On September 11th, 2001, the World Trade Center in New York City was destroyed, the aftermath of which would change American culture in ways we can still pinpoint decades after the fact. The greater minutia of the War on Terror or the Bush Administration is not something I'll be delving into here, but what's important here is that specific period of time, where the tragedy was still warm on American minds and the War on Terror was just beginning, because it's that specific cultural maelstrom that gives birth to something like Postal 2.

The reason 9/11 is so important to Postal 2 is due to the fact that the transgressive nature of the game lies in its nihilistic social and political commentary about America: From offensive Muslim stereotypes modeled after Bin-Laden who violently ransack churches and yell about Allah, to a 1:1 recreation of the botched Waco Siege operation by the ATF, to a whole in-game task about getting signatures for a petition dedicated to making whiny congressmen play video games, Postal 2 is a game that could have only been made in the transitional post-9/11 period between 1997 and 2003. Yet, despite Postal 2's attempts to be an apolitical parody piece that spares no demographic or political party, there are some aspects to the parody that belie a reflection of post-9/11 American society. The Postal Dude, despite being a violent lunatic who has no qualms about violence, is a model American: He votes on Voting Day, he loves the Second Amendment, and he makes time to go to Church. The fact that the Muslim stereotypes are all part of a terrorist organization, yet reside in the heart of small-town Americana, running the grocery store and hosting their base of operations right in The Postal Dude's backyard, reflect the Islamophobia that was rampant in American culture at the time due to the 9/11 Attacks, the paranoid ignorance that led to wide-spread discrimination against Muslim-Americans. Compound this with critiques of the U.S. Government, from rampant police brutality, to a recreation of the infamous Waco Siege, to the bombing of a Muslim terrorist camp in Apocalypse Weekend by a gung-ho, hyper-violent military force in a way that reflects the worst of the War in Iraq, the post-9/11 nature of the game is prominent in it's bloodstream. It's a perfect time capsule of the era, sensibilities and all.

Following in it's predecessor's footsteps, Postal 2 aims to be transgressive, in a much more aggressive sense than the original Postal, in a way that feels like a direct, personal response to the controversy courted by Postal upon its release. One of the first missions The Postal Dude embarks on is picking up his paycheck from an in-game replica of the Running With Scissors studio, where he works and interacts with real-life staff members in-game, before the studio is besieged by moral guardians protesting against violent video games, who hypocritically, launch a violent assault the studio and its staff. The Running With Scissors office in-game is crafted with love, with photos of staff on the wall, real-world photos of documents, meticulously crafted office spaces, and a whole faction of RWS NPCs that will always support The Postal Dude and whom you are allowed to kill with zero consequence. All of this paints a meta-context for the game going forth: A direct response to RWS' critics and cultural legacy, at a time where Joe Lieberman was still in the headlines and Mortal Kombat was being presented in court hearings on violent content in video games. Where Postal was a statement, Postal 2 is a response.

The most interesting part of Postal 2 as a response piece to the criticism of Postal is the fact that it's entirely possible to complete the game without a single kill. While the original Postal was a mass-shooting simulator that required you to kill in a commentary on the casualness with which we treat violence as entertainment, Postal 2 amped up it's transgression to the surface-level with the political commentary on America, but reworked the core gameplay loop in order to put the impetus for violence on the player. While there are systems in place for all manner of violence and crass actions from a myriad of murder implements to a functioning arson and urination mechanic, there are also mechanics for the mundane: waiting in line, paying for your goals, getting arrested peacefully and non-lethal takedown methods for every enemy you encounter. The meta nature of the game is pushed further than the interaction between Postal Dude and his creators at Running With Scissors, with a complete lack of a 4th wall as the Postal Dude comments on and interacts with the player in a mostly jeering way. The game itself taunts you with tedium and annoyance in an attempt to make you go postal, holding a finger an inch from your cheek while claiming to not touch you. The violence is shifted from a requirement to complete the game to an optional way of approaching a situation, and the casualness with which the average gamer will resort to violence ties into the main underlying theme of the series: the prevalence of violence in the media.

In our entertainment, violence is the most common language with which we communicate. Even in something as innocent as Mario, you still engage in violence to reach your goals, stomping on enemies and bosses, even if the violence is abstracted enough to not feel weird over it. This is not a condemnation of violence in our media, but simply an observation. Postal was so controversial because of the fact it stripped away the layer of dissonance we create by contextualizing the violence in real-world terms: a lone gunman engaging in meaningless violence to fulfill his goals. Postal 2's commentary on violence is much less upfront than the original Postal's, but it's still interesting in the detached way in which it lets the player engage in it. If you kill or if you don't, Postal 2 passes no judgement on your actions. It knows you'll resort to violence just because it's what you're conditioned to do as someone who plays video games, but the only thing goading you into engaging in said violence is the tedium in place in our own reality. It's a horrifically offensive, ultra-violent jankfest. It's cathartic form of virtual rebellion against the mundanity of everyday life.

"POSTAL 2 is only as violent as you are."

I gotta give Running with Scissors mad props. They are some evil, evil geniuses. This is the perfect, sarcastic middle-finger response to the backlash they received for the first Postal. All that violence media outlets and parents alike got so worked up over? Entirely optional here. The devs do give you the tools to be a mass slaughtering, public urinating menace to society, but in no way force you to use them. Meaning you can go through each of the 5 days' to-do lists of ordinary life tasks completely law-abidingly. That's brilliant, because it essentially turns anybody taking this seriously enough to get offended into the big underlying joke. You can't legitimately blame the game for whatever twisted actions you catch someone performing onscreen in this case, since the amount of freedom and lack direction given in regards to how the mundane goals can be tackled make it totally the product of their own sick little minds.

What's allowed this satire of GWB era America to stand the test of time as a sort of pseudo-classic that people still play, replay, thoroughly enjoy, and talk about nearly 21 years later as of this writing isn't its ability to appeal to immature teenagers while simultaneously causing their authority figures to look pretty foolish for complaining about it, however. It's the absolute playground for childish mischief it provides. The vulgar/heinous acts you can commit and politically incorrect world they take place in are presented in a cartoonish, clearly tongue-in-cheek manner akin to something like South Park. What feelings of repulsion one could have in regards to the havoc they create is offset by the knowledge that every NPC around you is just as big of a sociopathic maniac. A fact that only becomes more evident as the scenarios you find yourself in steadily grow increasingly outlandish, absurd, deranged, and unhinged as the in-game week goes on.

Not to mention, its approach to the open-world setting may be dated by modern standards, yet there's a retro charm to that simplicity and barrenness which solely serves to pull you in further. I noticed myself exploring the map, not because I had to find X number of doodads to turn into some umpteenth quest-giver or was chasing down another icon/marker, but rather due to genuine curiosity and pure enjoyment in doing so. I had a blast ignoring my main objectives and getting lost for hours in the various locations along the way, always being rewarded in the form of stuff such as amusingly silly visual gags, ridiculous Easter egg secrets, or new weapons that are hidden in every corner in very 'Murican fashion.

The best part is that they're basically giving this away these days. I picked up a Steam key from RWS’s own website for $2, and that version comes with a variety of expansions and quality of life improving mods already pre-installed that you can toggle on or off at your discretion. As a result, I can't help but recommend this, even if just to say you have had the Postal 2 experience for yourself. You really should too. Though the entertainment it offers is undeniably juvenile and highly inappropriate, the weird trash masterpiece status and strong cult following this has managed to achieve regardless (and continues to seemingly somehow grow) elevates it to being worthy of trying despite its fairly tasteless nature. Who knows? You may end up discovering a not-so-guilty pleasure in the process like I did.

9/10

seeing people talking about this "aging poorly" as if it wasn't fully intentionally designed to piss people off and wasn't a technical pile of shit on day one is amusing to say the least

it's a game that opens with someone kicking their dog before visiting a stereotypically-ran convenience store which houses suicide bombers. playing postal 2 while being the kind of person who gets angry at postal 2 is like going to a television broadcast and clapping when the blinking lights say "applause"

for most others, though, it's pretty damn funny

It's not funny on a surface level and it only gets less so when you actually think about it - when I was 14 this game was a fascination of mine because what other game has mechanics like using a cat as a silencer, or pissing everywhere? In retrospect, I definitely mistook novelty for quality.

Also in retrospect, it's probably good that 14-year-old me thought this game didn't really have anything serious to say outside of the in-game protest. I was wrong, of course - it has plenty to say, but it's nothing meaningful, it's said poorly, and the ideas contained therein are not worth the time it takes to uncover them - they are certainly not worth the time it takes to make an entire goddamn video game.

Serinin ilk oyunu fazlasıyla korkutucu ve iç bunaltıcı bir yapıya sahip olduğu için ilginç ama çok da eğlence sunmuyordu. Postal 2 ise iç bunaltıcı olmak yerine kendini esprili dolu hikayesiyle tamamıyla eğlence sunmaya adamış. Oyunda tek bir şey bile ciddiye alınmadan çok matrak ve iyi bir hikaye anlatılıyor. Hikayemiz ise Postal Dude'un karısının ona verdiği görevler ile günleri geçirmek üzere yazılmış. Tabii böyle anlatınca aşırı basit geliyor. Aslında o kadar basit bir şekilde ilerleyebiliyoruz. Oyun bize iki şekilde ilerleme biçimi sunuyor.

Barışçıl veya ilk oyundaki gibi manyak bir katliam çıkarabiliyorsunuz. Barışçıl yoldan ilerlemeye çalışınca doğal olarak kimseyi öldürmeden ilerliyorsunuz. (Bu durum sadece insanlar için geçerli hayvanları falan bağlamıyor diye biliyorum.) Tabii böyle ilerlemek için fazlasıyla sabırlı olmanız gerekiyor. Birde barışçıl oynamaya başta uğraşmazsınız diye düşünüyorum. İşte barışçıl falan deneyince sabırlı olmanız gerektiği gibi oyun bana daha uzun sürermiş gibi geldi.

Barışçıl yerine ben direk çatır çatır her şeyin içinden geçerek oynadım. Şahsen oyundan baya zevk alarak bitirdim. Oyunun en güzel şeyi galiba böyle sakin sakin "ya ben maaşımı çekecektim. Beyefendi biraz beklemeniz lazım." muhabbeti geçtikten sonra her yeri kaosa sürüklemekti. Bir de ana karakterimiz ve karşısına çıkan tipler dünya genelinde dönen olaylarla çok dalga geçiyorlar.

Oynanışı çok ahım şahım bir şey değil. Fazlasıyla düz bir FPS oynanışına sahip kayda değer birkaç özelliği var diyebilirim. Düşmanların böyle ateş ettiğiniz uzuvu falan kopuyor sonra kedi nanesi falan içince canın yenileniyor. Bu oyunda o kadar garipseyebilir miyim bilmiyorum ama sokakta kedi yakalarsak onu susturucu olarak silahımıza takabiliyoruz. Dediğim gibi oyunda gördüğünüz çoğu şeyden sonra bunu garipsemek artık garip oluyor.

Postal 2'de en büyük eksi olarak gördüğüm şey Apocalypse Weekend kısımlarıdır. Bu işte ana oyun hafta içini içerirken bu kısımlarda hafta sonunu içeriyor. Bu hafta sonu kısımlarını öyle kasıntılı yapmışlar gibi geldi ki böyle başlarında aha aynı tempo eğlence diyorum sonra aptal aptal şeyler yapmamız gerekiyordu. En azından o kadar uzun değil bu kısımlar çokta zevkimi zedelemedi. Postal 2 hafta sonu kısımları dışında dört dörtlük oyundur.

I've flip-flopped back and forth between saying "I genuinely like this game" and "Postal 2 is only good as a guilty pleasure" for a few years. In truth, this is a game that's hard to classify. Is it trying so hard to be offensive that it ends up being a bland exercise in poor taste, or does that bad taste coalesce into something more compelling? Having played through Postal 2 multiple times, I can sense a whiff of some social commentary, but anything profound you take out of it is an unintended side-effect of the climate in which it was produced. Strangely, that makes it so this winds up being one of the most fascinating PC games from the last twenty years. Postal 2 has aged so poorly that it's wrapped around to being a genuinely interesting piece of history--which is weird to say about a game where there's a dedicated button to unzip your trousers so you can pee on pedestrians. But really, no other period in time could produce something like this. If Postal 2 was made nowadays, people would say it feels like a cute throwback to 2003.

The question is: now that the shock factor has worn off, is it worth playing nowadays? I think so. Postal 2 harkens back to the origins of the Open World format. The whole "build a massive world and copy-paste everything" formula wasn't there yet, mainly because the technology to back it up wasn't, either. Instead, older games took the idea of having a large playspace and handed the keys to the player. If you want to go here, you can, and it might even save you some time if you use it as a shortcut. I'm tempted to classify this kind of a game as a "classic" open world, but more accurately, it's a sandbox. Think about it this way: sandboxes are not massive. As a small child, they're easy to get lost in. But the moment your legs start to sprout a few extra inches, you see the wooden planks holding up the small borders for what they are. As an older person, a beach might be where you want to go. But at the beach, there's always the fear of nature taking its course. If the water doesn't wash away your sandcastle, the crabs underneath the sand will scare you away. The sandbox is small, but you have more control as a compromise. Build a massive castle at the beach, and its scale might dwarf you, but built at your own level, you start to tell yourself stories. Video game sandboxes work in a similar manner; the bigger the map is, the more wasted its real estate is if the developers don't put it to good use. If the roads are smaller, though, there's less room to waste. You can link them, have them go to areas that the game never tells you to go to, and a curious player will think they've stumbled across something massive. Postal 2 is full of these areas; part of what makes this so much fun to go back to is discovering all of the possible shortcuts you can take. In reality, that answer is probably two or three, but in practice, it immerses you. The attitude of Postal might no longer be relevant, but the relatively small scale approach to non-linearity is timeless and makes revisiting this a blast every time.

What bums me out the most is that an excellent example to the contrary of that is actually this game's successor, Postal 4. A subtle running joke that's woven into this game is the use of cars as explosive barrels. The map of Paradise, Arizona, is small enough to be fully explorable by foot traffic without ever needing to resort to any other means. The idea that something that can take you to where you want to go within seconds is the best way of exploring the detailed map Running With Scissors has created is laughable. When you go to approach one of the many cars out of curiosity and resort to violence because you can't enter them, it's almost like the game is laughing at you for expecting less of the developers. While not hilarious in the traditional sense, it's perfect for Postal 2's "in your face" punk rock meets heavy metal aesthetic and cements what the developers set out to do with the technical limitations they had to put up with. In Postal 4, a game with a map that's probably more than twice as big as what's offered in Postal 2, the same gag appears a second time. The only difference is that it's there just be to be a callback to Postal 2. In Postal 4, any attempt at meta-humor is ruined because you spend a good chunk of your time exploring on a mobility scooter. This small, minor annoyance of mine is just the tip of the iceberg. In an attempt to look back at their glory days, Running With Scissors fundamentally misunderstood what parts of their game held up the best and cobbled together something else instead. It can technically be called Postal because it has the same whacko energy to it--but I wouldn't consider it a successor when the act of moving forward with an idea means you stumble in place every time.

In conclusion, I wish more of the Open World games that are coming out nowadays would harken back to the roots they were founded on. This isn't to say that I don't like Horizon, or Assassin's Creed, or Far Cry, or Ghost of Tsushima, or Day's Gone. But none of them feel original or exciting anymore. From what I've seen of Death Stranding, it seems to have tried something new, and I respect that--and hey, it even lets you throw your pee on people! Can't wait for the RWS collab coming... soon.

EDIT 4/16/24: Knocked off half a star because these developers are now delusional enough to think that their game, which is the most early-2000s shit imaginable, has aged well. No, it has not, shut the fuck up lmao

Feel like majority of the people love this game for the completely wrong reasons, the game has an "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating on Steam with lots of positive joke reviews making remarks on the silly humor of the game, or refer to it as a "so bad it's good" type of game, completely miss the depth the game has to offer than the "le funny pee", though I was also a part of that demographic.

The previous installment of Postal was a completely edgy game about a guy going Postal and going on a killing spree to kill enough people to progress to the next level, the next installment in the series, Postal 2 seems completely out of place right? I wouldn't say so, it's like Running with Scissors realized how silly it was so they made a complete satire of their previous game and overall hyperbolizing on the edginess and mock American Congressmen trying all in their power to ban videogames for making people go Postal ™. The satire is quite effective to this day and now functions as a time capsule to a really messed up period.

Underneath all that satire Postal 2 is also an effective horror game, the underground and cave locations with the Talibans and the asylum have an eerie atmosphere and sound design that makes you feel quite uneasy, the game's now dated graphics really give it the ugly look making it feel just like a snuff film, and not to mention the absolutely crazy finale that is just absolutely chaotic. the game also has aspects of Psychological Horror which comes from the sandbox nature of the game that tests the depths of human perversion and do messed up things that you would have never imagined you would think of doing until playing this game.

I unironically adore this game.

That doesn't make any sense, does it? How can anyone enjoy a game like this that half of it is clearly a joke and parades itself on its tastelessness?

Simple, through gameplay that's smarter then it lets on and a setting that appeals perfectly to my sick sense of humor.

The original tagline for Postal 2 was, "It's only as violent as you are."

And that's the perfect way to sum it all up. You can succeed in Postal 2 with as much bloodshed as you, the player, desire. It's an excellent commentary not only on choice in games, the discourse SURROUNDING violence in games, and a genius way of addressing the complaints of the first Postal, and how killing was the only way to beat it.

If you think you can do it, you probably can in Postal 2. Shooting might seem to be the obvious option, but there's another one around the corner if you think outside of the box with how the environment works.

This creates an INSANE amount of replayability, on top of things like the enhanced mode, creating EVEN MORE ways to replay the game.

This game IS NOT for everyone. By all means. The shooting is not the best and the writing will NOT be everyone's thing. But if you can pass that and the latter IS your thing, I think you should totally play this. Ignoring how dogshit RWS is as a dev and how they treat their fans nowadays, Postal 2 is still a keeper, and a game I keep coming back to all these years later.

This game's humor is aligned with South Park with multitudes of racism and racist caricatures/stereotypes played off with a wink and "I hate everybody" attitude that doesn't fool.

Depictions of Middle Eastern men as all uniformly being Al Qaeda collaborators/all Middle Eastern women being garbed in full black shawls and face coverings (also are aligned with Al Qaeda)

Crotchy (a mascot character toy from the game) is a white guy doing their worst possible Black Guy impression talking about being a "gangbanger" etc.

This game's only worthwhile reward for going through it's juvenile and right-wing jingoistic outlook on it's own gameworld is you can pull your penis out whenever you want and pee on anything and everything.

Along with that, the game has a kitchen sink approach to weaponry as there are dozens of different weapons you can equip, none of which feel exceptional to wield but turn any human npc into chunky salsa, even the shitty AR with it's lack of recoil animation and wimpy sound effect is one of the better generalist weapons you can play with.

I primed myself for it's racism and general caustic attitude upon replay but I felt that the carnage only got me so far, quit the replay around day 3, which is the petition day to make whiny congressmen play video games (har har)

Playing this game for the first time in 2023 has been pretty interesting. Seeing something that was once, and for some reason still is, considered "THE MOST OFFENSIVE GAME OF ALL TIME" and it's not even that much crazier than the later Fallout games in terms of carnage you can wrought. Not to disrespect the game or its place in history, just an observation of how times have changed since the early 2000s. Speaking of, it's not hard to tell how fresh 9/11 still was based on how prominent the Taliban feature. Reminds me of my youth.

Game itself is very fun. A little janky and frustrating at times, but overall a good time. Humor is a little dated, but I still found it funny more than groan-inducing. If you want a low-brainpower fuck-em-up sandbox, this is definitely worth your time. I have no regrets picking this up.

Fuck Apocalypse Weekend though that shit sucks. Very funny though.

Growing up, I really liked listening to Eminem, to the point where it pretty much was my defining personality trait. And while it is cringy to admit this looking back on it, there really was no better time capsule of the late 90s and early 2000s than his discography.

See, you really had to be there to get it: Family values and conservatives nuclear families were at a potent cultural war with media that made an active effort wanting to provoke them. Even if you were tactful in your criticism fo society and tried to cleverly layer your message and commentaries, people would still find a way to twist it into their narrative and censor it becuase it would be harmful to kids and their good morals.

Of course, that war would eventually come to all media outlets, including Rap and Hip Hop Music. Now some would argue that violence is inherently to this sort of genre, if not the vast majority of more narrative fictions. To never mention certain topics and ban their discussion (which happened even if you complied to their norms and were as tame as possible) would be to dumb down all products and consumers as a whole for being forbidden to consume and think for themselves.

Which traces back to Eminem. While a lot of it's contemporaries did have edgy humor to ragebait audiences into paying attention to their messages (that flew over their heads anyway), Eminem did it in a way that really, made it's entire personality to be offensive without barely having anything to say. It was edgy and in your face because that's all it really had to offer, not realizing that his music would have aged a lot more gracefully had he just taken more time out to see that there's more to adult topics than simply making an entire verse out of your songs about your ballsack being big.

I'd be lying if I said everything about Eminem's sense of humor is garbage, because some jokes do land, his lyrics are ridiculously quotable and the production does have it's charm. To this day, he's ridiculously popular and people from younger generations than mine can clearly appreciate something that I don't. Even if I find it hilarious that he's the favorite rapper among both experienced listeners who personally, I think should know better, and white conservatives who barely listen to hip-hop and delude themselves into believing that the character of shady is just like them when at the same time, complain when music artists get 'Too woke' with their artistry.

But there's a reason this type of offensive South Park-esque humor fell off in mainstream media. Young people bought offensive things out of the counter-culture principal that their dad didn't like it, so it must be good. But culture nowadays became so multifaceted that the need for a counter-culture barely exists anymore. Our knowledge of the word became a lot more vast, to the point where you think that if you had the popularity, time, money and range to spread a world-wide message that you believed in when making a product, you sure as fuck wouldn't use it to diss a minor celebrity like Gary Coleman, not only it would date your music horribly, but you would look incredibly goofy and shallow for it.

Maybe that's the point, maybe I'm just overanalysing an artist that was never meant to be taken seriously. But am I really supposed to be surprised when people say his others releases aren't nearly as well recieved? That everything that came after the fame of this release (Or the one before it that no one listened because it wasn't good either) failed to capture the same magic because it's just rehashing the same thing that made it popular ad nauseum when it wasn't even genius the first time?

I have a lot of soft spots for Eminem and I can appreciate him being self aware in it's sillyness, but I wouldn't blame anyone that said his discography was never good to begin with for the reasons mentioned previously.