by Ohhh, yes. A new kid on the block just moved to Duke Nukem’s neighborhood.
Fair warning; this review looks at a game that is extremely juvenile, violent, cruel, humorous and unethical. That also means it’s kind of awesome.
It’s probably best to just give a quick run down of what you get to do here. You can (in no particular order), shoot people. Go the grocery store and buy some milk. You can urinate on people. Pour gasoline on people and light them on fire. Urinate on people that have had gasoline poured on them and are on fire. You can urinate on yourself.
You can fight Arabian ninjas. Throw grenades. Get arrested and thrown in jail. Dress up like a cop and break out of jail. Go the doughnut store dressed as a cop and steal all the doughnuts. You can jam the wrong end of a cat onto your shotgun to create a weapon that meows every time you fire it. You can fight a cactus.
You can throw dynamite at innocent bystanders. You can break into your neighbor’s house and play fetch with their dog by using their decapitated head. You can eat pizza and smoke reefers. You can encounter video game protesters and murder the same protesters with their protester signs. You can wait in line at a bank to pick up your paycheck.
You can listen to the marching band. You can watch the marching band explode when a suicide bomber cat blows them up. You can confess your sins to a priest. You can bother people to sign your petition to congress.
You know what makes this game fun over something stupid like Grand Theft Auto? People who play GTA fall into one of two categories. They’re either people like me who don’t give a crap about the “story” of GTA and just want to drive around and do silly things, having fun. The other, sadder group, plays the game trying to live out their thug-life fantasies, because they think scoring meth, earning a cool hundred thou’, and plowing hookers is something to aspire to. Postal 2 caters strongly to that first category and says “We know you’re here to have fun–so let’s ramp this up to be as ridiculous and hilarious as possible.”
This game is for those who like things similar to Just Cause, Goat Simulator, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, and/or Saint’s Row. Sure, it’s immature and gratuitous, but none of it is meant to be taken seriously–that’s what makes it fun. It’s a little like a well-timed fart joke. 99% of all fart jokes fall flat because they focus far too much on the fart. What truly makes flatulence funny is the timing and the circumstances. No one actually thinks farting is funny (well, no one worth spending time with anyway). But Postal 2’s metaphorical fart jokes have just the right amount of dark humor and sardonic cruelty to say “Look, we both know this is stupid. But that’s exactly why we’re going it–because we’re not supposed to. And admit it–that makes you laugh.”
One day, God might want to have a few awkward conversations with me about some of the things I’ve done in this game, but I’m throwing this in Tier 1. It knows what it’s doing, and it’s having fun with it and it wants you to have fun too. At the end of the day, isn’t that all I can ask of a game?
