postal 4

there are benefits to today's early access culture. one is the oppurtunity to revisit games over longer periods of time, seeing where and how developments happen, what changes are made, and watever was meant to be there the first time. we're asked to be not just passive consumers, but historians, bug-testers, 'ideas guys'. some of this extends to postal 4. hell, some of this extended to postal 2.

infamously broken and badly-reviewed at launch, postal 2 received three major, titled-updates throughout its nearly two-decade running periods - 'share the pain' (adding CO-OP), 'apocalypse weekend' (extending the week conceit of its gameplay by two rather story-based days), and 'paradise lost' (the modern one, releasing in 2015 and adding another week of postal fun with your favorite characters and their hilarious gags). like a box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get with these - I remember torrenting postal 2 complete (share the pain/apocalypse weekend/[MOD] A Week in Paradise[MOD]) on my linux/windows dual-boot pentium laptop and finding a broken sawwed off shotgun on day one, somewhere half between the al-quida base in the sewer and the dude's home. it killed nearly everything in one shot and, as far as i know, wasn't anywhere near that broken in the base game. that's not to mention half the broken ♥♥♥♥ that RWS included from A Week in Paradise including a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nuke launcher. oh, but to balance everything, police officers' 7-8-9-heads now bonk on collision with your machete, instead of naturally being lopped off. i think this is one of the worst releases of postal 2, and it was my just desserts for illegally stealing from a small business owner. but the point is, you don't know what RWS will do with their games. they might just wreck them entirely as a weird joke. they might let a russian modding studio release their next numbered entry over the developer of Eternal Damnation. they might let you smoke weed in their game because theyre so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ crazy.

with this context, seeing what theyve done with postal 4 is a little less hair-raising. yes its ♥♥♥♥♥♥ it launched like it did, like postal 2, but time and effort have slowly brought it to some kind of playable state. to cut a long story short, i feel a little disappointed with postal 4. i expected some major way of pushing the immersive sim elements of postal forward, those moments where gary coleman is basically ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ you with grenades until you accidentally fat-finger the kick button and realize that every projectile in the game has gravity, velocity, and acceleration and that your boot is an effective means of reversing all of that. from the upgrade to unreal engine, i expected something like, a bfg that fires poop that causes every enemy that has tracer-sight to the poop to start vomiting, the ability to fire any kind of liquid from your water-gun including vomit, idk, like a weather gun that causes random surface liquids everywhere to appear so you could light things on fire easier. what i got was basically an updated postal 2 without the mods, but with prettier graphics.

there are worse games postal 4 could be than postal 2. with the new conceit that each of your daily tasks should be like minigames unto themselves rather than basic activities that launch you into open-world chaos, it becomes some of those worse games from time to time. worst of all is the cleaning up poop task on day 3, where, without a radar or any means of differentiating these piles of dark brown from the light beige the rest of the town is, you have to find a bunch of piles of poop and clean them up. sometimes there will be a woke sjw that will attack you with an assault rifle for cleaning up the poop, but you can get their kalasnikovs and shoot them back, or like piss on their faces to get them to vomit and stop targetting you for a few minutes if youre playing pacifist (for some reason). but wait, there's fifty-eight challenges around the map that work like trevor's 'rampages' from gta 5 where you have to kill or maim a lot of guys with a specific weapon, for cash and drugs. theyve also got collectable krotchy dolls, which you can exchange for cash or drugs. civvie-11, your favorite youtuber, is in the game, and you can talk to him to exchange cash for drugs. postal 4 has a lot of stuff like that.

the basic gameplay loop of postal 4 is much the same as its predecessors. you spawn into violence and rampage throughout the map, checking in on little alleyways and houses for ammo, drugs, health, and armor. occasionally, you get close enough to an Activity that you decide to wander in and see what minigame RWS has set up for you. sometimes it's great - the capstone of day 3 has an amusment park where you have to disable a bunch of electrical boxes while taking fire from park-goers before fighting two bosses at once, losing all your ammo, catnip (slows time), and dual-wielding juice (dual wields your gun) in a climax. sometimes you shovel ♥♥♥♥ (or firehose ♥♥♥♥, or blow ♥♥♥♥ up) while woke sjws attack you. you might shoot border crossers out of a cannon to infiltrate mexico or run a bespoke prison map to reëstablish control over the rioting prisoners. these Activities were hit and miss, for me. while they extend a tendency the second game had, think of burning library map you have to run after you deliver your library book, there's nothing as evocative and fun in them as the secret exit from the bank in the second game. poking around the sewer map from day one, i found exactly one secret weed pipe and nothing else. this is ultimately the biggest problem with postal 4, the fact that you run new maps or new areas for every activity, and the fact the world is so large, means your hidden secrets are miserly placed and lame in rewards. they have a massive place for you to roam around in and absolutely nothing but the challenges takes any advantage of it whatsoever. its all just rampage space for you to find your activities between, like a selection menu with a little more dismemberment.

most of the updates have gone into these bespoke Activities, so there's not much to discuss there. there's a dropkick now, if you're running and you jump and press kick at the peak of your height. each of your missions is at one of the four corners of the map, basically, so there's lots of dead time either rampaging or scootering around. after you get a decent amount of catnip, dual-wielding juice, and health pipes there's basically no reason to explore OR rampage and risk wasting your precious supplies; there aren't that many weapons in the game and there's nothing like the al-quida base with its nuke launcher, neither will you find much ammo for your revolver, glock, assault rifles, grenades, (or any ammo for the four-barreled shotgun outside of vending machines; though they're a good addition since they're a moneysink you can upgrade your ammo capacity at).

ultimately, compared to two, i didn't find postal 4 all that compelling. maybe i shouldve modded it, maybe itll improve with updates, but i feel comfortable reaching for postal 2 instead. recommended if you're new to the series, or desperate for more postal (i was).

postal 4 there are benefits to today's early access culture. one is the oppurtunity to revisit games over longer periods of time, seeing where and how developments happen, what changes are made, and watever was meant to be there the first time. we're asked to be not just passive consumers, but historians, bug-testers, 'ideas guys'. some of this extends to postal 4. hell, some of this extended to postal 2. infamously broken and badly-reviewed at launch, postal 2 received three major, titled-updates throughout its nearly two-decade running periods - 'share the pain' (adding CO-OP), 'apocalypse weekend' (extending the week conceit of its gameplay by two rather story-based days), and 'paradise lost' (the modern one, releasing in 2015 and adding another week of postal fun with your favorite characters and their hilarious gags). like a box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get with these - I remember torrenting postal 2 complete (share the pain/apocalypse weekend/[MOD] A Week in Paradise[MOD]) on my linux/windows dual-boot pentium laptop and finding a broken sawwed off shotgun on day one, somewhere half between the al-quida base in the sewer and the dude's home. it killed nearly everything in one shot and, as far as i know, wasn't anywhere near that broken in the base game. that's not to mention half the broken shit that RWS included from A Week in Paradise including a fucking nuke launcher. oh, but to balance everything, police officers' 7-8-9-heads now bonk on collision with your machete, instead of naturally being lopped off. i think this is one of the worst releases of postal 2, and it was my just desserts for illegally stealing from a small business owner. but the point is, you don't know what RWS will do with their games. they might just wreck them entirely as a weird joke. they might let a russian modding studio release their next numbered entry over the developer of Eternal Damnation. they might let you smoke weed in their game because theyre so goddamn crazy. with this context, seeing what theyve done with postal 4 is a little less hair-raising. yes its shitty it launched like it did, like postal 2, but time and effort have slowly brought it to some kind of playable state. to cut a long story short, i feel a little disappointed with postal 4. i expected some major way of pushing the immersive sim elements of postal forward, those moments where gary coleman is basically fucking you with grenades until you accidentally fat-finger the kick button and realize that every projectile in the game has gravity, velocity, and acceleration and that your boot is an effective means of reversing all of that. from the upgrade to unreal engine, i expected something like, a bfg that fires poop that causes every enemy that has tracer-sight to the poop to start vomiting, the ability to fire any kind of liquid from your water-gun including vomit, idk, like a weather gun that causes random surface liquids everywhere to appear so you could light things on fire easier. what i got was basically an updated postal 2 without the mods, but with prettier graphics. there are worse games postal 4 could be than postal 2. with the new conceit that each of your daily tasks should be like minigames unto themselves rather than basic activities that launch you into open-world chaos, it becomes some of those worse games from time to time. worst of all is the cleaning up poop task on day 3, where, without a radar or any means of differentiating these piles of dark brown from the light beige the rest of the town is, you have to find a bunch of piles of poop and clean them up. sometimes there will be a woke sjw that will attack you with an assault rifle for cleaning up the poop, but you can get their kalasnikovs and shoot them back, or like piss on their faces to get them to vomit and stop targetting you for a few minutes if youre playing pacifist (for some reason). but wait, there's fifty-eight challenges around the map that work like trevor's 'rampages' from gta 5 where you have to kill or maim a lot of guys with a specific weapon, for cash and drugs. theyve also got collectable krotchy dolls, which you can exchange for cash or drugs. civvie-11, your favorite youtuber, is in the game, and you can talk to him to exchange cash for drugs. [b]postal 4[/b] has a lot of stuff like that. the basic gameplay loop of postal 4 is much the same as its predecessors. you spawn into violence and rampage throughout the map, checking in on little alleyways and houses for ammo, drugs, health, and armor. occasionally, you get close enough to an Activity that you decide to wander in and see what minigame RWS has set up for you. sometimes it's great - the capstone of day 3 has an amusment park where you have to disable a bunch of electrical boxes while taking fire from park-goers before fighting two bosses at once, losing all your ammo, catnip (slows time), and dual-wielding juice (dual wields your gun) in a climax. sometimes you shovel shit (or firehose shit, or blow shit up) while woke sjws attack you. you might shoot border crossers out of a cannon to infiltrate mexico or run a bespoke prison map to reëstablish control over the rioting prisoners. these Activities were hit and miss, for me. while they extend a tendency the second game had, think of burning library map you have to run after you deliver your library book, there's nothing as evocative and fun in them as the secret exit from the bank in the second game. poking around the sewer map from day one, i found exactly one secret weed pipe and nothing else. this is ultimately the biggest problem with postal 4, the fact that you run new maps or new areas for every activity, and the fact the world is so large, means your hidden secrets are miserly placed and lame in rewards. they have a massive place for you to roam around in and absolutely nothing but the challenges takes any advantage of it whatsoever. its all just rampage space for you to find your activities between, like a selection menu with a little more dismemberment. most of the updates have gone into these bespoke Activities, so there's not much to discuss there. there's a dropkick now, if you're running and you jump and press kick at the peak of your height. each of your missions is at one of the four corners of the map, basically, so there's lots of dead time either rampaging or scootering around. after you get a decent amount of catnip, dual-wielding juice, and health pipes there's basically no reason to explore OR rampage and risk wasting your precious supplies; there aren't that many weapons in the game and there's nothing like the al-quida base with its nuke launcher, neither will you find much ammo for your revolver, glock, assault rifles, grenades, (or any ammo for the four-barreled shotgun outside of vending machines; though they're a good addition since they're a moneysink you can upgrade your ammo capacity at). ultimately, compared to two, i didn't find postal 4 all that compelling. maybe i shouldve modded it, maybe itll improve with updates, but i feel comfortable reaching for postal 2 instead. recommended if you're new to the series, or desperate for more postal (i was).