POSTAL 4: No Regerts fails to lift the bar in any aspect where it might be deemed a playable game.
I wasn’t even born when the first episode of the Postal series was broadcast in 1997. Unlike Duke Nukem, Postal puts its whole bet on sarcasm and mockery combined with a sense of harshness. Running with Scissors’ initial chapter had been well received by reviewers and players alike. The sequel marked the game’s complete transformation into a 3D environment filled with homes to explore, bizarre objects to uncover and name insane objectives.
It was possible to locate oneself in a parallel reality where all is permitted, and nothing is taken seriously. Postal 2 was developed by the same team a few years after the first game’s release. Edgelord’s hilarity and vulgarity were cranked up while the games’ perspective was replaced with a more traditional FPS. Aside from doing terrible things to NPCs, there was no logic or purpose within that game.
Unfortunately, POSTAL 4: No Regerts gets off to a shaky start once again as a true sequel to Postal 2 in papers. Running with Scissors began development in the fourth chapter even before the terrible coincidence of the Postal 3. The game starts with a warning indicating that it is not advised for children, individuals dealing with psychosis, and the list.
The game’s basic structure remains the same as in Postal 2: the game is split into five days, with the Postal Dude being challenged to do progressively brave things in every one of them. While developing POSTAL 4: No Regerts, the developers announced that the game would be less buggy and more polished. After being in the early access for a while, the game is finally released, except that it isn’t the fact at all.
Those who are acquainted with the previous Postal games should view this release as a legitimate sequel to Postal 2. Immediately after the imaginary town of Paradise is destroyed by nuclear weapons, the Postal Dude treks along a desert road until he reaches the city of Edensin, in the state of Arizona. From this point on, the action begins as Postal Dude attempts to rebuild his life. You are dumped in a canyon with a group of destitute junkies, where you discover a pen and a cardboard box.
A note written on the cardboard by Postal Dude states that he’s searching for a job and is willing to do sexual activities if necessary. If he exhibits his cardboard sign proposal to enough people, you’ll ultimately be assigned to a hiring agency, which will put in action the fundamental foundation of POSTAL 4. Many activities in the form of missions are found throughout town for Postal Dude, ranging from aid with regular municipal activities such as animal control to bidet installation.
The gameplay in POSTAL 4: No Regerts is a little sloppy most of the time due to its faulty physics or bizarre AI behavior. To be quite honest, the missions are pretty ordinary. Each objective is instead about the journey to achieve them. The way the mission plays out is still a significant aspect of the game, and it seems like it has been missed here. This is in direct contrast to the gameplay of Postal 2, in which everyday activities take weird twists and grow into circumstances you never anticipated being in.
These tasks will act as primary and secondary missions depending on the circumstances. From Monday through Friday, every day of the week, you are assigned a new set of errands to accomplish. These include fixing sewage lightbulbs, signing petitions, etc. He goes on to the following day after all of the chores have been performed.
This town looks vibrant and full of individuals, each of whom may walk freely and engage in their own activities. The player can freely wander throughout the city in POSTAL 4: No Regerts. The player may travel everywhere, including inside homes and rummaging for valuable objects and ingredients to cook with, climbing roofs and pet animals, and completing objectives that do not need the player to follow a predetermined sequence. A peaceful approach may be used, or you can use force to go through the adventure, using weapons, brutality, and provocations to get what you want. Even though many approaches to completing tasks, you will almost always favor the speedier and more brutal one.
A parody open-world shooter in the spirit of South Park, POSTAL 4: No Regerts pitches itself as an open-world shooter that seeks to push the boundaries with a filthy and a vulgar topic. Its content primarily consists of useless lewd remarks and literal toilet humor, and everything seems as if they are meant to be humorous. The game has two sections: one in which you must unclog a drain by slapping large piles of excrement with a shovel, and another in which you must visit an amusement park for no apparent reason.
Of course, these are shamefully infantile topics, but if the conversation was at the very least well-written or innovative in its approach, I would have no objections. The answer is no. Most of the jokes in POSTAL 4 are good enough to earn a laugh. Much of it is simply a clumsy and apparent mockery. There is no such thing as a filter or an idiotic joke.
Since you’re allowed to move about the city from the beginning of the game, you’ll unavoidably get distracted as you travel toward your assignments. As you learn about new mechanics and uncover new weapons, goods, and interactable items against the NPCs in whatever inventive ways your twisted imagination can devise, you are free to do anything you want. Even if the fights were not virtually intolerable, there would still be some thrill.
The primary source of difficulty in POSTAL 4 is the game’s AI, although it is by no means the only one. Often, the enemies will rush at you in a single direction and then completely conveniently ignore that you are there, or they will gather together in a pack, unmoving, ready to be killed.
A couple of throwables, a few ordinary guns and melee weapons, and the classic gas can make up the armament, including the new Splurt’N’Squirt water gun. Attempting to aim down sights seems extremely clumsy and inflexible in a manner we are used to in a usual FPS game. All the weaponry lacks the weight and feeling of impact you would anticipate. You can still use fire to spill gasoline on the ground. A few things may be combined to create bizarre effects, and the drug usage feature, which grants passive powers, including a drink that boosts your pee stream’s power, is still in place at POSTAL 4: No Regerts.
To make matters worse, the game’s graphics are dreadful throughout. The visuals themselves are downright outdated. When there were no problems or crashes for an unusually long period, efficiency concerns nevertheless indicated that it ran poorly. Even with my PC exceeding the recommended specifications, the frame rate fails to sustain 50 frames per second, with apparent reductions in the 20-30 frames per second range for no explicable reason when entering houses and buildings.
There is no sense of unity in the game environment; for example, while traveling from one district to another, you might be stopped by an unseen wall while waiting for another district to fully load. The game also has the visual flair of an old shooter. POSTAL 4: No Regerts is a game that hardly runs at all. With crashes and hangs regularly, the game hardly runs smoothly at all. It pauses and loses frames too frequently with a constant slew of bizarre visual abnormalities. Despite being on the early access for two years, the game should never have been released in the first place until the graphical issues were sorted.
POSTAL 4 was so shaky that I was anxious, constantly worrying about what would go tragically wrong next. The game totally lacks fun and anything somewhat near entertaining or exciting features. The only thing it has in plenty is technical glitches that only exacerbate the game’s long list of severe flaws. While it stays faithful to the elements that made it popular among its fans, it fails to lift the bar in any aspect where it might be deemed a playable game.
The humor is amateurish and uninteresting, and the technical part is entirely out of line. The only thing that brought a smile to my face was listening to Jon St. John’s voice. It is difficult to suggest POSTAL 4: No Regerts, even to the most diehard fans of this series, due to so many technical issues with the game.
Looking for more reviews on the latest games? Check GamesCreed’s game reviews section for more.
