POSTAL 4: No Regerts Gameplay Preview

POSTAL 4: No Regerts is…a POSTAL game. Yes, they still make those and it seems like the game has developed a cult following over the years. For those who haven’t had the privilege of experiencing a POSTAL game, it’s basically a janky GTA-esque game with peak 90’s humor. It honestly feels like a blast from the past. It’s a shame the game feels like it was made in the 90’s as well.

For starters, the game has a no holds barred, unapologetic approach to humor that perviates through the entire game. Think South Park but more crass and less intelligent. The humor is apparent in the cut scenes, dialogue, and even mission design. For example, in the prison warden mission, you catch the warden in what seems like a questionable act and it just turns out he’s polishing his gun. Literal gun, not metaphorical. It did manage to get a chuckle out of me. Not all of the humor hit though and some punchlines will definitely feel like misses depending on your nostalgia factor. It even has Jon St. John as a voice actor, the guy who voiced Duke Nukem. For me, it definitely brought me back to being in high school. Yes I’m old.

As for the game play, it’s an open world sandbox game with missions to complete. You collect a wide variety of weapons and collectables and the game even encourages you to go on killing sprees with timed events where you have to dispatch a number of citizens using a certain weapon. The senseless, gratuitous violence reminded me of the old Jack Thompson law suits. What a time it was to be alive. To keep it short Jack Thompson was a lawyer who claimed that violent video games caused violence in real life. He is disbarred. I think that speaks for itself.

Other than going on murderous rampages in the streets, you can complete jobs in order to pay the bills. You have an assortment of odd jobs throughout the city to complete such as subduing a prison riot, cleaning the sewers, maintaining the quota of catching wild animals on the streets, all with the POSTAL brand of humor. In addition to the missions are random side quests, such as putting out fires, that pop up every now and then.

In all honesty, the game is a decent amount of fun but it does have some major flaws holding it back. The game looks just as dated as the humor. I’m not really one to nitpick graphics but the price tag of $39.99 does seem a bit high for what I’m getting. Secondly, the game is poorly optimized and sluggish. It does run smoothly for the most part but you will run into random crashes and parts in the map where it’ll freeze in order to load the rest of the map. This is quite annoying. The game freezing while loading does break the pacing of the game.

The game is also very janky. Now I appreciate a good amount of jank in the media I consume but this game seems to have a higher quantity than I normally see in games. You go into mission start areas that are empty and then a cut scene will trigger out of nowhere. Sometimes the cut scene won’t trigger or will trigger late so you’re left wondering if you are in the right area to start the mission. This sort of stuff doesn’t really bother me but it will probably make it more difficult for less patient players to get into the game.

Flaws aside, the game is old school fun. You can just go on mindless rampages in the streets. Let the mindless, politically incorrect, and lewd humor wash over you like a warm tidal wave of sewer tea. No regerts.