Postal III

Overview

Postal III iterates upon the violent gameplay of Postal 2 in a new city called Catharsis. The game was developed using the Valve Source Engine. Unlike the previous game, Postal III is played from a third-person perspective and replaces that game's open world sandbox for a series of open-ended missions based along branching narrative paths. The game features appearances from low-tier celebrities such as film director Uwe Boll and porn star Ron Jeremy.

Story

Postal III follows Postal Dude Jr.'s failed one-day career in video game development (Postal 2) and the ensuing "accidental" nuclear destruction of Paradise, Arizona ( Apocalypse Weekend). Following a brief prologue that recaps the events of Postal 2, the story follows the Postal Dude and his psychotic pit bull Champ as they emigrate to the town of Catharsis. Unfortunately, due to the global economic meltdown, left-wing "green" extremism and hypocritical right-wing government corruption, life in Catharsis isn't much better.

Postal III is set against the backdrop of a satirically broken US economy where gas costs $17 a gallon and Mexico is forced to patrol its borders to prevent Americans from illegally jumping the fence looking for jobs and healthcare. Meanwhile, the Dude stumbles from one disastrous temp job to the next, just trying to make ends meet. Over the course of the game, he crosses paths with eco-zealots, "Hockey Moms," stereotypical gay Segway "biker" gangs, deranged fast food mascots, corrupt government officials, Al Qaeda, the Venezuelan army, and even a meth-crazed rhino. But there are choices to be made. Will the Dude follow the path of Good, joining the Catharsis police department to protect and serve? Or will he tap fresh new veins of crazy and find himself hunted and hounded by all?

Level Design/Missions

The game is very story driven, and every level consists of a mission that begins with a cutscene and ends with one as well. While it's still possible to treat the game as a sandbox mayhem game and free roam around the current level causing mayhem, the game is always waiting for the player to finish the task at hand, whether it's a fetch quest or a kill mission with a counter, in order to play the next cutscene, progress the story and move on to the next area. Which means that traveling from one town to another is not an option, it's only done when the missions of said town are all finished.

Gameplay

Postal III is arguably a cover-based third person shooter. However despite the game's tips and level design, which encourage hiding behind cover during combat the game can easily, it can still viably played as run and gunner. The game features numerous gameplay alterations that reflect the developer's attempt to provide a contemporary experience, including but not limited to: regenerative health, visible 'grenade' trails, human shields, and cover systems.

The game still has a few of the absurd Postal gameplay elements such as urinating in the air when on fire to put the fire out, kicking/stomping small objects or the pedestrians/enemies, and spilling gasoline on people then throwing a lit match to set them on fire.

The combat has been enhanced, with a large arsenal of weaponry at the player's disposal, used and deployed in a variety of ways. A player can use pistols, shotguns, assault rifles, machine guns and rocket launchers to shoot the enemies, swing a machete or a nailed bat at them, throw grenades, molotov cocktails, bee hives or vicious cats at them, spray them with pepper spray, a flamethrower or catnip spray, laser-guide dogs/monkeys towards the enemy, urinate on them and more. These various weapons and the variety of ways to use them, whether in long range, medium range or at point blank, make the combat surprisingly more tactical and thoughtful based on the surrounding area, the types of enemies and whether or not the player is surrounded by allies.

Weapons

Development and Release

The game had long been in development hell and this shows in the myriad of bugs and glitches in the final product. Perhaps because of this, the game was initially released in 2011 but only in Russia, a Steam release was planned but was delayed and Steam, at one point, deleted the game from it's listings.

Under it's initial release the game received mostly negative reaction from fans and Runnning With Scissors eventually pulled the release and encouraged would be buyers to purchase earlier Postal games. It later came to light that Running With Scissors had outsourced the production of the game to a Russian game company who failed to satisfy RWS's standard.

The game was eventually released to Steam in early 2013.A version was in development for the PS3 and the Xbox 360: the fate of those ports are unknown.

PC System Requirements

• OS: Windows 7 / Vista / XP
• Processor: 3.0 Ghz P4, Dual Core 2.0 (or higher) or AMD64X2 (or higher)
• Memory: 1GP XP/2GB Vista
• Hard Disk Space: 13.5 GB
• Video Card: Video card must 128MB or more and should be a DirectX 9 –compatible with support for Pixel Shaders
• DirectX®: 9.0c
• Sound: DirectX 9.0c Compatible