Honestly didn't know how much I needed this game and it's just kind of wild how gonzo it all is and just how it's so offensive to the point where it eclipses offensiveness and becomes more like something out a surreal nightmare or something. Really admire how this game is always so inventive with its level design and scenarios even though it also definitely does have a feeling to it like the rest of it is just stitched together with scotch tape but it's utterly compelling all the way through. See I think these games are just something that appeal to the misanthrope in all of us and there's a genuine sense of catharsis that I get from playing this and what's more is that it is genuinely funny. I dunno, but something about a game featuring Al-Qaeda becoming a hippie movement or the insistence this game has on integrating Uwe Boll's Postal movie as part of its narrative and again, just how surreal it all really is, definitely sticks out to me.

Smart thing that this game does is how it simultaneously appeals to the woke and anti-woke crowds, with a really good example being about how Milo Yiannopoulos is featured in this as the owner of a gay bar that you have to ruin karaoke night in. Now either you find him affable or charming or you find him obnoxious as all hell, but good news with the latter one, you can also murder him, dismember his corpse, set him on fire and then urinate all over his remains, if you wanted to. I marvel at how inventive and interactive these games are, to be honest. Nothing else like them.

Finally, some good freaking Postal. Shows there's still some gas in the tank for both Postal 2 and maybe the franchise as a whole. After 11 years away and a disastrously received outsourced third main entry Paradise Lost immediately retcons as a nightmarish coma dream of the Dude, Running with Scissors returned to develop this expansion for themselves. I’ve got to say, all the growth you would hope to see from them after such an extended absence is on display here as they deliver not only their typical demented wit, but evidence that they’d genuinely been refining their craft during that period as well.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not proclaiming this to be some massive step forward for the property. At the end of the day, it is just more Postal 2 (which as it turns out is exactly what I wanted) on a slightly reskinned map. Yet it features markedly improved writing, level-design, vision, and boss battles compared to Apocalypse Weekend. It's also the first Postal to make me legitimately laugh out loud. Stuff such as the robot factory with its hilarious Claptrap parodies (voiced by David Eddings himself) and occasional copycat G-Man sighting, alongside an overall goofier assortment of tasks that include shutting down a nightclub by performing bad karaoke led to a campaign that might actually be more imaginative, amusing, and better paced than even that of the base game.

Another aspect I particularly enjoyed as well was the increased amount of effort that went into fleshing out the map with a greater variety of fun things to uncover. The sorely missed open-world format gets resurrected after far too long and RWS ensured there are more secrets, Easter eggs, and personal touches than ever before to successfully revitalize the setting of post-apocalyptic "Paradise," Arizona by giving you extra rewards for wandering off the beaten path and exploring a setting that had previously always felt kind of barren before. FYI, there's a house where you can find two Postal Babes kissing in a backroom. Happy hunting you horny nerds.

Now, as much as I'd love to keep heaping praise onto this and happily declare it as the best entry in the series (not quite, but very close), there are some issues. A couple of which are pretty serious. Once you reach Thursday on your to-do list for the new week you can tell they either ran out of time, ideas, or most likely money knowing these guys during development. The areas you revisit from the main offering stop featuring enough changes to keep you from realizing you’re basically playing recycled content, causing the last hour or so until you reach the finale in Hell to drag a bit. It probably wasn't overly noticeable or that big of an issue for those who had been waiting on Paradise Lost for roughly a decade, but as someone who had only beaten P2 a mere month ago it stuck out like a sore thumb. A much worse flaw however comes from the option you're given to create a desktop shortcut that will allow you to jump straight into the experience rather than having to go through two different main menus to access it, since opting to go that route results in your Steam achievements bugging out.

There are some other, less significant problems along the lines of minor audio quirks and whatnot. Although ultimately, large or small, none of the faults prevented me from thoroughly enjoying this. It's a fantastic and perfectly befitting send-off by Running with Scissors for easily their biggest success that doubles as a thank you/apology for all the crap that was released in between to the fans, while painting a promising picture for future installments. I know my enthusiasm and optimism for the rest of the property that followed has been somewhat restored after struggling through a string of lackluster to downright awful sequels and spin-offs recently. Perhaps the first definite proof that there's real talent at the Tucson-based studio behind all the controversy.

9/10

Postal 2: Paradise Lost is a follow-up to Apocalypse Weekend built on top of Postal 2 as an apology to fans for Postal 3. Postal fans often consider it to be tied with 2 as the best game in the series, with some even referring to it as the “real” Postal 3. I disagree with both of these sentiments. Paradise Lost is very much just more Postal 2. It reuses the entire map from the base game, has most of the same characters, and contains just about every system and mechanic in the base game. The few original mechanics it does have were added into the base game in one of the anniversary patches, which in turn makes it feel like even less of a standalone package. More than anything else, Paradise Lost is an unabashed work of fan service.

But unfortunately for me, even though I’ve played all of these Postal games, I am not a fan of the series. In fact, I’m getting pretty fucking sick of it. Postal 2 is the only one I enjoyed, and everything else ranges from horrendous to mediocre. Paradise Lost is in the mediocre category. It is Postal 2 with an Apocalypse Weekend skin and a reference to Postal 3 that doesn’t do anything interesting. I’ve put off writing about this game for nearly a month and a half because I genuinely cannot think of anything interesting to say about it (and frankly due to irl things too but whatever). I am putting minimum effort into this review because I was already exhausted from both this game and the franchise less than halfway through playing it. Since the game is based around a (rather terrible) story and each day begins at a different area of the map, the general pacing of the game is fucking terrible. It is exhausting to walk across the same ugly, retextured map over and over again for seemingly every chore. I just want to stop thinking about this game because I’ve already said most of my thoughts when I wrote about Postal 2 and 3. Maybe 4 and Brain Damaged will be different. I hope they are. I just want to stop thinking about Apocalypse Weekend and Paradise Lost. They are neither good games, nor interesting to think about. I’m tired of RWS, and I don’t know how they aren’t tired of being known for nothing but Postal. It’s a shitty franchise with 1 game that is remotely engaging and another game that is so bad that it’s entertaining.

I’m sorry this is rushed and repetitive, but I just want to be done with this. I’m not even editing this tbh.