Postal Redux (PC) Review

Who doesn’t want their mayhem in HD?

There are few games more fitting than a description of BRUTAL. With Postal Redux (as well as the Postal series, if you are not familiar) there is no great plot scheme. No grand story. A guy lost his job, lost his car, lost his house. A guy had nothing left to lose… so he went Postal!

The game starts simple enough: Guy has a semi-automatic weapon with unlimited ammunition and a black trench coat. In his surrounding neighborhood there are, not one, not two, but 19 armed and hostile folks who are determined to stop you. If only they knew who they were up against. Pistols, revolvers, ha! Shotguns, rocket launchers, yeah right. I’ve got nothing to lose, and unlimited ammunition. No one can be in a better position than I can. Along the way you pick up shotguns, rocket launchers, grenades, molotov cocktails and more. Feel like shooting a gas pump? Why not, the explosion may take out a few hostiles!

In order to clear the level, you have to take down 90% of the hostiles in the area. Cops, SWAT, hillbillies, or even local militia, they’re all out to stop you. So take them down. If you really want to go for the gusto, you can clear the level of 100% of both hostiles and civilians. Then you get a notice of ‘extermination’. You’ve wiped the map clean. And don’t worry, if there is a pesky hostile who is down, but still crawling away… no worries. There is a kill feature, where you walk up to them, tell them you will see them in the afterlife, and finish the job with a three-shot end game. Or on the opposite side of the coin, if you are outnumbered and you know it, you can comment ‘i regret nothing’ and swallow the barrel of your pistol. Few things really get any more straight to the point.

Some people were not / are not a fan of the Postal line of games. Mind numbing violence, gratuitous violence, you name it. And to be fair, they are not wrong. Postal has never been about reclaiming a lost love, or of finding a lost artifact. As the name implies, this guy goes POSTAL!  Now while some people will tell you that games like this should be shuttered away in a ‘no access’ vault, I whole-heartedly disagree. I am a normal, functioning member of society. I show up to work on time, etc. I am not going out blowing up gas pumps and the like, just because I have the means to do so.

That being said, if you are like me, you could look upon Postal Redux as a bit of a guilty pleasure. After a long day, maybe the kids are asleep, sneak away for some sweet revenge that only a video game can satisfy. You know that annoying guy you see every day, always has the same lame comment,  you just wish he would disappear. Well, at least for a few minutes, in the confines of your gaming system, you are able to imagine he is that pesky county sherriff that keeps getting in your way.

LET ME BE CLEAR: I MYSELF, NOR ANYONE ASSOCIATED WITH BRUTAL GAMER, ADVOCATE RUNNING DOWN THE STREETS GUNNING PEOPLE DOWN SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU CAN!

And now, with that out of the way…

Final Thoughts

While I did not have the luxury of playing the original Postal when it came out, I cannot tell you how many hours I spent on Postal 2. Postal Redux brings back many memories of days where you just want to forget about certain people around you, but there is nothing you can do about it. Running With Scissors are an incredible team, responsible for a ridiculously entertaining shoot-em-up game. There’s not much you can say about the soundtrack here, as you are too busy listening to the bullets whiz by. The language is a bit vulgar but, lets be real, you are wiping out civilization. Who cares if you are telling people to go to hell?