Postal (known as Going Postal in Europe) is the first game in the Postal
franchise. The development began in 1996 and was released in November 1997 by
Running With Scissors and Ripcord Games. At the time, the game was very
controversial due to the higher than usual violence and brutality, and
therefore was banned in over 10+ countries.
One of the most brutal game ever
made is the subject of this new Retro dose, and the silly, sadistic
entertainment that this game has been able to offer was outclasses only by its
sequel - Postal 2 from 2003. In 1997, a group of enthusiasts form Arizona
gathered under the name Running With Scissors and decided to make a video game
that was supposed to suit their own taste. I believe that they themselves did
not count on making such a sick game that the whole gaming community, various
psychologists and psychiatrists, and numerous supporters for banning violence
in video games will talk about it for years. This is the title that shared the
GOTY prize on the 2002 Gamer List under the title "Most Controversial Game
of All Time".
Postal is an isometric, in some
parts also top-down, 3D shooter available today for Linux, Mac OS or Windows
via Steam, GOG, Desure or similar download services. The twenty-one backgrounds
in the game are hand-drawn, and it's interesting that the game does not have a
classic story, though some of its parts are related to The Postal Dude, the
protagonist of the series, can be seen in detail by watching events on screen
and through basic information from the manual of the game.
The aim of the game was to kill
as many armed characters as possible using eight different types of weapons,
and the interesting fact was that the level could be completed even if the
player was killed as long as the main task was done on the level. The mentioned
killing of enemies was often extremely brutal and it is no wonder that the game
is now on numerous lists of the most brutal games ever made. The game ends with
the Postal Dude experiencing some sort of psychotic episode; he attempts to
murder a group of elementary school students at recess, but realizes that his
weapons are useless as the children are seemingly unaffected. After passing
out, he's presumably captured and incarcerated in a mental institution. The
ending movie features a doctor making a report on the Dude's psyche, commenting
on the phenomena of "going postal" and how the stresses of modern
life can drive one to madness. The Dude himself is shown lying in a padded
cell, straight-jacket bound, suggesting he was truly insane all along.
Despite the numerous awards that
the game has picked up, some of which are for the game for year, the current
score on Metacritica is pretty low, which unjustly throws bad light on the ingenuity
of the game. In order to convince yourself what is so ingenious in the Postal from
1997, I will leave it to yourself to find out.
Good tempo of insane violence
continued with Postal 2 from 2003, but unfortunately Postal 3, which was
released in 2011/2012 was not of high quality and did not receive enough
attention to continue the tradition of the Postal Series. The movie on which
Uwe Boll was playing is not his worst work and it is even watchable, so if you
want a little bit of postal atmosphere, I can recommend watching this movie. As
for the quality of the postal extension we expect, we can only hope that one
day it will come up and resume to stir things up in the gaming world because of
the excessive level of controversy that a single Postal title can have.
