Postal 3

Deep down we want to like Postal 3. You see, Postal 2 was a fun and healthy companion during our formative years, and we like to think it turned us into the upstanding, sophisticated gentlemen we are today (maybe if we’d played something a bit classier like Civilisation or Rollercoaster Tycoon we’d be writing for the Economist or the Observer, but nooooo). We also –for our sins- believe Uwe Boll’s Postal movie to be the best game to film adaptation ever. Yes, even better than Bloodrayne. It encapsulated perfectly the moral degradation, outrageous sense of humour and gleeful carnage of the game that inspired it. It also featured Verne Troyer’s demise at the hands of an enormous group of horny monkeys, and a massacre at an Auschwitz theme park, replete with wanton child murder and badass 70s cop show music. In our eyes (because we have the mental age of primary school children), it’s worthy of a thousand Oscars.

Imagine our disappointment then, to find that not only was Postal 3 a bit plops, but also rampantly unfunny. Sure it’s self-aware, and takes delight in ripping the piss out of its target audience, but it’s also a bloody mess. It’s been in the works for years yes? So why does it feel like it’s been developed in about 6 months by a bunch of (drunk) coders that spent most of the time masturbating and laughing at internet memes that stopped being funny in late 2008?

Your character Postal Dude needs money, and does a lot of shitty menial jobs that involve doing things like hoovering up semen covered tissues (before firing them at soccer mums), killing cops/hippies, escorting a man in a gimp suit through a mansion while fighting off Paparazzi and salvaging cats with AIDS. Though we applaud such brazen attempts to be vile, they simply aren’t fun, and after Postal Dude comes out with the same tired soundbite for the millionth time you will likely want to nip downstairs for a cup of tea and weep.

Maybe it’s because we’ve grown up and are much more well-adjusted these days, but we didn’t delight in the murder of innocent civilians like we did with its predecessor. Sure it’s still sort of funny chucking a machete at some hag’s braying head, but in the back of our minds we felt a soft twinge of guilt pawing away at our conscience, gently chiding ‘this is why you’ll die alone.’

Rather than a first person marauder, you control postal dude from a 3rd person perspective, like a cut price, slightly more intelligent Marcus Phoenix. As you know, Postal 2 in a way had a monopoly in the ‘open world first person psychopath simulator’ genre. By turning into a run of the mill third person shooter though, Running With Scissors have, what’s the scientific term? Oh yeah… they’ve fucked up. By going third person (it’s level based, not even open world anymore), they’ve thrown their hat in with the likes of, ooooh, let’s see… FUCKING VANQUISH. As you know (or should know) Vanquish is the best shooter ever, so having this clumsy, unfunny barely source-mod worthy game trundle along like a nose picking, Family Guy quote spouting moron is a bit embarrassing. The shooting’s rubbish, the missions are tedious and you’ll emit deflated, impatient sighs as you try and cajole the dumbbell NPC you’re escorting into moving where he’s supposed to.

So no, not even fond memories of Postal 2 or our love for the Postal movie could ever get us to recommend this, which is a shame, as we’d definitely like more games to relentlessly take the piss like this one does. We’d like them to be good at the same time though eh lads? LADS? The game salvages an extra point for having drive-by Segway shootouts though. So no, we can’t totally hate it.

We nearly did though. Sad face.