POSTAL 2

Postal 2 (stylized as Postal²) is a first-person shooter video game by Running with Scissors, and it is the sequel to the 1997 game Postal. Both are intentionally highly controversial due to high levels of violence and stereotyping. Unlike its predecessor, Postal 2 is played completely in first-person based on the Unreal Graphics Engine. Due to its graphic nature, Postal 2 has been banned in Australia and several other countries. Scenes of the game can be seen in the music video of the Black Eyed Peas single "Where Is the Love?"

[edit] Plot

The player takes on the role of "The Postal Dude", a tall thin man with a goatee, sunglasses, a blue alien t-shirt, and a long black leather coat. The Postal Dude also wears a Happy Smiley pin on his right lapel and a cross pin on his left one. The Postal Dude lives in a trailer park with his nagging wife (only identified in the credits as 'Postal Dude's Bitch') in the town of Paradise, Arizona.

The game levels are split into days of the week starting Monday and finishing Friday. At the beginning of each day, Dude is given several tasks to accomplish, such as 'Get milk', 'Confess sins', and other seemingly mundane tasks. The purpose of the game is to finish all of the tasks throughout the week, and the player can accomplish these tasks in any way he wishes, be it as civilly or as chaotically as possible (it is possible, if occasionally difficult, to complete most tasks without engaging in battle, or, at least, killing other people). The daily tasks can be accomplished in any order, and the game includes one task that is only activated on a certain day if Dude performs a certain action.

Dude must put up with being flipped the bird, mugged, attacked by protesters, put upon by an obnoxious convenience store owner/terrorist and his patrons who cut before Dude in the "money-line", plus a marching band, a murderous toy mascot named Krotchy, the police and SWAT team, the ATF and the National Guard, a religious cult, savage butchers, psycho Al-Qaeda terrorists, and Gary Coleman, among many other things.

[edit] Gameplay

Interacting with a resident of Paradise

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.

[edit] Comparison with Grand Theft Auto

Like the Grand Theft Auto series, the game aims to be non-linear by allowing Postal Dude to explore the town of Paradise. At first, the Postal Dude can only enter the neighborhood areas directly adjacent to his own neighborhood, but new areas are unlocked as each day of the week passes. However, the local inhabitants also become progressively more violent and heavily armed as the week goes on, and on the final two days of the week, SWAT teams and National Guard squads patrolling Paradise wear heavy body armor and are well-armed. According to the storyline, they are there for a convention and in response to a request for assistance hunting down a spree killer. (It is implied that the killer is Postal Dude, regardless of whether or not he has been killing people during the course of the game.)

Unlike Grand Theft Auto, the game world is not one single large continuous map, but rather several different neighborhood maps broken up by loading zones (which are marked by road signs saying 'Load Zone'). One of the main gameplay complaints about the game upon its initial release was that the loading time for each new map was extremely long, seriously interrupting the flow of gameplay and reducing the motivation for exploring new areas. The vendor-released 1337 patch managed to significantly reduce load times.

Missions work differently than in Grand Theft Auto. Instead of choosing a mission and then carrying it out from the beginning to its end, players are given a series of tasks at the start of each day. They can then complete the tasks in any order they like, as they go along without having to specifically select them or initiate any of the missions.

[edit] Gary Coleman cameos

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 (travel to the local shopping mall to get Gary's autograph). The player can choose to fight and kill Coleman as one of the game's two boss characters or simply have the book signed peacefully (after enduring a long line-up). If the book does get signed, the Dude remarks to Coleman that he really loved him in Facts of Life (a spinoff sitcom which Coleman cameoed in). 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 (various evil Gary Coleman clones also serve as recurring enemies during Postal Dude's constant hallucinations).

[edit] Props

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, other animals present are elephants; 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 bizarre 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 anus (cats can only be used while equipped with a shotgun or assault rifle) as a 'silencer'. Every time a shot is fired, the cat meows in apparent agony, and the gunshot is muffled. After several shots the cat will be killed and 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 (pizza, donuts, fast 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 also severed heads. There were also going to be cows included in the game, but they were left unprogrammed. They did appear in Apocalypse Weekend and the A Week in Paradise modification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_2