Postal 2
Postal 2 is a 2003 first-person shooter video game developed by Running with Scissors and published by Whiptail Interactive. It is the second installment in the Postal franchise, and was released for Microsoft Windows in April 2003, macOS in April 2004 and Linux in April 2005. Postal 2, as well as its predecessor, has received notoriety for its high levels of violence, stereotyping, and black comedy. Unlike the first installment, Postal 2 is played from a first-person perspective, rather than an isometric perspective. The game is the first in the series to feature an open world.
Set in the fictional Arizona town of Paradise, Postal 2 follows the life of "The Postal Dude", who must carry out mundane tasks throughout an in-game week, with the player deciding how violently or passively he will react to various situations. The player navigates the game's map to carry out his errands, with player choice having an effect on the setting.
The game received a mixed reception from critics upon its release and has gained a cult following. It has received several expansion packs, and in December 2003, a multiplayer expansion was released, titled Postal 2: Share the Pain, though the multiplayer servers were shut down in september 2015. Postal 2 remains continually updated, with a new expansion pack titled Paradise Lost released in April 2015.
The game received attention for its violent gameplay, and was responsible for multiple controversies. It was followed by a sequel, Postal III, in December 2011, and another, Postal 4: No Regerts, in April 2022. A virtual reality adaptation, along with a remake of the game, known as Postal 2 VR and Postal 2 Redux respectively have been announced, being developed by Flat2VR Studios and Team Beef, with Redux planned to release in 2026.
Plot
In Postal 2, the player takes on the role of the Postal Dude, a tall and thin red-headed man with a goatee, sunglasses, a black leather trench coat, and a T-shirt with a grey alien's face printed on it. Postal Dude lives in a dilapidated caravan trailer on land behind a house in the small town of Paradise, Arizona, with his wife, who is identified in the credits as "The Bitch". The game's levels are split into days of the week starting Monday and finishing Friday..At the beginning of each day, Postal Dude is given several tasks to accomplish, such as "get milk", "confess sins", and other seemingly mundane tasks. The objective of Postal 2 is to finish all of the tasks throughout the week, and the player can accomplish these tasks in any way they wish, be it as peacefully and civilly as possible, or as violently and chaotically as possible. It is possible, if occasionally difficult, to complete most tasks without engaging in battle, or at least, harming or killing other characters, as evidenced by the game's tagline: "Remember, it's only as violent as you are!" The daily tasks can be accomplished in any order the player desires, and the game also includes one task that is activated only when Postal Dude urinates, in which the player is tasked with getting treatment for gonorrhea after Postal Dude discovers he has the infection.
Throughout the course of the game, Postal Dude must put up with being provoked by other characters on a regular basis. He is given the finger, mugged, attacked by various groups of protesters, and is harassed by an obnoxious convenience store owner/terrorist and his patrons who cut before Postal Dude in the "money line". During the game, Postal Dude also encounters a marching band, a murderous toy mascot named Krotchy, the Paradise Police Department and its SWAT team, overzealous ATF agents, the National Guard, an eccentric religious cult, cannibalistic butcher shop workers, fanatical al-Qaeda terrorists, and former child actor Gary Coleman, among many others.
By Friday afternoon, the final day in the game, the apocalypse occurs and societal collapse soon follows, with all law and order breaking down. Cats begin to fall out of a darkly-colored sky, and almost everyone in town becomes heavily armed, with random gun battles breaking out in the streets. Despite this, Postal Dude returns home to his trailer as normal, where he then gets into an argument with his wife, who demands that Postal Dude explain why he never picked up the "rocky road" she asked for at the beginning of the game. Postal 2 then ends with a gunshot being heard, before being kicked to the end credits.
Gameplay
One of the major concepts of Postal 2 is that it is meant to be a "living world", a simulation of a tongue-in-cheek off-kilter town. Game characters live out their lives completely separate from the actions of Dude—walking around town, buying and selling merchandise, and even engaging in random shootouts with each other and the police.The town features many cars but they are all "useless exploding props", according to Dude, and cannot be driven, although they can be blown up and sent flying into the air. In addition to cats and dogs, elephants are present; these animals can be shot or set on fire—or simply annoyed by the player walking into them—causing them to trumpet with rage and attack anyone within stomping distance. A peculiar feature is the ability to pick up cats as an inventory item. When used, The Postal Dude shoves the barrel of the currently equipped firearm into the cat's rectum as a "silencer". Every time a shot is fired, the cat meows in apparent agony, and the gunshot is muffled. After nine shots, the cat has run out of lives and it will fly from the end of the weapon. Most dogs have the ability to befriend the Dude if he feeds them a continual supply of dog biscuits or feeds them any other food. Once a canine's loyalty has been earned, the dog will attack anyone who attacks the Dude, or alternatively, anyone whom the Dude attacks. Dogs will also chase and kill cats, and play fetch with the Dude's inventory items and severed heads. There were also going to be cows included in the game, but they were left unimplemented. They did appear in Apocalypse Weekend and the A Week in Paradise modification.
The game also features a cameo by Gary Coleman, acting as himself, who appears early on as the objective of one of the game's tasks. The player can choose to fight and kill Coleman or simply have the book signed peacefully. The Dude twice mistakes Coleman as having starred in What's Happening!! and The Facts of Life, when he actually starred in Diff'rent Strokes. Regardless of the Dude's actions, the police storm the building in an attempt to arrest Gary Coleman and a gunfight ensues which invariably results in Coleman's apparent demise, with or without the player's help. Later on in the game he can also be seen in the Police Station, when the player escapes from his cell he also frees everyone else—including Coleman, who can be seen running alongside Krotchy. Coleman apparently survives as he can be seen in the Apocalypse Weekend expansion, bandaged up in the hospital.
Development
The game was developed by 9 people.Release
Postal 2 was the first release by Whiptail Interactive, a publisher based in West Chester, Pennsylvania. The game was released to manufacturing in early April 2003 and shipped later that month in North America and Europe.In 2016, Postal 2 is released on Steam after a approved submission on Steam Greenlight along with its expansions.
Sales
Postal 2 became Linux Game Publishing's fastest selling game in its first month, and contributed greatly to the continuing profitability of the company.Expansions
''Share the Pain''
An updated edition of the game, entitled Postal 2: Share the Pain, included a multiplayer mode. The Macintosh and Linux versions of Postal 2 shipped only as Postal 2: Share the Pain.Share the Pain received an average score of 59 out of 100 based on 10 reviews on review aggregator website Metacritic, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
''Apocalypse Weekend''
Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend is an expansion pack to Postal 2 released by Running with Scissors. As a result of issues with publisher Whiptail Interactive, the expansion pack was originally released in Russia on August 1, 2004. In the USA and other countries the expansion pack was released on May 31, 2005 for Microsoft Windows, and September 28, 2005 for the Mac OS X and Linux versions. Apocalypse Weekend expands the reaches of Paradise with new maps and missions, set on Saturday and Sunday, adds new weapons and foes, and raises the gore and violence to an even greater level. It was later included in both the Postal Fudge Pack and Postal X: 10th Anniversary compilations alongside Share the Pain and several fan produced mods, including A Week in Paradise which allows content from Apocalypse Weekend to appear in the original game as well as allowing the expansions levels to be played as part of the original five-day campaign.Apocalypse Weekend begins Saturday morning, with the Postal Dude waking up in the hospital, his head bandaged from a near-fatal gunshot wound. While the Postal 2 ending leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not the Dude shot his wife or if his wife shot him, after he wakes up in the hospital he finds a card from his wife saying that she is leaving him. It was later revealed on the official website that the Dude shot himself due to his wife nagging him. The Dude's ultimate goal is to recover his trailer and his dog Champ, and to this end, escapes from the hospital.
With the exception of the zombies that appear later in the game, it would appear the madness depicted at the end of Friday on the previous game has petered out. The Dude proceeds through several missions including assignments from his former employers, Running with Scissors, encounters with mad cow tourette zombies, as well as confrontations with terrorists and the military. Periodically, the Dude's head wound causes him to enter a nether realm where he is attacked by Gary Coleman clones. Throughout the weekend, the Dude fights off hordes of zombies, Taliban and the National Guard until he finally faces a zombified Mike Jaret, an employee of Running with Scissors. Once the Dude destroys it, he leaves Paradise in his car with his dog and his trailer while Paradise explodes due to a massive nuclear warhead he "borrowed" to destroy a rival video game development and publishing company. The Dude's last words of the game are "I regret nothing".
While gameplay is similar to its parent Postal 2, Apocalypse Weekend is not as open-ended. The gameplay is more linear in design, with the player mostly forced to follow a certain path to complete the game—typical of most first-person shooter games. In addition, the player cannot play as a pacifist and is forced to kill animals and zombies in order to progress in the game. Unlike the main game, Apocalypse Weekend also includes several "boss monster" encounters. All normal cats are also replaced with "dervish cats", which spin in a manner similar to that of Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil, attacking any nearby character when agitated. Dervish cats can also be collected and, in addition to muffling guns, can be thrown at NPCs to attack them.
Apocalypse Weekend received an average score of 45 out of 100 based on 4 reviews on Metacritic, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".