The open-world areas are empty and lifeless, gunplay is clunky and unsatisfying, and technical issues and crashes are near-constant. If you were hoping that maybe some wacky, larger-than-life FPS combat could make up for the comedy shortcomings, I have some awful news: by every metric, playing Postal 4 is a complete horror show. These moments got a chuckle out of me, but they’re so buried under jokes that sent a full-body cringe through my system it was hardly worth exhuming them.
One section where I painted over a gang’s graffiti and was attacked by a group of Karens who accused me of cultural appropriation caught me off guard and made me smile, while another that forced me to cast my vote in an election that was clearly rigged came close to making something resembling a point. In fairness, there are the tiniest slivers of moments where I can see what Running With Scissors was going for. The fact that it so wildly misses the mark while using such heavy topics as the subject just makes the “comedy” that much harder to bear. As someone with practically no boundaries when it comes to comedy, I’m definitely not one to clutch my pearls just because a game is making light of hot-button issues for the sake of shock jokes – but Postal 4 does offend me by how painfully unfunny it is nearly every step of the way. One mission had me launch Mexicans over a border wall via a giant slingshot and another had me “reform” some prison inmates by beating them senseless. Unlike the generally excellent commentary found in Grand Theft Auto 5, Postal 4 left me wincing for hours as it takes on heavy issues with the finesse and grace of a grease fire. It’s a mess, and that’s before we even touch the parts that delve into sensitive political topics. After seeming not to bother with telling a coherent story for the first 14 of its 15 hours, the end bizarrely tries to throw a curveball at you and make you care about anything that’s happened with a plot twist that fell flatter than my uncle thinks the Earth is. Along the way you meet a cast of unhinged characters like a man obsessed with bidets for some reason and a foul-mouthed mobster and must complete a chain of quests for each of them before moving on to the next set.
#Postal 4 gameplay series
You play as The Dude from Postal 2, a bathrobe-wearing ne’er-do-well, as he searches for his stolen mobile home and tries to scrape out a living by doing a series of bizarre nonsequitur chores for the locals. If you even consider Postal 4’s sloppy chain of errands a “story,” it’s an absolutely miserable one. Instead it’s got all the subtlety and nuance of an enraged ape throwing its dung. It’s embarrassingly juvenile stuff to be sure, but if the dialogue were at least well-written or clever along the way I’d have no problem with that.
There’s one part where you have to unclog a sewer by smacking huge piles of feces with a shovel and another where you visit a vagina-themed amusement park for no discernible reason. Its sophomoric, cringe-inducing writing is mostly made up of pointless sexual gags and literal toilet humor, and it all feels like it was spewed out by a fourth grader who just learned their tenth naughty word.
The main difference is that South Park usually backs up its outrageous ideas with smart writing and some kind of coherent message or meaning behind the madness, while Postal 4 almost never sticks the landing. You have to give out a decent amount of tickets, so you have to shoot the meters to make them switch to the expired status.Postal 4 bills itself as a satirical open-world shooter that wants to push the limits with a raunchy, over-the-top style and a crass subject matter in the vein of South Park.
To pay off a ticket for loitering you have to do community service, which in this case involves giving tickets to cars parked next to expired meters. The new jobs the Dude is tasked with completing offer you the chance to commit all kinds of dumb mayhem. Although it still looks like a shinier version of something that could have been made using the original Source engine. They don't look amazing, but there's lighting and camera angles and it appears to be striving for a cinematic feel. That said, the cutscenes seem to be a marked improvement over Monday's offering since the characters are no longer stiffly standing in front of each other with blank stares on their faces while delivering wacky dialogue. I don't expect anything from a Postal story because it's just there as a thin explanation for why the Dude is committing all the various atrocities. RELATED: Forget Co-Op, Give Me Untitled Goose Game Battle Royale
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