"Sometimes they come back" - this dusty phrase, which is considered to be a cliché of gamers, nevertheless perfectly describes Postal 4: No Regerts. In this case, in the face of a seemingly new game from Friv5Online Games Studio, the cult second part returned, one of the most hooligan, punk, cruel and at the same time satirical Poki games in history.
After Friv5Online highly publicized collaboration with Akella ended in scandal, divorce, and the release of the disastrous third installment in 2011 (with which the original writers had virtually nothing to do with), Vince Desi, longtime RWS leader , had few options for further action. Forget and start all over again? Perhaps, but it takes resources, talent and money. So he chose to forget and start over the old way.
First of all, we decided to forget Postal 3 as a nightmare - and in 2015, in the Postal 2: Paradise Lost add-on, the events of the third part really turned into a nightmare. A year later, an HD remaster of the original was released - Postal: Redux . To work on both projects, Vince did not involve new professional developers (some veterans left the studio), but modders from among the fans, which was reflected in the technical quality. This is especially true of Postal 2: Paradise Lost , which suffered from bugs in the same way as the Dude suffered from urinary incontinence.
The same principle was used for the fourth part, which was released in early access in 2019. In fact, this is a remake of Postal 2, ported to the Unreal Engine 4 engine (however, it was crookedly transferred, but more on that later). Here, not only the same ideas and the same structure of the narrative, broken down into days of the week, but even the scripts and assets have largely moved from the second part. And it catches the eye.
Well, in general, we got the same odorous mixture of toilet humor and cruelty hypertrophied to the level of a parody, where no one interferes with defusing a passerby or chopping off his head with a shovel, urinating on anything and anyone and even put out a fire with a directed jet. Here you can use your right leg as a universal lockpick, and a cat as a muffler on the barrel.
It is clear that the plot is formally new. It wasn’t enough for Dude, whose hometown turned into radioactive dust, and his trailer was stolen from the parking lot while he was urinating. And now our hero in one purple robe and berets, together with the faithful dog Champ, is forced to go to the nearest city to earn money. But the essence of this has not changed much. Every new day we complete orders to earn money. Moreover, many of them are already familiar from past issues of Postal - for example, we run through the streets and ask passers-by to sign another crazy petition.
The Dude starts by cleaning the sewers, screwing in light bulbs, catching homeless animals and prisoners who escaped through our own fault, and issuing fines. Then you have to become a game tester, disrupt political debates, sabotage the amusement park on Cooney Island (yes, the theme is exactly what you think about it), work for the local mafia and even for a cheerful mayor who is obsessed with installing bidets all over the city.
Urine, toilets and everything connected with it is, as expected, a separate fad. By the way, we ourselves decide how it will look… Well, you understand.
But what has changed from this? Well, yes, now you can shoot and burn with napalm demonstrators who advocate good old toilet paper, as well as knock down artificial vaginas with a jet of vigorous urine in a shooting range on Cooney Island, where aggressive ladies walk in a costume of female genitals (there are also characters in a penis costume - equality is respected ). Funny? Well, I don’t know, I laughed my own on this topic in Postal 2 . You can, of course, grin now, but it's like watching Beavis and Butthead and Bloodhound Gang clips at 46. Fun, but not for long.
However, this is all a matter of tastes, which we will not argue about here - I am sure that many will like it all. But there are also objective things. In his video preview of the early alpha version , Elman Huseynov said that we basically watched it in vain. And among other things, he complained about the lack of content, about the fact that there were no police officers, and the houses were just empty blank boxes.
In the full version, of course, everything was brought in, including the police, who, if they kill passers-by in front of them, begin to hunt for the Dude. But, again, it didn't really change much. Residents still wander aimlessly from side to side along the roads along which no one but us drives - the city is just a scenery for shooting and mocking passers-by. The game design is still as outdated and primitive as the shooter gameplay comes from the zero.
Many will say that this is normal for a game with such a frostbitten concept. In addition, there are fun new weapons, like a scythe on a chain (it also doubles as a grappling hook), water pistols, flamethrowers and a cage with carnivorous pigeons - in places this makes the process of destroying everyone around really funny and juicy. Races on small cars also look good - in general, there are interesting situations here.
But, firstly, I would still like a conceptual development, as well as, as an option, a sharper and more relevant satire. But Vince Desi and his comrades prefer to fool around and hooligans just for the sake of hooliganism. Also, of course, a position, but for me this is just a joke repeated twice.
And secondly, its technical implementation interferes with enjoying Postal 4. The AI is stupid and buggy - the enemies, having received nuts from us, can simply freeze to the spot. Once I got cats stuck, which I had to lure to the place of trapping animals. I had to kill the tailed ones in order to throw the corpses into the car - I was not even surprised that they were counted to me.
In addition, there is terrible optimization here - wild fps drawdowns happen even for owners of powerful machines, and on those that are weaker, the game can even turn into a continuous “slow-mo”. Long reloads on “seamless” locations constantly happen, and crashes to the desktop are not uncommon. In addition, there is no translation into Russian. In general, it seems that the authors did Postal 4 in approximately the same state in which the Dude constantly resides - they ate pizza and chocolate donuts and drank beer to fill the bladder with what you can pour everything around in this game.
It is clear that much of what we criticize other Poki games for in Postal 4: No Regerts can be called an artistic device - this applies to both primitive shooter mechanics and the “shooting gallery city”. And many, I'm sure, will get their dose of pleasure and nostalgia. But I am very upset by the technical execution and the lack of fresh ideas. It remains to be hoped that the authors will keep their promise and will constantly polish and improve the game after the release. Although the future of the series is still seen as not very fun.
Pros: in fact, this is the good old Postal 2, but on Unreal Engine 4; sometimes funny; there are cool new types of weapons; expressive dude's voice acting.
Cons: terrible technical implementation; lack of fresh ideas; bugged AI.