Playing Postal & Postal: Redux: Fire Away

it's time for my most requested review postal redux alongside its progenitor which I got no requests to review I mentioned him postal to that I have limited experience with one and until I started playing it for review that was still true it basically amounted to young me opening up the game realizing it was nothing like postal 2 within about a minute and closing it young me was strange in what game he went into probably had better taste than I do now plus for this day I have this weird aversion to isometric games especially if it's an action title I've always felt weirdly disconnected from the goings-on in games like this and I can't quite explain why I won't use it against the game just because it has it unless it uses it poorly of course while I did have an idea to do a comparison between redux and hatred before I forget was released I dropped the idea around the time hatred came out and I became apprehensive to review postal 1 for reasons mentioned and I knew I'd need to be interested in playing and reviewing the original game first if I was going to go on to the remake I feel that it's only fair I need to know what's different so before I sat down to play through the same game twice separated by nearly 20 years of game development all I knew going in was the genre tone and its ending if one word could sum up post 1 it'd be bleak an air of misery hangs over the whole game the artwork is trying to disturb the music and much of the sound is discordant and unappealing both intentionally and not and the gameplay is mostly mundane everything fun and it runs hilariously counter to its Brad nurse it can feel very confused at times like the over-the-top gameplay that become the norm into is just hiding under the surface the game and indeed each stage opens up with some grim dark edgy prose written by postal dudes edgy may bury gameplay immediately starts up a police standoff and about ten seconds later there are several dead cops and assorted look at the assaulted civilians not much story implied beyond that moving van outside the home and the fact that we know the dude is a fair man he waited for the cops to turn up after all unlike no important you just went right to it impatient [ __ ] let's do another Olli comparison to hatred I feel postal stone was a little easier to take seriously it's still confused but there is nothing that shatters it just as hard as no important proudly made in the USA baby Ric hunter is delivering wry one-liners that don't match I have a characterization we'll see in this review there are streets lined with missile turrets there's one of these before each stage most of which I could only read in a mocking tone and there's the do - goofy run animation oh boy oh boy I can't wait to kill people so what is it that works well it's the background art doing all of the heavy lifting with an occasional thumbs up from the ambient noise painted backgrounds are my favorite part of the game and I mostly played to see more of them hatred felt like a perfectly fine world filtered for a [ __ ] hit snap anyway even Denmark some may find that idea more disturbing and I totally get why but for immersing yourself in a game Coastal's world feels more like a place that gave up long ago its uncaring and decaying the postal dude is just the first one to break and from our perspective it's not even hiding how awful it is gameplay-wise is an isometric shooter you'll plop down onto a smallish from that and have to kill a certain number of hostiles you technically don't have to kill any civilians but human lives are essentially a collectible and if you want 100% you're going to have to comb the map looking for the last subdue feels it be too rude to leave but he is it nice enough to scream each stage is about five to ten minutes in length perhaps double that if you're planning on exploring each nook and cranny getting that 100% annihilation and grabbing every last bit of ammo so one notable thing before I get into the nitty-gritty of gameplay I am playing the steam version of postal one which alongside - has seen some updates higher resolution options and modernized controls most importantly I only found this out after I'd already beaten the game so I went back to play it with the original controls and after a few minutes of playing as tank man I was happy to have been uninformed the antiquated controls still seep through in other ways of course the f1 key to jump to the next stage after you hit your quota for instance is actually a bad thing but it's definitely disorienting and then there's the incredible stiffness of switching weapons I swear it or like the button to change is not registering at times and when it does it takes a sois and grenades and mines needing to be equipped made me barely use them alongside the fact that grenades are incredibly awkward to aim and mines was shite all but one time I did make use of them I felt like I was going out of my way to do so rather than being my best option in that situation so I felt they were more trouble than they're worth the update controls make the dude far more mobile WASD to move and arrow keys to point shoot I tried to use the mouse and it was a fascinating experience WASD not only moves me but it changes my facing the mouse only turns left and right relative to my facing the keyboard and mouse are fighting right I'll use a controller you don't get to play [ __ ] eight directions all of them so about those controller controls the human race as represented poster is not prepared for a man capable of running in one direction and firing in another they're also dogs bullet sponges so you know what it's evens the difficulty here is a strange thing I didn't mess with a difficulty slider assuming this was the intended difficulty due to the short stages I did not save scum and I did each level in one life start to finish I only died a couple of times see I too am a bullet sponge the people you kill are a bit of a bore they won about enemy's weight statically in clusters around the map waiting for you to either get close or engage them so for the most part you get off the first shot they can also be trivialized very easily except on the rare occasions where they're placed in tight corners or come into the map ready to rumble but and these are dangerous in autumn mouths the regular firearm enemies will occasionally get off a ton of shots that last but other times are fairly mad at the air behind me so occasionally I lose a fair chunk of hope in a flash and other times I'll swim through numerous gunfights and come out the other side not much worse for wear I can never pin down don't warm in one run and write in another turrets rocket men and Grenadines are more enjoyable as the fact they have actual projectiles explosives nonetheless means it's more a game of predicting arcs and dodging projectiles and their blasts and on occasion lining up so the enemies will kill each other in the mad scramble to get me rocket enemies are the best in the game for this as they present actual compact considerations beyond how do I kill this faster than it can even shoot there is a Crouch key purely for ducking under Rockets so Whittle them down from a distance but risk getting juggled or getting close presenting yourself to more risk but if they get a shot they'll take themselves down with you or hope you can keep the head of their shots and that's just when dealing with a lone one when they have backup they just raise more gameplay options to consider health is recovered via pickups the amount of these on every map is rather small and their health output is tiny Alma - only blocks a handful of hits it means that most of the maps in the game wound down idon't about into my hope is worrying me and now I go to a boring gameplay style of popping peoples carefully a distance choosing the incredibly static AI since they haven't like realized the gravity of the situation you have to go out of your way to involve people take me seriously all right well here we go well for starters an infinite ammo SFG the shotgun a late-game water shotgun that entirely overshadows the former by virtue of use the same ammo engine being less [ __ ] a rocket launcher with regular and heat seeker rockets a napalm launcher lastly a flamethrower then of course the grenades I could never quite get to grips with I suppose that's why kicking is the way forward molotovs are stupid powerful but that doesn't quite balance out how would arced weapons are there are the three kinds of mine I will give the game complements in that no gun is completely useless I often go back to the start or SMG since what it's a minor irritant for most enemies it's a minor irritant with infinite ammo and range plus it lets me keep moving while I fire this is my least favorite part of the game I don't mind it much for the rocket launcher but why does this shotgun kill my movement when I shoot it it fails to make it feel powerful it just makes it operate in a very flow braking stop-and-start manner and it legitimately makes it feel worthless firing explosions on the other hand immediately kill everything I mean my emotions run a bit first you know spread the love but they are not recovering rockets and eventually flame for a fuel is pretty plentiful well okay the flamethrower is the least efficient weapon ammo wise but it doesn't matter sits a teensy little puff is enough to kill everything but turrets instantly voila I'm fuel efficient on that note there is a detail that I like with pickups and if you grab an ammo pickup and it maxes out your ammunition it doesn't completely deplete the pickup if there's any left over and you could juggle the rest pickup I said that word too much in that debt rockets have infinite range so I can stand a great distance and just kill enemies with impunity I could fire off the screen and maybe I'll hit something enemies are only aggro'd by distance or damage and it's hard to be angry if you're dead okay so that's what the ostrich line was about I said I like the look of the maps and that is true but in gameplay they're pretty bad they're open nature is the one good thing about you can choose how to approach most fights from quite a number of ways and I rarely ever felt funneled into an unfair situation you can always back off entry approach problems on the other hand at least one stage just spawns you in front of a whole squad of enemies who are ready and raring to go a whole Street obscured by the map until you wander down it sure why not I want to get that gear over there I can't walk around because a [ __ ] corner hasn't been drawn I can only wonder what wondrous sights like just south of this house occasionally the enemies can get obscured by the environment I can't shoot over this box bullet collision with the environment is massively inconsistent and the perspective [ __ ] with me until I test it how am I meant to guess if that's segregating road and pavement or if that's your wall best of luck lobbing grenades around corners not that note you can't free grenades over that [ __ ] slots enemies waiting around on the map of fine getting shot more sprinkles incredibly rare so yeah being outdoors enemies we're cool what I'm not okay with is the use of random buildings as enemy closets it's comical watching them trickle out in single file ready to die I don't mind these until we get to the point where our code or rather hoping to eke out the last few survivors for 100% and they're incredibly slow they will trundle out the maps are also incredibly stack only explosive barrels detonate an occasional fun with chain reactions but cars don't explode gas pumps are invulnerable I got 100% on most of the maps but in both won and upcoming Redux I did not hit when I represent total for the entire game I got bored of hunting for the last singular survivors on certain maps and stopped caring and when you stop caring once well I keep caring thereafter it will never really be 100% now yeah I became a lazy mass murderer nearing the end plus since not everyone dies instantly but instead goes into a brawling near-death state occasionally the soon-to-be dead would be blending in with the corpses until they bleed out there is an execution move to speed this along but it's always the same slow animation and it too quickly gets boring plus it's impossible to do it in a firefight I mostly left the dying to their own devices it's like trust then sphere over with your sick bastard I'm already dead that's the spirit all of this comes together to form a slow slog to the game enemies over take too long to die or just immolated by infinite range rockets or getting whipped by a flamethrower which means the most powerful feeling weapon in the game also has no weight to it again then running around on fire almost makes up for that combat is mostly psychological the physical side of it is pretty uninspired as we see the primary attack of all foes is eroding a new voice line or screams each time they are hit or every half second whichever comes first causing a cacophony liable to give you a headache close the game and spare everyone inside occasionally this backfires and they just start the word prick or [ __ ] and it's vaguely funny it actually aids me Keter explode man they're so bizarrely out of place and easy to defeat they may as well just be blokes in wheelchairs who are covered in asbestos plus with the overall tone and pace of the game I do actually feel after asked is this meant to be fun at all now this is a major concern if something is fun I'll bloody well have fun and I don't play games entirely for aimless fun if a game wants me to be uneasy sad intrigued whatever I'll buy in if it does it well and postal can occasionally do uneasy well the appearing screams of civilians the artwork the decaying environments the disconnected slow joyless and occasionally methodical gameplay but then we've got the dude's lines I think he's having fun but it's unclear and this bridges the gap to things that are fun dancing around projectile enemies ducking under rockets my absolute favorite part of the gameplay is when I'm set on fire I'm rendered unable to stop running and I can only want to shoot plus I'm taking damage but I can charge enemies to spread the flames and now this is an actual gameplay decision that needs to be made very quickly take some enemies down at the risk of losing even more health or cut my losses and run for cover and this guy confer a fire so he's pretty fun and with that we're at the end a loading screen tells you what's going down next in elementary school I knew this was the final destination but wasn't quite clear on everything it's a cutscene I expected to fail to kill children through my own efforts but that's not the case the dude charges the school tries to kill the children and repeatedly misses which only makes sense kids are pretty small realizing they're unkillable he has a mental breakdown this is where the game draws a line takes his foot off the gas we see the dude in a mental asylum a radio report makes stabs at his motives a 6-day killing spree from his home to an Air Force Base culminating a mental breakdown this marks the only completely straight-faced and genuine story swerve in the whole series there's no ironical comedic salon just a small comment on virtual violence cutting it before it goes a bit too far so all of this killing was building to something it wasn't something I felt this whole game was worth but it was something I thought I was done with poster one at this point but before I can move on to redux I had to look into special delivery it's a pack of four extra stages a store a shantytown the site of an earthquake and a resort more of the same shooting wise but the stages do stand out in some ways the core game had very sparse stabs at humor you know the dude small selection of lines but well he's always meeting new people so he's not scared to repeat them special delivery ups this a bit the stage descriptions are more lighthearted the dude now has staged contextual lines it even opens you the dude asking you don't sell postal before opening fire the colors are more vibrant while still maintaining the overall art styles you can actually see the lights on the poster too starting here that was a small source of fascination for seeing the scarp things postal did carry forward from here I'm not a fan of postal one at the end of it all the ad sports moments I enjoyed and I can see what was getting at I felt the ending more or less worked even if that payoff wasn't quite worth the time invested what as much time as well it without 2 hours 15 minutes I'm still glad I played close to one at least once however to see the predecessor to they really are huffing away the both gameplay and enjoyment and special delivery does give me an idea as for how that shift again and now with this review we move from the beginning of the series to its latest release shoot I wasn't sure how much to expect from redux perhaps and a present Mouse evening both of which were there of course but we've also got the old stages redrawn three new stages new models a new weapon two new modes a co-op one and a score attack a whole host of little gameplay tweaks and rebalances I'm not sure about the minute long load time whenever I launch and a few times it's seemingly lasted forever most games don't go for that you know it besides that Redux is an entirely improved and better version of postal one if you haven't already bought either there is little reason not to go for Redux outside of curiosity I still would not call Redux a good game however it's just move things up from bullying with bad to okay mild fun on occasion when I first boot up the game and had a fiddle I realized that my controls had improved a ton and the enemies were slightly faster and more aggressive but barely keeping up so I got the difficulty up too hard for this one as there is now a more direct difficulty select I died five times as much as the original title but even with the added difficulty this was preferable to the more active victories of vanilla postal yeah pick trenchcoat let's go hard mode also reveals a new addition on this difficulty end up the loading screen lullaby has been replaced with a log kept by the dude detailing is very repetitive thoughts on what's happening these entries were in the original postal manual and this is a bit more of a down-to-earth take on goings-on rather than killing everyone cuz [ __ ] it why not have some prose he now believes everyone is infected with a hate plague to which only he is immune it ties the stages together a bit more cohesively but does boil down to [ __ ] lads everyone's got mental and I'm off to the Air Force Base rephrased 16 times more pain so both sets of loading screens don't really gel the first lot of too edgy for someone having this much fun and this is too wimpy for someone who's clearly unfriend this is the original concept art for the dude it lines up a bit more of these war log entries scared of the world honestly believes he's the sole survivor of a madness but that's not what's here my dude is taking on this hate plague with flair that's a boomstick he wants all of them to see him coming che me drop that run animation I'd say hard was a far better fit for this game the enemies are now actually sort of dangerous more aggressive and quicker to aggro but still in a sweet spot where reckless play as possible but risky and I did notice in Redux especially now I can swap weapons without hassle but I was varying up my weapons more situationally rather than just using the flamethrower or Oh shot gun and Rockets whenever possible I felt like I knew when I was playing right or wrong a bit more which is an improvement being able to actually gauge a strategy and the game adds a health flip over enemies who you're aiming at I am ambivalent about this blip the enemies still felt like bullet sponges only now I'm not watching them I'm watching a blip turn from green to red it also feels like a weird softlock outside of explosions or weapons which spread there is no point in firing until you see the blip it's a guaranteed hit pop up the weapons have seen some rebalancing for the better the starter SMG now has a limited range to make it a bit more of a fallback it's still useful in a pinch while stopping me from just wearing down an enemy as they try and close the gap there is a new gun the hard-hitting long-range revolver limited ammo but powerful it fulfills the role revolvers fill in shooters and it works pretty well here slotting into the game played well and feeling pretty punchy now all the weapons say for the rocket launcher can be running gun web so the shotgun is actually not sure to use now it does the thing shotguns are good at get in ruin someone's day get out a good weapon was just plating under the surface you're a shotgun now has its own ammo pool and you get it far earlier in the game it's limited enough that when I feel I've stockpiled it I can cut loose for a little bit the original what was shotgun share down was the standard and you could run a gun with it and it was more powerful so just out-and-out replace to start a shotgun fear it's just a powerful but you have to ration it a little bit for the enemies increased aggression means that the flamethrower is harder to use while being essentially unchanged a a lot of strengths of popping up the devil's that they originally so slow to react I could get in range to do so right now it's a little bit riskier to pull off and grenades and our secondary attack and can be cycled through independently of your firearm still a little bit fiddly but thanks to actual now seem a bit easier to use there is still a notable delay between stopping firing and being able to throw one but now I actually felt like using them wasn't going to waste my time or require way too much setup firing explosions are still one-hit kills and the ammo cap has been increased across the board even with the increased aggression it remains completely possible if not easier now it's a cheese a ton of encounters ducking under rockets and somehow less satisfying but I can't quite put my finger on why Renee the Molotov enemies are harder to dodge now as their explosives are less easily spite with the updated graphics still getting set on fire is fun and there is a small change that works rather well when self fire you now mad dash towards your cursor it threw me off at first but I quickly adjusted to it and then I realized the genius behind it it lets you know subconsciously but when set on fire you have become a toasty human projectile executions are still in the game and each weapon now has its own animation rather than switching back to the SMG it's still kind of humdrum not as gruesome as hatred and it breaks pace postal redux vastly improves the execution mechanic the redrawn maps are pretty good I feel like they've been cleaned a bit and lost some grip they still capture the depressing tone however no more f1 to jump to next stage now you actually need to walk to the exit taking one last glimpse at everything that happened the corpses of enemies the scorch marks left from fire and explosions it's a good time to reflect on all the other time you walked back and forth across the stage looking for that one prick holding you up wait it fix the civilian starring the small points on maps have also been changed combined with the diary entries this makes the whole game feel like a more interlinked series of stages the stages themselves have also been given more interactivity gas pumps now go up in flames with some influence a ton of weapon collision has been removed so we can fire for a good degree of things so in general combat is a lot faster paced and way less still it northward the perspective issues are still intact but overall this change makes the whole game less irritating alongside the old maps special deliveries of course bundled in alongside one new Mac the carnival which is a great stage one of the few to use diegetic music it create probably my favorite memory from my time with this game headed to the stage exit to the repetitive jungle a nice McCobb juxtaposition the gaming sites two stages formerly exclusive to super postal a japan-only edition of the game with tokyo and osaka maps alongside this the game has options for playing the original 16 stage campaign special delivery alone was super postal included or a new extended campaign that changed the two together this is what I played so the last stage is somewhere in Osaka with the dude following at Godzilla's footsteps after the air force base his war logs really stopped making much sense and he doesn't quite question his trip to Nippon so all but one or two things that Redux changes are entirely for the better it's a slightly faster puntilla game I still don't think it's a good game as it's been magically transformed into one the shooting is still a no frills affair the simple act of play was not immersive or rewarding for me plus yes it may be fast forwarded but it was also several stages longer more background up but also more people to kill now walking in at 23 stages in total it does all culminate in a different ending it's a far less impactful but very understandable change given the times the elementary school is being replaced with a dude coming across a funeral bleeding once again to a mental breakdown now it is meant to be read as the dude coming across his own funeral and that causing his breakdown but I took it differently I took it as realizing that people hosting a funeral are likely not infected with a hate plague and trombonist obviously are and basically realizing that he just murdered a ton of innocent people because of a delusion it doesn't make any more sense but I still prefer it so that's the campaign but there is also online co-op none of my friends own it and the one session I did join was unplayable due to lag I always see having played it enough to say this is a problem crippling everyone so obviously at no point during my time at single-player that I think free more people would improve the experience the rampage mode is a bit more my style the score attack mode based around combo kills and varied use of weapons plus the stages get some music to go along with the app it's not bad we're just a little incentivization I'm forced to play fast and furious rather than tactful it makes it a lot more engaging as a game so let's return very briefly to my plan comparison between this and hatred bearing in mind I haven't exactly come away from either game of fan of them what would I recommend if you need some top-down city slaughter well Redux wins out hatreds gameplay is slower and more grounded I feel there is more potential for a fun game in there with some tune-up and a less boring stage design much of my climbing hatred was spent exploiting enemy weaknesses out of need and having very little fun doing so gunning down civilians was a necessity progress but they will follow more on any map that need it so hunting them down wasn't a slog Redux is less realistic faster paced and more about getting [ __ ] dead before it can possibly harm you while I still choose the AI on occasion at times out necessity mostly just out of not wanting to bother to confront enemies and get to the end sooner I could at least make tactical gameplay decisions and occasionally play the game in a fun way the stages are also shorter and much nicer to look at but hunting down civvies is a bit more annoying the amount on any map is set just a bit higher than the percentage you need to kill and there is 100% which in the end was pointless for me but why don't try and get it I haven't got a good answer redox is the game I've gotten the most requests to cover I didn't let that affect my opinion of the game but I can't quite figure out why this of all games are the one I've gotten the most requests for I am appreciative that people enjoy what I make and want my opinions on specific titles and I hope how long it took me to get to this hasn't been annoying you why this one in particular boy I dunno my postal videos have generally got more views than others but this game is on a different continent than too literally there are recognizable elements and the main character is ostensibly the same guy so the same dude but the tone is entirely different the games have different aims that are trying to provide very different experiences I don't regret planet poster 1 better late than never and Redux is a massively improved version more content and what remains from the original is better but I didn't come away a big fan

Channel: Tehsnakerer

Views: 107,423

Rating: 4.9044228 out of 5

Keywords: postal, postal: redux, redux, steam, running with scissors, gameplay, review, PC, rampage, coop

Id: sS-FT-0Byuk

Length: 28min 17sec (1697 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 23 2016