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Controversy does not a good game make.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: April 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Obviously intended to be irreverent, super-violent, and disturbing, rating Postal 2 on a politically correct, moral, or ethical basis would be ridiculous. So let's just rate it on quality of programming and enjoyment of gameplay, shall we?

The graphics: Not bad, but certainly not on par with games like No One Lives Forever 2 and Mafia. The game does utilize the Unreal engine and has some nice textures here and there, but the town has a very artificial and claustrophobic feel to it. The NPC textures are o.k., as well, but nowhere near those in Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

The sounds: Very so-so. I found the weapon sounds in particular to be very unrealistic - especially the AR15. (It sounds like an airgun.) In a game where gunplay is an essential part of the fun, this is a glaring flaw.

A.I. - Not nearly good enough to be satisfying in the way the game claims to aspire to. To truly descend into the cellar of bad taste, the NPC's would have to behave in a believable manner, with a certain complexity of interaction available. As it stands, the NPC's have a very limited range of behaviors. This, combined with the so-so graphics makes for a very artificial environment.

Gameplay: Obviously, the creators did not have the funding nor programming talent to make Postal 2 into a game with cutting-edge graphics and groundbreaking gameplay. Even with these limitations, however, the developers could have made the game far more fun with just a little thought into what makes all of us want to go "postal". Getting stuck in traffic, having to wait in long lines, getting diss'd by a rude employee - with a little creativity, the programmers could have inserted these scenarios into the game to add fuel to our virtual postal tendencies. As it stands, apart from the postal dude's general psychosis, your player has no real motivation to go wacky - and the A.I. just isn't good enough to make it fun when you do. Without these assets, any open-ended environment - no matter how big - won't keep you coming back for more...

System Specs: P4 1.9ghz, 512mb rambus, Geforce4 Ti4600 128mb, Soundblaster Xgamer. Game ran fine on highest resolution with only a few stutters here and there, but I found loading times to be a bit excessive - especially considering the lesser graphic quality.

Bargain basement quality, crudeness, and boredom.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: June 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've been eagerly anticipating this game after having played the original. Well, the game is here, it is from the same company, it is supposed to take the tongue-in-cheek hyperviolence of the predecessor to the next level and yet I only played it for 40 minutes before uninstalling it and putting on eBay. Why would that happen? I'll tell you why!

This game is slow. In fact, it is not slow - it is SL-O-O-OW. Start the game and you are presented with a borderless window with a warning with no visible activity going on for about one minute. At some point I was sure the game had quetly terminated leaving this window behind and I was going to restart it when it finally went fullscreen. Loading between areas is also very slow - on my machine it takes about 1.5-2 minutes. Remember - we are talking about areas within a single mission, so you'll have a chance to experience these reloads several times through each mission. As there is no sign or indication of area switch, it always comes suddenly. First time I was through it, the area around was so non-descript in both directions, that I mad a mistake and backed out one step. Bad move! I was punished by loading the very area I came from (and subsequently by having to load the new area again). Finally, in many cases such delays are accompanied with absolutely no activity on-screen so it is quite difficult to figure out whether the game is dead or it is merely loading. Just in case you wonder: my machine is pretty fast. Most of modern games (e.g. the recently played GTA3) show excellent performance on it.

The game graphics looks crude. It looks like an old 3D shooter game rendered in OpenGL - in other words, very immature. It is OK to have such shabby graphics in an open source program or a free demo, but there is absolutely no excuse to release a commerical game with such graphics in 2003.

Finally, the game looks very mundane. Sure, there are 'cute" moments to it with people yelling obscenities and a programmer's workplace located in an office bathroom - but all of this is merely an icing on top of a very dull first person shooter. You go around and run chores. You may also kill people walking around. So much for thrill.

All in all, this is what it looks like - a rushed release of a dull, generic first person shooter of bargain basement quality. Spend your hard earned money somewhere else (like an excellent (and I do mean it!) Grand Theft Auto III) or this game will make you go postal.

Junk! Absolute Junk!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 11
Date: April 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Save your money. Don't buy this junk. Waste of money.

This isnt a shooter, its a shooting

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: July 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game has no substance whatsoever and runs purely on shock value, if your looking for a game this is the last thing I would recomend. The player slays innocents, thats it, no actual game. Its like the Grand Theft Auto series minus the action, the driving and the story.

Kudos Running With Scissors

This Game Is Sick and Twisted

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: January 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This game is horrible. What kind of twisted person would want to play a game where you stick guns up cute little kittens behinds and use them as silencers? That is just wrong. Not to mention the ability to throw a decapitated head of a cow filled with anthrax, causing people to barf up blood. If your an animal rights activist, or just a normal person, then this game is not for sane people! With it's "over-the-top violence" (which I quote from the box) and extremely twisted plot, this game is a sick, twisted, mental, animal killing bloodbath from the beginning to the end. And don't even get me started with how this game is NOT for kids.... You would have to be seriously messed up in the head to play crap like this.

Good game for pinheads!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: April 27, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I found absolutely no challenge inthis stupid game at all. Itis beneath me. What a waste of time and money. This game is Garb-aaaaaggggeeee!!!

This game is ... dumb.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 9
Date: April 23, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is a lame excuse for attention. The missions are meaningless and stupid. You go to the store to buy a gallon of milk, there's one mission. The game says "only as violent as you are" but is intentionaly made for you to be as violent as possible, or the missions wouldn't be so linear and stupid. Cutting a young girl's head off with a shovel, blowing a police officers head off with a shotgun and kicking it around as a soccer ball, pouring gasoline on someone and lighting them on fire, and harming/brutaly murdering helpless animals are some examples of the terrible and discusting violence included. Obviously the people that make this need to be sent to an insane asylum because it is not funny at all. It's the grossest game on the market and totaly uncalled for. If you're gonna make a game as graphicly violent as you can, the least you could do is include some bad guys. But there are none at all, except for yourself. The graphics aren't good, and everything else about the game "is bad" to an unbelievably high extent. I'm not one to complain about a violent video game but this is just sick. Go buy GTA3 or Vice City if you want to go on a rampage because this game is sofa king dumb. Avoid at any and all costs. If you find it on a shelf for 99 cents on clearence, it's still not worth it because it's such a bad game.

Not worth the code it was compiled with

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: December 20, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Developer Running With Scissors was obviously trying to cash in on the popularity of Rockstar's "Grand Theft Auto" series, and they failed miserably. The game is boring and pointless.

The plot is simple: the player assumes the role of "The Postal Dude" and, each day, sets off to complete a list of boring tasks, like going to the store for milk. Invariably each mundane task ends in disaster as various nutty groups in the game burst in and start shooting.

The game plays up the "choice" the player has, whether to be passive or to "go postal" with various weapons. There's no reason to play passive, and the novelty of the over-the-top violence gets old fast. Characters spout inane dialog, and the only high point of the game is when Gary Coleman (yes, Gary Coleman) makes an appearance at a mall which, of course, ends in a gun battle.

Although powered by the Unreal engine, Postal 2 looks drab. Out of the box, the game has some serious bugs, including ridiculously long load times between levels. This gets frustrating fast as there are so many level changes to get from point A to point B. A recent patch has fixed this issue, but the game remains a pointless exercise in futility.

Sometimes the saving grace for a bad single-player game can be the multiplayer option. "Postal 2" does not have multiplayer. Instead, you have to actually purchase the multiplayer add-on for $9.95. Running With Scissors might have scored an extra star had it released the multiplayer part for free, as was the case with the "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" multiplayer expansion, "Enemy Territory," which started life as an expansion to RTCW and ended up being a free stand-alone product.

You're better off spending the $20 on the vastly superior "Grand Theft Auto III" or, for ten bucks more, "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City." Either choice is a better one than the terminally boring "Postal 2."

Nice idea, if you're ready for prison.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 8
Date: January 08, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I thought it'd be fun to play an ultra-violent game for a change. It was fun, for the first 5 minutes. After that, the game gets a little old and makes you a little cranky. Especially when you sit and wait for the next scenario to load. I think the developers did that on purpose to tick-off the gamer even more, and make him even more violent.
The graphics started out nice enough, but I guess the guy doing the building interiors had the week off when they put this game together.
As far as a fulfilling experience, the only thing this game teaches is how to get mad. Most of us have figured that out, already.
For all you Gary Coleman fans, this game is a must!!!
For everyone else, you can find better use of your time.

Short, boring and budget

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 11
Date: April 25, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The one crime a game can commit above all others is to bore the player.

Postal 2 is not only boring but it's also very short.

No real story to speak of, but does it need one? You play the postal dude, you know that guy in shop class who creeped you out in high school? You spend a 5 day week running errands in the small town of Paradise Arizona. Get some milk, fix your car, but some napalm. All the normal things the loner psycho would do. Except your not really a loaner at all. You have a unseen woman who yells insults at you before and after your day. I suspect her insults are supposed to be funny. Like a lot of the game I kept trying to find the "funny" bits.

The humor is all over but it comes at you so low, you may miss a lot of it. If you like it when wrestlers do funny little skits on their shows, you may like some the humor. I think most people over 12 will be bored by it all.

The worst crime this game commits is cowardice. The developers could have made a game with real punch but they chickened out and tried to make the game funny.

I honestly think no one could make a game about a social retard mowing down innocent people with all manner of weapons in a serious way. Could they? Would they want too? Apparently not. Like a teen poser who acts all street and bad, the came is seriously flawed. It's nothing original. Grand Theft Auto did it a lot better and did not try to be funny.

The game looks ok. The graphics feel very beta-ish. Level loading is slow and the sound is just ok. The postal dudes voice is the games saving grace and it's only redeeming feature. But lets be honest here, it is the same thing we saw in the original postal way back when.

The world you move thru gets boring after about 20 min or so. Once you notice how bad it all is.

The developers say you can play the game without killing anyone. They say you can wimp out and be a pacifist. I don't see how since the force you to kill people all the time. The open ended gameplay they talk about so much is no where to be found. Once you complete a chore, the game takes over, shows you a in game movie and then people proceed to try a kill you.

Did I mention the game is short? It really is. A good player will be done in a very short time. A bad player may take a little longer but they will finish it.

The developers also talk a lot about a twist ending! Oh yea. I will save you the trouble. You get shot by your woman for forgetting ice cream! Baw ha ha! Funny stuff that.

On the whole it feels like a bunch of lonely insecure kids who like to burn stuff deiced to make a game for their lonely insecure friends who like to burn stuff. If your 12, think guns and fire are "cool", you may like this game. If your not, you will be bored.

It's funny how a game trying to scream at you with controversy is nothing but a short, boring budget title at best.

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