Waiting in line will never be the same again.
Whether it's going to the gas station, or the grocery store, waiting in line will never be same again. Thanks to Postal 2, I will forever struggle with images of pouring gasoline and lighting the line on fire, or running up the line with a shovel, decapitating everyone while making my way to the front of the line. It's experiences like this and more that make Postal 2 quite a memorable, yet unfortunately quick journey.
Though not as controversial as the original Postal, this sequel is still not for the easily offended or the faint of heart. There are not many games out there where you can take a piss on someone, shoot down priests, become infected with gonorrhea, smoke crack, use cats as silencers, become a sex offender, and, in Postal tradition, light an entire marching band on fire. The game has a lot of very unique, very nasty features and all can be quite fun to pull off as horrible as they are.
Once again, you take control of The Postal Dude and guide him through 5 days of his pathetic life in the rundown town of Paradise, Arizona. Throughout these five days, you'll find yourself running errands for your wife, going to confessional, visiting your father's grave, picking up your paycheck, visiting your Uncle's birthday party, returning books at the library, and other seemingly normal activities. But violence and mayhem lurks around every corner of the city, and this is where the games most unique element comes into play. You have the choice to either respond like a criminal with violence and insanity or be the good citizen and never kill anyone, steal anything, or break the law in any way. You go to buy milk and find yourself standing in a line for the cashier. You can decide to nicely wait in the line and pay respectfully, or steal the milk and blow away the cashier on the way out. This will most likely lead you to being arrested, but you can just blow away the cops if you want to also. Every activity in the game comes with a choice and it's the most rewarding element of the game. Though it's extremely difficult, you can actually beat the entire game with resorting to violence AT ALL. Don't count on it though. While these elements of the game are very unique, the typical FPS perspective of the game is nothing new. Your arsenal is a mixture of usual shooter weapons and some very...interesting weapons.
Postal 2's sense of humor is a mixed bag and it's the factor that usually separates people into either loving the game or hating the game. I personally think it's a lot of fun. Sure it's crude, gross, and sometimes absolutely revolting, but it can be downright hilarious at times and it's part of the entire feel of the game. If you didn't expect to be grossed out and offended by the sequel to the video game that was brought before Congress for it's content, then your playing the wrong game. Postal 2 sets out to be shocking and nasty, and it excels at it. As far as ranking for shock value goes, Postal 2 is the top of the list, ranking in at number one. I can just imagine the smile on Vince Desi's face every time he reads a review saying how awful and offensive Postal is. Of course it is. That's the point.
Just like almost every other game, Postal 2 does have a few glaring issues. To some people, the entire game could be an issue, but me, being the evil person that I am for enjoying this game, can only find one issue. The loading time. Postal 2 takes place in a rather large city, separated into different sections, very similar to Grand Theft Auto 3. It can take anywhere from 30 seconds to over a minute to load a different segment and it's especially annoying since most of your objectives take place throughout the entire city. In other words, your going to be seeing a lot of loading screens. Sometimes the loading can randomly be very quick, but this very rarely happens. The game is also very short. The five days go by fairly quickly and beating the game can take as fast as 8 hours, but the "choice" element of the game really helps with the replay value as you will want to play the game multiple times, trying out different strategies.
Love it or hate it, Postal 2 is an instantly memorable experience. Whether it's the unique gameplay elements, or the visually beautiful, yet bleak look of the graphics, or even the hilarious situations you almost always seem to find yourself thrown into. Postal 2 is definitely not for everyone, or maybe even anyone, but it's surely something that should not be missed. Let me put it this way: I can't promise you'll enjoy it, but you surely won't forget it.
