Now, I want to say up front that, since this post represents me in my official capacity as a game reviewer for ChristCenteredGamer, I shall strive to keep this as family-friendly as possible, except where I must describe matters pertinent to Postal 4. I'm publishing it here since this is NOT an official CCG post, though I have informed my employers about it and made clear it's just my two cents, which it is.
That in mind, here is my review of Postal 4:
https://www.christcenteredgamer.com/reviews/pc-mac/8049-postal-4-no-regerts-pc
And here is IGN's:
https://www.ign.com/articles/postal-4-no-regerts-review
That all said and done, I want to cover some things I believe the writer of the IGN review got wrong or missed the point of.
1. First off, let me admit up front I enjoyed Postal 2 and still do. As a game it's hilarious and like Postal 4 started out janky and unstable and now is a polished jewel. My IGN colleague seems to gloss over the fact Postal games have never been all that stable when they were first released but RWS will spend literal years polishing it up till it's a lot better.
They played it on early access. So did I. The RELEASE version was markedly more stable. The EA version was much worse. I reviewed the release version and had maybe three crashes, all of which had little effect on being able to jump back in and resume playing. The IGN review was apparently done on the EA builds.
Also, the developers released a long message on release saying "we know this is still kinda janky, but we got all the things we intended to finish the base game in, please send us further bug reports so we can polish it further and we plan to add more stuff over time once we do that". As of this writing, their 1.0.5 update has proven the Running With Scissors developers as good as their word.
2. The IGN guy was apparently expecting Postal 4 to have intelligent social commentary and a plot deeper than any Postal fan (like me) expects. Postal games have the literary depth of a business card, and that's the point because they are from the perspective (since 2 at least) of a guy having an absolutely miserable week where he can't get anything done without the world trying to kill him in some ludicrous way for it. Whether you "go postal" or try to get to the end of the week doing all of the errands without killing everything is up to you.
Now, I write for a Christian oriented games review site, IGN is secular, but I went into my review fully accepting the Postal series is one that revolves around toilet humor and sex jokes and was able to describe it all in the moral section of my review without, to be frank, whining about it. The Postal series has always been juvenile in that sense, and I find it amusing I'm a Christian yet I got less worked up than this guy who spends a fair portion of his review seething about it.
They also neglect to mention several things they found pointless actually DO have a point in game. The errand where you clean out a sewer is to earn some money, which is explained prior because The Postal Dude is broke and needs the cash. The "vagina-themed" park you visit is part of a job to sabotage it on behalf of someone who wants the park closed down for their own reasons, you are not visiting it for no reason at all.
3. As for the overall structure of the plot, it's what any Postal fan expects: The Postal Dude having a terrible week trying to do mundane things to get to the end of said week. Postal 2 had the same formula, and Postal 4 is no different. My IGN colleague again seems to have expected more, which is surprising, because when I beat Postal 2 it too had a largely plotless progression based on a loose structure of errands that had little connection to each other aside from the fact they gave your character something to do for each game day. They also complain about a certain twist at the end, which is also weird because the twist in question is supposed to be ridiculous. Even The Dude himself isn't all that impressed and calls out its cliched nature.
They again complain it doesn't try to tell me a "message" or have "social commentary". Yet again, if you are playing a Postal game since 2 for anything resembling actual societal commentary that deep and meaningful, you are missing the point. It is NOT Grand Theft Auto with its "crime pays short term but ultimately sucks long-term" message since the III-based games, nor does it seriously try to be.
The complaints about the jokes falling flat are a bit redundant and ironic. My IGN colleague seemed offended at how low-brow the humor was, apparently expecting it to be a lot wittier than it was. Me, when I play a Postal game, I expect it to be crude on every level and to not care about trying to be clever about it. Your main character is crack-smoking white trash trying to simply survive a world that is like a demented crazy parody of ours with or without going postal just to cope. Trying to make more sense out of it or expecting anything deeper is like jumping into a kiddy pool and being disappointed there is no deep end.
4. Their complaints about the combat definitely reveal it was reviewed based on the early access and not the release build. In the release build, I found combat fairly polished on the level of Postal 2 in its current Steam incarnation circa 2022. Enemies were certainly not total idiots (if anything, they came off a bit smarter than their Postal 2 counterparts), and even without using the goofier options, combat worked just fine for me. Again, the Release build (1.0) is the version I reviewed, and I had no issues with any of the combat options, silly or mundane.
Their comments about using your own urine as a weapon (a Postal trademark) are nonsense. I never had any moment in Postal 4 I specifically had to use my urine as a weapon. Even in Postal 2 there was a grand total of ONCE you had to urinate on something, your dad's grave, but it was never required to be used. In both 2 and 4 your urine could be used to douse yourself if you were on fire, but using it on people in either game was mostly for grossout comedy/distraction purposes.
The comments about Edensin offering little to do also reveal more ignorance. Postal 2 didn't offer a ton to do if you played it as non violently as possible, and even if you did go full psychopath you mostly were just having fun unleashing your inner lunatic. The Release build of Edensin actually offers more to do than Postal 2 (without what was added and/or restored by mods in 2) had by default. I'll grant them a few areas off the beaten track felt empty, but I expect later builds will fill in those blanks or we'll get mod support to do so. Besides, as the developers plainly stated on release, they only made sure the core game experience was in place on the 1.0 build, more would be added over time.
5. In conclusion, my IGN colleague's review is terribly off the mark and clearly reflects the Early Access builds and not the release version. As for myself, I would, strictly as a game, recommend Postal 4 as is as opposed to their review which treats it like Postal III all over again (and believe me, it's not).
