contamination" it all comes together to just be a totally absurd package, that even at its worst most frustrating times, you still almost have a smile on your face thinking to yourself "What the fuck am I playing?" its so juvanile and shitty that it goes from being unenjoyable and annoying and wraps around to being so over the top its just amusing.
The open world has a few different things you can do. Theres activities that reward both pacifist and violent playstyles, the game does a good job rewarding both. Theres achievements for playing the game as pacifist, so the game doesn't funnel you into a certain playstyle. Theres even GTA style Rampages this time around for both styles. Theres violent rampages, and theres pacifist challenges you can do like shooting targets and things of that sort. There are a few ways to spend your money, mostly from vending machines to buy ammo, new guns, and consumables, but I think there is also a pawn shop where you can sell some of these weird dolls you pickup, but sadly I never found the pawn shop. I think theres a place you can buy some clothes too, but I never bothered.
The end of each day has you returning to some place to ring a bell and sleep for the night. But the game sometimes does a really poor job with informing the player where he has to go or what he has to do. The minimap will only tell you the vague general location of the objective, it wont point you right to it. Sure, thats fine enough. But sometimes it added unnecessary frustration and annoyance. This one time I was at the end of a day, and drove to the ending location. It was this big mansion. All I had to do was walk up to the front door and find some little table with a tiny bell on it and ring it. But this was before I realized you even had to ring bells to end the day, I think it was Tuesday so the mechanic didn't stick with me yet. So I spent like 15 minutes roaming around this huge mansion looking for progress. I don't know, it should of just pointed me straight to the bell, or had a big sign in front of it. It was very easy to miss and just wasted my time. Other times, I'd go to a mission location, and similarly be left clueless what to do, roaming around in circles for 15 minutes until I found the one spot needed to progress. The pacing and steering the player towards what he must do could be improved. Small things like that build up to make the game feel more annoying than enjoyable at times.
There is another vehicle you can get, but I only saw it around the end of the game. This dune buggy thing. It was ok, I wish I saw more of them earlier. Too little too late.
The addition of the vehicle is questionable. For one it further makes the tone of the game more zany and silly, you're going around in a Purple bath coat, riding a motorized scooter, listening to the radio songs blaring like "Pull my finger, this ones gonna be a stinker!" over and over. Again, wheres the dark humor? Postal 2 was almost scary it was so edgy. It was all black humor, disturbing. Postal 4 seems to have almost entirely abandoned such black humor for just constant shit jokes and wacky humor. Its a little disappointing. But still, found myself smiling at it and laughing more than once. But also the scooter makes it so you ignore most of the game world. In Postal 2, you felt incentivized to checkout all the different houses for pickups and you were more up close and personal with the game world. In Postal 4, you spend a lot of time just mindlessly driving past everything, staring at the minimap trying to get to the next objective. It kinda takes something away. But at the same time, without it, the game may be too dull with too much walking back and forth. Pro's and cons.
Some tasks are fairly straight forward and mundane, like Sewer Worker where you climb around a sewer, utilizing Unreal Engine 4's physics based props picking them up and jumping up on them to reach certain areas and heights, going around replacing lightbulbs, and whacking piles of shit with a shovel to unclog sewage pipes. Another one you go around a Prison complex opening up jail cells, shooting waves of enemies.
But really this is a poor introduction and first impression of the game. You'd think they would want to front load the beginning of the game with some eye popping and ridiculous things, instead its almost like the worst missions are at the beginning of the game. The sewer segment is way too long and dull, all you do is change light bulbs and attack some goofy cartoon looking rats and smack piles of shit with a shovel.
Speaking of the shooting, how is it? Most of the guns from classic arsenal is back. Desert eagle standard pistol, Shotgun, AK47, M4, to the weird Pigeon mines, throwing scissors, among others. The game features aiming down sights, unlike Postal 2, which is a new addition to the franchise. But really it feels like a standard Unreal Engine 4 shooter, but more rough around the edges and janky. Bodies tend to fly back with ridiculous forceful physics, especially when dropkicking them. But like I said earlier, the half-broken AI can ruin otherwise enjoyable shooting mechanics. The gun models, textures, animations, are all impressively done and feel fun and powerful to use. Just the AI can bring it down when it feels like you're shooting at dumb lifeless targets. Though, the games gore system is great. You can shoot off each limb, hands, and legs, they run around screaming holding their hand stumps slowing bleeding out. Its shocking, graphic, but makes the combat feel impactful and chaotic. Throwing a grenade and seeing gibs flying all over the place, bouncing around, all the ridiculous over the top screams, the combat is a highlight of the game, unfortunately the previous issues mentioned really bring it down a notch. The bad AI, and the confusing and misleading respawn system. On top of these issues, its not uncommon to go up against what seems like infinitely respawning enemies. In which case it makes engaging with the combat feel almost pointless, and running past them is the more viable choice. You can find yourself in a situation where you're dying and respawning, but your ammo keeps dwindling, so you can be really stuck in a hard place just because of confusing and janky game design, ontop of infinite respawning enemies.
The variety of enemies are entertaining and frequently hilarious, though. The game is funny. Its so over the top blatantly immature it wears stupidity on its sleeve. Its actually one of the most enjoyable parts of the game and why I kept playing. It loves the "so bad its good" vibe. It thrives in it. You'll be getting attacked by various moralizing groups, from Anti-gambling protestors, Environmentalists protesting toilet paper in praise of Bidets, raging progressives who attack you for spray painting over some gang graffiti because its "ruining indigenous culture", among others. Between satirizing basically every group imaginable, and the constant potty humor, sex and dick jokes plastered everywhere, even to the text objectives like "Culmination" instead of "Contamination" it all comes together to just be a totally absurd package, that even at its worst most frustrating times, you still almost have a smile on your face thinking to yourself "What the fuck am I playing?" its so juvanile and shitty that it goes from being unenjoyable and annoying and wraps around to being so over the top its just amusing.
The open world has a few different things you can do. Theres activities that reward both pacifist and violent playstyles, the game does a good job rewarding both. Theres achievements for playing the game as pacifist, so the game doesn't funnel you into a certain playstyle. Theres even GTA style Rampages this time around for both styles. Theres violent rampages, and theres pacifist challenges you can do like shooting targets and things of that sort. There are a few ways to spend your money, mostly from vending machines to buy ammo, new guns, and consumables, but I think there is also a pawn shop where you can sell some of these weird dolls you pickup, but sadly I never found the pawn shop. I think theres a place you can buy some clothes too, but I never bothered.
The end of each day has you returning to some place to ring a bell and sleep for the night. But the game sometimes does a really poor job with informing the player where he has to go or what he has to do. The minimap will only tell you the vague general location of the objective, it wont point you right to it. Sure, thats fine enough. But sometimes it added unnecessary frustration and annoyance. This one time I was at the end of a day, and drove to the ending location. It was this big mansion. All I had to do was walk up to the front door and find some little table with a tiny bell on it and ring it. But this was before I realized you even had to ring bells to end the day, I think it was Tuesday so the mechanic didn't stick with me yet. So I spent like 15 minutes roaming around this huge mansion looking for progress. I don't know, it should of just pointed me straight to the bell, or had a big sign in front of it. It was very easy to miss and just wasted my time. Other times, I'd go to a mission location, and similarly be left clueless what to do, roaming around in circles for 15 minutes until I found the one spot needed to progress. The pacing and steering the player towards what he must do could be improved. Small things like that build up to make the game feel more annoying than enjoyable at times.
As you progress through the game, through the days, the tasks get more and more absurd. Monday is simple and mundane enough, Tuesday has you shooting immigrants over the border with a catapult while getting attacked by waves of police (kinda annoying mission, the aforementioned respawn system made it feel even more dumb). Theres a task here where you go into a almost 1 to 1 copy of Breaking Bad's drug lab. Then you turn into a fucking cat of all things and play an entire segment roaming around as a cat. You go to get some milk, then you do a stupid little boss fight against a dog with your cat claws. Theres even icons showing you that you can climb up various parts of the town. Like why did they even spend time developing this cat mechanic? You see it for like 10 minutes tops, it probably took them a week of development time and money to make. Just seems like it could of been put somewhere more impactful, like fixing bugs or putting in a better task. It honestly felt like filler and past the 30 second novelty of "Haha I'm a cat" it wasn't great.
Theres another task on Tuesday where you go to a police station and pay a fine. You can do annoying community service where you go around as a meter maid, but that sounded like a miserable slog. So you just go up and pay the fine but then the police station locks down and you have to escape the police station while everyone shoots at you. This section could of been fun, but again, the janky death/respawn system coupled with broken shit AI just ruined the whole thing and made it stupid and frustrating.
Wednesday starts with a silly cutscene with one of the game devs wearing a toilet on his head. And this cutscene looks like something out of Borderlands. Again, just not a huge fan of the artstyle of these cutscenes and the tone is way too whimsical and silly and I'm really missing the darker more morbid tones of Postal 2. But its fine, it did produce a smirk or two. This day had some tasks that downright frustrated me. One of them has you going to the theme park Kunny Island, it plays a brief cutscene vaguely telling you to destroy some power boxes. But the first time I wasn't fully paying attention and was left totally clueless what to do. I had to re-load my old save and go back to watch the cutscene again (because like I said previously, the game doesn't do a good job telling you what you should do sometimes). After that, the mission was just confusing. I'd shoot one of the power boxes, but then everyone would start shooting me. Ok, but at the same time, one of these people attacking me is actually invincible. This costume wearing mascot person that I'd dump hundreds of rounds into, wouldn't die. Even weirder you can walk up to this person and press X to talk and he says like "Can I pay you to shut this place down for good?" And I did it, and then nothing happened. Just what the fuck is going on? Then theres another DJ person you can talk to and pay her money too to "Go on and leave" and shes like "I'll see you afterwards!" ...and nothing happened. I don't get it. Eventually I realized theres tiny icons on the minimap that at least show you the power boxes so I went around and shut them all off and finally completed the task. That one was just confusing and shitty. Though, the location looked interesting, with an impressive amount of sights and things to interact with. Though I tried using some of the rides and rollercoasters and it let me press X to get on, but nothing happened?
The classic petition mission is back, you just go around asking people to sign a petition to put bidets in every house. Except this time you can equip a gun in your left hand and threaten them with violence to sign, which sped the task along nicely.
Thursday was a real mixed bag. It takes place on an entirely separate map, this out back woods area with a few wooden shacks and hillbillies. This place is just weird and mostly empty. You just go around aimlessly looking through shacks for your gear and your dog. Theres a few side areas and caves you can swim through, that looked important, but its completely empty and just leads to a dead end? Its like the map is half finished. Pretty strange and disappointing. Theres a task where you do a weird racing mission on a kart course, but you arent supposed to win, you're supposed to knock the other people around and let the Red guy win. Ok, well I failed, but it still completed the task anyway? Err, ok? - Then theres probably the worst task in the game. A task to be a game tester. The game tester task in Postal 2 was awesome, you go into a game dev studio and shoot the place up. Well here you get teleported to some virtual reality Tron world and do a bunch of shitty puzzles that are so boring and unfun even the devs knew it because theres a button you can press to Skip level at a fee. I did that a few times but it still wasn't over. Then theres this giant sprawling section where you're getting chased by robot guys with doors spawning in your face and if you walk into the door you instantly die. This section fucking sucked mostly because the setting is unappealing, but its trial and error bullshit where theres hardly any health packs, and I barely had any ammo meanwhile theres infinitely respawning enemies, plus the shit respawn system dwindling my ammo each time I respawned. It was just a totally unfun slog that I wish I could of skipped entirely. Giant pac-man's eating you from behind and everything. Just what the fuck.
Friday is also a total mixed bag. The first half is alright, you go through a dam shooting it up and plugging holes by picking up objects and putting them in the right shape hole. But some of the "holes" arnet actually holes and are tiny cracks that don't even look like interactable things, so the game confused and mislead me. Theres a timer on the screen, but guess what, its just an illusion. If the timer runs out you dont even fail and just keep playing. Its just there to stress you out I guess? Theres a mission where you just go through the mall shooting cops and do a boss fight with what turns out to be your cousin in law.
Oh yeah quick note, the game has a handful of boss fights but they're fucking joke. Between the AI being dumb as rocks, standing there or barely doing anything, you just crouch behind a corner and unload a few magazines at their head and its over in like 15 seconds each time. Not much to say about them.
Anyway then on Friday theres a cave mission where you go through a cave shooting at treasure hunters, and theres a little Tomb Raider joke going on where you go inside a small tomb and grab the treasure and escape. But even the pillars that come down from the ceiling are buggy and simply lightly touching one makes you immediately die. The jank never ends. But after this the classic raining cats red sky part happens (like in Postal 2) where everyone in the town goes mad and starts rioting and killing each other and attacking you nonstop. This section has you going all around the game map completing a few more tasks, going to the Bidet station to do a boss fight against one of the game developers Mike, going to the Mexican mansion again to do another boss fight, going back to the main tower place to do a boss fight against your father. But the problem is this entire section almost doesn't spawn any health items. So for like an hour straight I had 1hp, running around getting one shot, respawning, getting one shot, doing this miserable slog trying to inch myself closer to the objectives. It was just a total pain in the ass. I also had $0 so I couldn't buy any supplies anywhere. It was very frustrating and unfun. I ended up finding a few health items like pizza and a crack pipe once or twice but it was way too few and far between. This part could be balanced better, either putting health items after some of the boss fights, or making people randomly drop food, I don't know. But its current state was just painful.
Satire used to be more chaotic and unpredictable.
In Postal 2, the devs mocked everyone: Christian fundamentalists, military jingoism, school shooters, PETA, hippies, politicians, and even the player. It was pure anarchy: absurd, tasteless, and ideologically scattered.
But Postal 4 feels more aligned with right-leaning internet culture. While it technically still pokes fun at a range of targets, it does so disproportionately. The voting booth scene only lets you vote Republican, the Democrat option is sabotaged, not just in passing, but in a way that lingers and draws attention. The game repeatedly mocks “woke” language and cancel culture in ways that echo conservative memes more than neutral parody. Right-wing groups are parodied more gently, often framed as goofy or harmless.
There are even vaccination posters scattered around that say “do it, you dumb animals,” which feels less like satire of anti-vaxxers and more like a jab at public health messaging itself.
The issue isn’t that the game offends ... that’s expected, it’s that the tone has shifted and is more one dimensional. It’s no longer absurd nihilism where everything is fair game; instead, it feels like it’s preaching to a particular choir. The change is subtle, but if you’ve played Postal 2, you can feel it... the tone has gone from “nobody is safe” to “you know who we’re really laughing at.” which makes it feel like its just another tribalistic culture war device.
And in that shift, Postal loses something that once made it feel uniquely chaotic and untamed.
The few times it dares to be "political" or do modern social commentary, it comes across as feeling pandering and less like its just an unpredictable attack on everything sacred. Its almost like they're playing it safe most of the time, opting out controversial edgy takes for more poop and sex jokes, and honestly it gets old after awhile and has me missing the feeling of being shock and awe'd like Postal 2 left me feeling.
Postal 4 left me feeling mixed. But most of the time frustrated. Its just too buggy, I know it spent a lot of time in early access but maybe it needed even more time to cook. Some of the game balance is off, the save system and AI is half working, just most of the entire game is half-working or half baked. Also the tone shift is a little off-putting to me and goes too much into the silly potty humor over dark and edgy which I found disappointing. The default voice actor should be Rick Hunter, not Jon St John. Many of the tasks arent that shocking or memorable unlike I feel like Postal 2 had a lot of memorable and funny tasks. The Unreal Engine 4 implementation is pretty awful, the game just runs like shit and stutters constantly it doesn't feel smooth ontop of it all. Multiple times the entire game was just bugging out and breaking at the seams, falling through the game world and needing to quit and open it back up. I don't want to trash on this game, I think it could be good, but after the end credits rolled I felt relieved to uninstall it. I did have some good times with it, cracked a few laughs and thought some things were awesome, I think the general combat and gore and bullet impacts feel fun,
I appreciate the large variety of weapons and consumables, although many weapons from Postal 2 are missing, and the consumables can be confusing such as Vitamin X, its under the Health category in the inventory screen and it even says its for Health on the tooltip, although it never raises your health and it took me hours to realize what it even does. It turns out it makes your pee/melee stronger? To such an extent that it sends NPC's ragdolling across the screen at light speed that just looks kinda stupid and out of place, more like Saints Row 4 wackiness.. more evidence that the tone is just gone full on silly and the edgy vibe is further eroded away.
And even the controls feel like a half broken mess too (atleast on controller). Actually multiple times towards the end of the game I gaveup on using the controller and had to go sit at my desk just to get through things faster because I was feeling so frustrated by the controller implementation.
And guess what? It turns out as of this writing there is a Public Beta which completely overhauls the save system AND the AI...AND implemented full co-op! What the hell! It seems like I totally ruined my impression of Postal 4 by playing at this point, I wish I knew that, and I wish I'd waited until this was the main version to play. Its too bad stuff like this didnt happen during Early Access and the current state of the game is such a mess. Maybe I will come back and try the game in a few years to see if its been patched up and made more enjoyable. I feel like there is probably a more enjoyable game buried deep in here somewhere, although the story, cutscenes, and tone is already sadly semented. At least if many of the bugs were fixed up, and of those core mechanics were polished, it would of been significantly more enjoyable, but sadly in its current state it left me feeling sour and looking forward for it to be over.
5/10
And guess what? It turns out as of this writing there is a Public Beta which completely overhauls the save system AND the AI...AND implemented full co-op! What the hell! It seems like I totally ruined my impression of Postal 4 by playing at this point, I wish I knew that, and I wish I'd waited until this was the main version to play. Its too bad stuff like this didnt happen during Early Access and the current state of the game is such a mess. Maybe I will come back and try the game in a few years to see if its been patched up and made more enjoyable. I feel like there is probably a more enjoyable game buried deep in here somewhere, although the story, cutscenes, and tone is already sadly semented. At least if many of the bugs were fixed up, and of those core mechanics were polished, it would of been significantly more enjoyable, but sadly in its current state it left me feeling sour and looking forward for it to be over.
5/10
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