Postal (video game)

Postal is an isometric top-down shooter video game developed by Running with Scissors and published by Ripcord Games in 1997. A sequel titled Postal 2 was released in 2003. A March 2001 re-release of the game called Postal Plus included the "Special Delivery" expansion pack. A remake Postal Redux was released for Microsoft Windows on May 20, 2016. At the end of 2016, the game's source code was released.

Plot
The game follows an average man known only as the Postal Dude when he discovers that a mind-altering substance has been released onto the town of Paradise, infecting the populace with insanity and bloodlust. Capped off by the sudden eviction from his home, the Postal Dude believes himself to be the only sane man left and sets out to put an end to the madness in his town, which he believes originates from a local Air Force base.

After massacring the Air Force base, the Postal Dude has a psychotic episode, ending with him having a mental breakdown. Afterwards, the Postal Dude is locked up in a mental asylum as a psychiatrist documents on his violent behavior, revealing that the Dude was insane all along.

Gameplay
The game primarily has an isometric point of view, but some levels are set in a top-down perspective. The main objective of each level is to kill a certain number of enemies, refered to as hostiles. Hostiles range from pistol wielding police, bomb throwing vigilantes, rifle toting SWAT teams, and rocket firing soldiers, among others. In addition to hostiles, each map has a number of unarmed civilians that the player has the option of killing. There is no reward or punishment for killing civilians. One also has the ability to execute "downed" (a state of near death where the target is crawling on the ground after being shot a number of times) hostiles/civilians which is completely optional, holding no punishment or reward. Basically, the goal is to survive against waves of enemies while killing/executing as many or as little bystanders as you like.

Throughout each level, weapon and health pickups can be collected that aid the player in combat. After killing a given percentage of hostiles in a level, the player must press F1 to move on to the next level. In Redux, the level exit appears after reaching the level's quota.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The game has a thrilling story-line with a very unique narrative style. And if playing the game with the Special Delivery Expansion Pack (or even better, the Excess Postage mode in Redux, which includes all 23 levels), while the ending of the game is abrupt, it's strangely fitting and simply terrifying.
 * 2) The voice acting is passable, with Rick Hunter's voice acting being the best.
 * 3) * In Redux, the Postal Dude actually talks unlike in the 1997 release, replacing Vince Desi's grunting and pain noises.
 * 4) The game also has a horrifying and great soundtrack, and the OST for Redux's Rampage mode is filled with bangers such as "Temporomandibular Grind" and "Run From Me".
 * 5) Each level has their own unsettling and uncanny loading screens accompanied by disturbing diary notes of the Postal Dude that are really creepy, especially the "War Journal" entries mentioned in the manual and in Postal Redux when playing on Hard or Nightmare difficulty.
 * 6) The player has a large selection of weapons to choose from such as a Napalm Launcher, Molotovs, a Machine Gun (Sub-Machine Gun in Redux), an AA-12 automatic shotgun (known as the "Spray Cannon") and the Rocket Launcher.
 * 7) The Postal Dude himself is a rather interesting character, with many quotable lines such as "You must be freezing. Let me warm you up!", "What?! You don't sell POSTAL?" and "Now that's a boomstick!", and the loading screens dive into his insanity. He is also never seen directly, only being seen as the player's sprite in gameplay and in the loading screens, although his appearance is heavily distorted and hides within the shadows, except for the final level, "Air Force Base".
 * 8) As of 2019, you can get original version for free. You hear that right. For. Free.

Redux

 * 1) The remake includes Rampage mode, an arcade game mode based around killing people to rack up a high score, and the executions are utilized in this mode as a way to keep the score multiplier up.
 * 2) You can finally change the Postal Dude's trench coat color with ease. Options include the default (Black), classic (Red), Super Postal/Postal Plus (Green) mh:crappygames:Postal III (Brown/Orange) and so on. In addition, there's a hidden command/game mode where you can play as Not Important from mh:crappygames:Hatred.
 * 3) For the first time in the Postal franchise, you can FINALLY play it on a console with the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 ports of Redux. While it was gonna be possible at one point with a game port for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, it probably would’ve sucked.
 * 4) There are different execution and suicide animations depending on what weapon the Dude is currently using instead of just the Machine Gun in the original.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The original version hasn't aged well for numerous reasons:
 * 2) *Poor and really uncomfortable tank-like controls.
 * 3) * You can't shoot while running unless you're using the Machine Gun or Spray Cannon (this was however finally fixed in Redux).
 * 4) * Awful hit detection.
 * 5) * You don't automatically progress without pressing the F1 key after reaching the required number of kills, which in itself isn't very clear.
 * 6) * The Super Postal levels taking place in Tokyo and Osaka are only available in the Japanese release of the game (Steam version of the game and Redux version have them included after patches).
 * 7) * The original ending infamously shows the Dude attempting to shoot up an elementary school.
 * 8) *Redux replaced it with "The End" (the Postal Dude gatecrashing a funeral), in regards to the fact that school shootings have become more common and thus lost their shock value, as well as to possibly avoid getting an Adults Only rating.
 * 9) Mediocre AI. Example: in some cases, the RPG-armed or the grenade/Molotov-throwing enemies may end up killing themselves trying to kill the player.
 * 10) The physics of throwing grenades/molotovs is weird, as the maps make it uncertan what you can or can't throw them over. This also applies to the other weapons.
 * 11) The character models in Redux look dull, especially the Postal Dude's model, even compared to those from the sequel.

Controversy
When the original game was released, it sparked a lot of controversy due to the game's violent and dark tone, along with being released when the violent video game controversy was at it's peak, and the United States Postal Service filed a lawsuit towards Running With Scissors over the game's title, which was named after the slang term "going postal", referring to murders performed by United States Postal Service (USPS) employees, which was dismissed in 2003. The game was also targeted by senator Joe Lieberman, who labeled it as one of the worst things in America, while retail chains CompUSA and Wal-Mart refused to sell the game. In its first week, Postal was sold over 10,000 times in the United States.

Trivia

 * The Postal Dude (by default as it can be changed in the multiplayer settings) wears a red coat in the original disc version of Postal, yet the first color on the list (as the config lists them by number) is black (which is number zero).
 * This entry is noted for being the darkest and most disturbing title in the series. Many people who are familiar with Postal 2, or its inclusion of crude humor, are often surprised to find out how radically different the sequel and first game are from each other.
 * The voice heard within gameplay, voiced by Rick Hunter, is not the Postal Dude speaking, but another voice (implied to be a demon) in his head taunting him and commanding him to kill. This is verifiable by the fact that within the game's files, this voice is labelled as "demon".
 * In Postal 2 onwards, the Demon's voice was changed to be the Dude's actual voice.
 * The game's soundtrack is samples from the Altered States sample collection from Zero-G, most notably Central Park's theme, which uses the "Is That The Door?" track. This specific sample was used in other pieces of entertainment, most notably 28 Days Later, Half-Life 2, Vanishing Point, and three Silent Hill games.
 * In the credits, there is a person credited for "Story" and "Cutscene text" known as "The Pain Killer". This was revealed to be Bill Kunkel by Vince Desi in the RWS podcast.
 * In the initial release and beta test version of the game, if it detects that it's running without the CD inserted (or if the beta expires in the case of the later), everyone in the level is set on fire.
 * The Postal Dude's "WHAT?! You don't sell Postal?" line upon starting EZ Mart is a reference to the fact the game was blacklisted from many stores due to the controversy surrounding it.
 * The level itself, EZ Mart, is a parody of Walmart.

Reception
Postal received mixed reviews from critics. It holds a Metacritic score of 56/100.

Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Overall, Postal is a title that breaks absolutely no new ground, but its tongue-in-cheek shooting action comes together to form a well-above-average shooter that adds to the genre."

Sales
NPD Techworld, a firm that tracked sales in the United States, reported 49,036 units sold of Postal by December 2002.

Videos
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