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(More customer reviews)Postal was an extremely controversial game when Ripcord Games released it back in 1997. Those people who want to ban everything under the sun were quite up in arms - figuratively, of course, not to mention ironically - about it. Postal supposedly corrupted the minds of the young, created violent criminals by inuring them to acts of cold-blooded murder, yada yada yada. All of those protests, of course, resulted in higher sales - which was Ripcord's marketing plan all along. These "ban everything under the sun" people just don't get it. The vast majority of us can actually separate fantasy from reality; we don't even come close to equating a game with real life. And Postal could not possibly be blamed for corrupting kids' minds - there's a great big M for Mature Audiences rating right on the box. If a child were to play this game, the blame would have to fall on the parents, not the software maker - but of course, a lot of parents won't accept the responsibility of actually raising their children when it's so much easier to just let them run wild and then blame society for their problems.
The funny thing about Postal is that, even back in 1997, the graphics were incredibly basic (almost anachronistic), the game was incredibly simple to master, and the whole thing could be played in one sitting. Despite all of this, I loved the game then and I love it now - and I love it for the reasons the critics hated it. It's hilarious. You play a guy who has gone Postal, and your only objective is to kill (with a pretty good range of increasingly destructive weapons) as many people as possible in a number of different settings - your yard, the junkyard, the farm, the construction site, etc. Cops and paramilitary types will try to stop and kill you, while a number of innocent civilians find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. You don't have to kill civilians to accomplish your objectives, but who can resist unleashing a few grenades in the midst of a marching band and then mowing the band members down as they run away in panic screaming "He's going Postal?" You don't just kill and move on, by the way. A lot of victims don't die immediately, so they'll be crawling around on the ground begging for mercy. It's up to you to let them die slowly or put them out of their misery, execution-style. If all the killing is more than you can take, you also have the option of pushing the suicide button (yelling "I regret nothing" as you shoot yourself in the head).
The strength of Postal is really the concept, not the gameplay. It's a short, incredibly easy game (although you can choose from 10 different skill levels) with relatively poor graphics, so you're probably not going to enjoy it unless you really buy into the violent concept. I still enjoy playing this game all these years after its release (and it does run in Windows XP without a hitch, by the way), but I can't say the gameplay in and of itself was ever all that impressive. Postal is the gaming equivalent of watching a good, low-budget horror film. It looks cheap, the special effects aren't really all that special, and yes, a lot of imaginary people die, but you can't help but enjoy the whole experience. And, when you're done, you walk away the same completely sane person you were when you sat down, with nary a compulsion to go out and do the violent things depicted on the screen.
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