Before Uwe Boll brought us the magnificent masterpiecePostal, there was the notoriously tasteless Postal 2. And before that? 1997's Postal, developed by Running With Scissors. It's arguably one of the most unsettling PC games ever created, and one that attracted a good dose of attention from the Moral Guardians. You play as "The Postal Dude", who believes himself the Only Sane Man, and goes on a bloody rampage, shooting it out with cops and soldiers—and inevitably inflicting a lot of collateral damage along the way.The 2003 sequel Postal 2, doesn't play itself nearly as seriously. The Postal Dude is now married and lives in a trailer park, and the game covers what has to be the weirdest week of his life, as every day the simplest errands become life-or-death battles. (Cashing his paycheck? Robbers invade the bank and he gets caught in the crossfire. Returning a library book? Anti-book protesters set the library on fire with him in it.) There is an expansion pack (Apocalypse Weekend) with its own campaign that covers Saturday and Sunday of The Postal Dude's weirdest week, with new weapons and characters. A popular Game Mod, included in later releases of the game, titled A Week in Paradise backports Apocalypse Weekend's enhancements and additional weapons to the base game, as well as merging the two campaigns and adding some extra content for good measure.The games are not only controversial, but have also been panned by critics, mostly by reviewers who were offended by the game's content, such as Robert Coffey of Computer Gaming World who wrote that "until someone boxes up syphilis and tries to sell it at retail, Postal 2 is the worst product ever foisted upon consumers", a quote that has since been included on the boxes of re-releases. The series as a whole has developed a Love It or Hate It reputation with its mixture of shock value and generally fun, cathartic gameplay.Postal III, which is built on the Source engine, is co-developed by Running With Scissors, TrashMasters Studios, and Russian developer/publisher Akella. It was announced in 2006, and was finally set to be released worldwide via digital distribution on the Steam store Christmas week on December 20, 2011. As per possible mandate by Akella, three retail versions were released in Russia on November 23, 2011. Hard copies and Steam CD Keys are available for purchase on the Running With Scissors online store. It should be noted that the PC version was released unrated due to Akella not wanting to pay for an ESRB rating. The game had to wait until February 17th, 2012, to get a rating, and until then, you couldn't actually buy it on Steam. Console versions for both the Xbox 360 and PS3 are to be available at some time in 2012, should RWS find an American publisher. While versions for both Linux and Mac OS X were announced in 2006, those versions are possibly on hold indefinitely.
Crapsack World: No normal person would want to live in Paradise. The police are corrupt, and all the townspeople appear to be idiots and/or jerks.
It's worse in Catharsis, as the global economic meltdown has shot gas prices through the roof. The place is a border town and houses the G.W. Bush memorial border fence, which is used to keep Americans from illegally entering Mexico to look for jobs instead of the other way around. Any "illegals" crossing from Mexico are nothing but Al Qaeda wearing piss-poor disguises.
Fat Bitch: The Dude's wife, at least in the movie. In both it and the second game, she's simply known as "The Dude's Bitch".
Genre Shift: Not for the games, but for the developer. Prior to Postal, these people made such games as Tom & Jerry and Bobby's World for the SNES, amongst other titles largely aimed at children. They also made the well-known Spy VS Spy game. Why'd they shift over? They basically got tired of making licensed games and wanted to do their own stuff.
Heroic Comedic Sociopath: The Postal Dude, when killing terrorists and zombies. The Dude can actually embrace the "Heroic" part in Postal III, where he can become a cop and use non-lethal force to take down bad guys.
Moral Guardians: The series attracted the attention of them in real life, while the games themselves mock them, by portraying them as hypocritically violent protesters.
Press X to Die: Played literally. In Postal 1, the player can press "Q" to commit suicide by gunshot. Postal 2 allows you to press "G" do the same, but by biting a hand-grenade, which doubles as a Suicide Attack. This was removed from Postal III. There is a nod to it in the form of the "Emo" achievement, for injuring yourself.
Videogame Cruelty Potential: The whole point of the series. In both games the player can encounter a marching band, that will inevitably be lit on fire or blown up. In Postal 2, it's possible to shoot a character, light him on fire, piss on him to put the fire out, kick him to death while he is crawling on the ground, then whack the charred corpse's head off with a shovel for good measure.
Wide Open Sandbox: The second and third games to varying degrees. The first game, and the second game's expansion are linear, level-based games, but some levels are fairly open in design.
All There in the Manual: There's no backstory or anything in the game, save for the unsettling loading screens, nor a tutorial of any sort. The manual fills you in a bit, suggesting some sort of Hate Plague.
The intro to Postal III reveals that his house was foreclosed on, which caused the Dude to snap.
Body Horror: The credits screen that appears every time you quit.
Exploding Barrels: Played straight, and also used somewhat creatively to simulate explosive environmental objects like gas pumps.
Infant Immortality: Played with. The final level is called "School", but it's all scripted. The Dude shows up and opens fire on a playground, but the children aren't affected. Then he has his BSOD. On the other hand, the kids from that level seem to be the same shorter sprites you can kill during the game, so who knows?
Murder Simulators: The game seems dangerously close to one, at times.
Played totally straight for the player; the difference between having armor or not before entering a gunfight is typically only about five extra HP at the end of it.
Asshole Victim: Many of the people you kill are violent protestors, brutal cops, or terrorists. Even regular civilians will often be extremely rude towards you.
Author Avatar: The Postal Dude works for Running With Scissors, the developers of the game. He's fired immediately before getting his paycheck from Vince Desi, but employees walking around Paradise are pretty much the only NPCs that will defend the Dude if things go wrong. They also have the highest hit points of all the regular NPCs.
Beast of Battle: One area of the game is an arena where a marching band and, for some reason, a trio of elephants are parading around. Annoy the elephants and they go on the rampage, generally taking out the band first. The Apocalypse Weekend expansion includes a scenario where you kill elephants with a scythe for a guy who makes waste-baskets out of their feet; the elephants rampage again and kill everybody else.
Book Burning: The library and the anti-book protestors.
Breaking the Fourth Wall: "Hey, it's not my fault. Book the kid with the keyboard." Just one of numerous quips that show that the Postal Dude is keenly aware of being in a video game.
He'll especially call you out on Save Scumming with the quicksave key. "My grandmother could beat the game if she saved as much as you do!"
He also has messages for you if you cheat. "Did I ask for cheese?"
Brick Joke: At the start of Monday, your wife tells you to pick up some Rocky Road. When you get home at the end of Friday, she asks if you remembered to get the Rocky Road.
Early in Apocalypse Weekend, Vince mentions that Mike J has caught mad cow and is out sick. At the very end of the game, he returns as the final boss, the "Kosher Mad Cow Zombie, God of Hellfire".
Cartoon Bomb: The M@D Bomb, added in the A Week in Paradise mod.
Chainsaw Good: Also included in the AWP mod. It needs fuel and is noisy, but it can chew through people at close range easily.
Daydream Surprise: Apocalypse Weekend begins with one, with the dude imagining himself in bed with two of the Postal babes. It quickly turns nightmarish when some fat evil doctor shows up, at which point the Dude catapults awake.
Disk One Nuke: A Week in Paradise makes the "Fag Hunter" arcade game into a playable minigame. While the premise might put people off, it's still worth playing just for the chance to grab a fully-loaded revolver, shotgun, machine gun, sniper rifle, and rocket launcher within ten minutes of starting the game (especially since the only extra bonus for actually doing what the minigame tells you is a few health items).
Even sooner, the same mod adds a machete from Apocalypse Weekend into the shed near the Postal Dude's trailer, which, unlike the melee weapons from the base game, can kill people in a single hit from any range.
Driven to Suicide: At the end of the game the Postal Dude realizes he forgot his wife's Rocky Road ice cream and shoots himself rather than face her reaction. In the expansion, he comes to in the hospital the next day, having only inflicted enough damage to cause hallucinations.
Emergency Weapon: The Dude can kick anything in front of him. It's a fairly weak attack, but has Mundane Utility in that it can quickly open doors and force NPCs to get out of your way.
Even Evil Has Standards: Walking near one of the "Teen Sniper" arcade machines causes the Dude to state "That's clearly wrong."
Everything Trying to Kill You: One errand each day results in a specific group wanting the Postal Dude dead for various reasons. For some it makes sense (butchers on Thursday, from whom you're stealing meat). For others not so much (postal workers on Friday who shoot you because a letter bomb meant for you went off in the mail room; then again, that's assuming you didn't take the violent option and shoot them first).
Once you finish the last errand on Friday, the Apocalypse comes. At that point, all bets are off: anyone who isn't a RWS employee is going to shoot at you if they see you.
Fan Disservice: A part of the game where the Postal Dude wakes up dressed in an ass-less gimp suit.
The expansion has gimp-suited attack dogs and dervish cats.
Grenade Hot Potato: It's possible to take out grenade-throwing enemies by kicking their grenades back at them.
Hate Plague: Afflicts the whole town of Paradise after you complete all of your tasks on Friday. At least the NPCs are often too busy killing each other to bother with killing you.
Hitbox Dissonance: Gary Coleman. Especially obvious when the AI always goes for the head and you see puffs of blood appearing ABOVE Gary's head when he gets into a shootout. Likely done for balance reasons, lest Gary end up like Golden Eye 1997's Oddjob.
This also leads to strange things if you play A Week in Paradise and attempt to kill Gary when he shows up; if you do so with a bladed weapon and behead him, his ragdoll stretches out to normal size.
Hitler Ate Sugar: As per parody, some book protesters hold signs stating "ACHTUNG! HITLER WROTE A BOOK!"
Hyper Destructive Bouncing Ball: One of the napalm launcher's fire modes. The AWP mod's M@D Bomb and Jihad Grenade, both grenade-type weapons, also have some unusual bounce to them.
This is the source of humor from a lot of the hate groups: protesters who are against violent video games holding signs stating "KILL VIOLENT GAMERS" and can later be found playing arcade games in the mall, a condemned house with graffiti sprayed by an otherwise-unseen "Parents Against Graffiti" group, and others.
It's The Only Way To Be Sure: See below, except The Postal Dude's plan wasn't about the zombies that happened to have overwhelmed Paradise at the time.
I'll Kill You!: Often uttered by hostile NPCs when you get too close.
Karma Houdini: Postal Dude, again. At the end of Apocalypse Weekendhe nukes an entire city killing an unknown amount of people, and he gets away free, despite taking out about half of the US Army in the process. He even gets to save his dog, too.
In a comic posted on the official site at one point detailing the immediate aftermath, the government officially blamed Al Qaeda for the nuke. Not that it was a huge stretch, since Paradise was literally infested with Al Qaeda members by this point.
Kill It with Fire: Let's just say that the fire effects are very, very thoroughly planned.
You can pour trails of gasoline on the floor and light it with a match when some poor sap walks near.
There's the napalm launcher weapon, which either fires impact-detonating napalm bombs or fires Hyper Destructive Bouncing Ball napalm bombs that spill fuel that catches fire soon after all over the place!
Lighter and Softer: Postal 2 in comparison with Postal 1. It's still demented and violent, but the game has a more comical atmosphere, with less disturbing stuff.
Loads and Loads of Loading: Postal 2 was often criticized for this. The loading is milder in patched versions, though.
Apocalypse Weekend adds dismemberment; people can have their limbs sliced off and still live, bleeding and crawling in pain. With the scythe, you can cut their torsos in two and watch some organs spill out!
The A Week in Paradise mod takes it up a notch by having NPCs to run around screaming with their arms gone, while making the gore even more detailed.
New Game Plus: Beating the game once enables "Enhanced Mode", which gives such bonuses as the ability to piss napalm. One can also access the cheat menu after having beaten the game.
Nuke 'Em: In the ending of Apocalypse Weekend, the Dude grabs a nuclear warhead from an Army base after he's detained as a terrorist. He sets it up at a rival game company, and it takes out Paradise as he and his dog Champ drive away.
Our Zombies Are Different: The Mad Cow Tourettes Zombies from Apocalypse Weekend, who grumble slurred strings of profanities whilst stalking their victims. Will not die if their heads are intact - yes, this includes a clean beheading, as pointed out in a cutscene. Your Head Asplode is a MUST.
Pacifist Run: Difficult, but possible with skill and patience. You're rewarded with an endgame message saying "Thank you for playing, JESUS!". Impossible to do in Apocalypse Weekend and the A Week in Paradise mod, however.
Police Brutality: The in-game police seem to enjoy beating the crap out of random civilians just for the hell of it. Their methods of dealing with actual crimes could also come off as overkill.
While they'll allow you to sit still and be handcuffed, the NPCs do not get that option - the cops will kill them. Seems to be a trade-off, as they'll let NPCs walk around clearly carrying weapons with no problem, but if they see you draw one they've already got their own drawn and aimed at you.
Shoplift and Die: One of the first tasks is to get milk from the store. If you take it and leave without paying, the owner will come after you with a gun. Of course, this being Postal, you can just shoot him. And of course, that's assuming you didn't already shoot him before even getting the milk. The game strongly implies that this is the preferred outcome: the objective is counted as complete as soon as you grab the milk without even hinting at actually paying for it. Plus, attempting to do so places you in ridiculously long queue filled with people custom-designed to irritate the player with their words and behaviour. That, and the shop owner is clearly a terrorist.
Strawman Political: The protesters, who are often hypocrites and are not above killing people and setting buildings ablaze to make their point. Especially blatant when the first group you meet, Parents for Decency, wants to kill violent video gamers. They inevitably end up wanting to kill The Postal Dude, who mostly just ends up being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Take That: Postal 2 features some stabs at Senator Joe Lieberman, who said some rather bad things about Postal 1, amongst other violent video games such as Doom.
The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: It is nearly impossible to beat the game without killing anyone and in fact, most players probably wouldn't even think of tring it (sort of defeats the purpose of a game designed purely for Catharsis Factor). However, if you somehow manage to pull it off, you will get a unique message at the end of the game saying "Thanks for playing, Jesus".
There are a surprising number of details in the game itself too, showing that the development team truly cared to add depth to the game's interactivity: For example, if you "discard" a cat near a dog, the dog will pursue the fleeing cat until it catches it, allied dogs will fight just about any person who is assaulting you until the person or the dog is dead, and dogs will even leave waste matter on the ground, given time. Other touches include varied responses based upon your costume, such as police officers saying something similar to "It's not worth your pension!" if they see you "tasering" somebody while you're dressed as a cop.
Also subvert-able in that throwing a sledgehammer at a cow from behind can actually cause the thing to get stuck up its anus. Dogs can also catch machetes in their mouth without getting it chopped off, as well.
Wide Open Sandbox: At the start of the day, you're given three or four errands and then left to your own devices. You can even choose to do some errands in different ways - for example, the bank robbery mentioned at the very top of the page? You can sneak into the vault and steal the money yourself while the intended robbers and police are fighting each other, and then sneak out through a secret passage behind a bookshelf.
Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: The Postal Dude's name really is "The Postal Dude". Pay a parking ticket in the second game and the cop says, "And let that be a lesson to you, Mr. The Dude." His dad's gravestone is also labeled "T. Dude Sr."
The Postal III intro lampshades this, the Dude saying that he "hates that fucking name". When asked if he has a real name, he sheepishly admits "I forget".
You Got Murder: The package intended for you later in the main game is a letter bomb. You can later find the exact same packages among the Taliban, most notably in Apocalypse Weekend.
Your Head Asplode: A shotgun blast or sledgehammer whack to the face usually does this. Required to kill the zombies in Apocalypse Weekend.
Postal III
Action Girl: Guest star Playboy Playmate Jennifer Walcott acts like one, as do the Postal Babes.
Amazon Brigade: Of sorts. Jennifer Walcott heads a team of security guards made up completely of Postal Babes.
Anachronism Stew: A very minor case. The game takes place after Dubya's administration, but the Dude has a cellphone from the '80s.
Affectionate Parody: Believe it or not. The game's cutscenes have a grindhouse flare.
Custom Uniform: Ever so slightly. If the dude goes the "good" path and thus has to wear a variety of police uniforms and suits, he keeps his happy face and Christian cross buttons, as well as his Fingerless Gloves.
Emergency Weapon: The kick returns. There aren't any doors you need to kick open, but it'll knock over most human foes, setting them up for any number of nasty finishing attacks.
Everything's Worse With Bees: Swarms of African Killer Bees roam some areas, most notably the Ecotoligists' compound. They slowly eat away at the health of anyone they chase after. The Postal Dude can acquire bee hives to throw at enemies, thus unleashing the bees on them.
Fan Disservice: The Dude's first job in the game is working as a cleaner in a sex shop ran by Mayor Raul Chomo (played by Ron Jeremy), 'nuff said.
Said Mayor also has a Malaysian slave boy... which ends up being a 40-year-old slave man. In a gimp suit. That's assless. And has nipple tassels. And a Gary Coleman mask on the back of his head.
Reaching Daveland on either route has Chomo's Presidential Campaign tape replaced with a sex tape featuring the Mayor. And Uncle Dave. And the Malaysian slave "boy". And a rhino. Thankfully, it's only described, but what little is seen of the "video" shows someone's naked ass and a man-tit.
Karma Meter: The game has one, with a "Good" side and a "Bad" side. The "Good" side has the Dude joining the Catharsis Police Force. The "Bad" side has the Dude staying the immoral asshole he has always been and working along side his Uncle Dave and Mayor Chomo. Good karma is maintained by carefully observing your objectives, using non-lethal force when necessary, and not rampaging against innocent bystanders. Bad karma is gained by ignoring your secondary objectives and massacring the residents of Catharsis. In a weird twist, only Good karma can be lost while Bad karma can be both gained and lost.
Good Ending: After Mayor Chomo's botched campaign speech and him, Uncle Dave, and Osama run away, the Dude is sent after them. While cornered, Dave decides to arm a plutonium bomb so that the Hockey Moms, Postal Babes, Gay Cowboys, and the Dude are killed along with them. Turns out that the Afghani "plutonium" is nothing but a jar of piss. After the Dude kills Chomo, Dave, and Osama, things take a turn for the weird-worst. The Apocalypse happens again. With the fucking Venezuelan army lead by Hugo Chavez showing up. After fighting his way through the war-torn streets of Catharsis to reach his trailer, the Dude confronts Chavez and kills him. The aftermath results in a wave of "Dude-mania", with the Dude becoming a national hero, finishing with him taking the 2012 Presidential campaign by storm and replacing Barack Obama, with Jennifer Walcott as his personal bodyguard. While discussing Oval Office redecoration ideas with Jen, the Dude finds the infamous fictional representation of the nuclear football thanks to Champ. It ends with a close-up of the Dude wearing a devilish grin on his face and saying "I will regret nothing". Cue the credits.
Bad Ending: Starts off almost the same as the Good Ending, but instead of the Dude going after the Mayor, Uncle Dave, and Osama, he fights his way out of Daveland with Champ and leaves them to the Hockey Moms. Dave decides to drink the "plutonium" rather than have the Hockey Moms kill him, but finds out that the jar was full of piss. The Hockey Moms end up tearing the trio apart akin to a zombie horde. After a fake-out "The End", the Dude continues his tale, showing that him, Champ, and the Motorhead monkey were captured by the US army and sub-sequentially given the electric chair. Another scene change reveals that the person the Dude was telling his tale to was Saint Peter, in hopes of bullshitting his way into Heaven. After Peter trounces the Dude's story, he says that he has no choice but to send the Dude to his eternal damnation. As the Dude and Champ are dropped into Hell, the Dude yells out "I regret nothing!" and the credits roll.
Neutral/Pacifist Ending: Same as the Good Ending, except for the final outcome. The Postal Dude ends up on Limp Dickerson's late night talk show "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous", sharing his story of having escaped the Venezuelan Army in Catharsis without killing anyone. He announces that his best-selling book: "The Fall of Paradise: If I Did It" (a jab at O.J. Simpson's book) is coming out on softcover. He has since married Jennifer Walcott after finding her trying to hotwire his car, with their wedding ceremony taking place in Machu Picchu. The couple then take this moment to advertise the Peruvian Big Mac and Peruvian NAZCAR [sic]. The host then congratulates them on their highly publicized lottery jackpot win of $500,000,000, with the Dude also mentioning that they've moved into their dream house, ending with the obligatory quip: "I guess you could say, I regret nothing." Champ then proceeds to gnaw the host's nads, the signal fades and the credits roll.
No Celebrities Were Harmed: For the most part, celebrities appear as themselves (Jennifer Wolcott, Randy Jones, etc.) or as in-name parodies of such (Uwe Boll, Al Gore, Hugo Chavez) but there is one major exception- the unnamed leader of the Hockey Moms looks a whole hell of a lot like Sarah Palin.
Obvious Beta: The game does have some glaring glitches. Certain Steam achievements are bugged and don't unlock. The AI for certain NPCs are still primitive or broken. Certain computer builds make the game crash constantly.
Regenerating Health: Gone are the health pickups of earlier installments, though some of the Postal Dude's lines would seem to imply that health packs were Dummied Out at some point.
Vaporware: The official title was announced in 2006, with very few screenshots or videos being released since then and the official website being mostly filler. In October 2011, the game finally appeared on Steam's store under "Coming Soon" with the release scheduled for December. The exact date has finally been revealed as December 20th, although the game is only available in the Running With Scissors online shop.
Author Avatar / Breaking the Fourth Wall: Vince Desi himself - director of Running With Scissors - eventually reveals himself to fight Uwe Boll for the latter making the very movie you're watching.
—"Boll, I'm Vince Desi, what the fuck did you do to my game "Postal"?"
Nazi Gold - Quoth the Bollmeister himself: "Someone has to spend it!"
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