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| - Before Uwe Boll brought us the magnificent masterpiece Postal, there was the notoriously tasteless Postal 2. And before that? 1997's Postal, developed by Running With Scissors. It's arguably one of the most unsettling PC games ever created, and one that attracted a good dose of attention from the Moral Guardians. You play as "The Postal Dude", who believes himself the Only Sane Man, and goes on a bloody rampage, shooting it out with cops and soldiers—and inevitably inflicting a lot of collateral damage along the way.
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| abstract
| - Before Uwe Boll brought us the magnificent masterpiece Postal, there was the notoriously tasteless Postal 2. And before that? 1997's Postal, developed by Running With Scissors. It's arguably one of the most unsettling PC games ever created, and one that attracted a good dose of attention from the Moral Guardians. You play as "The Postal Dude", who believes himself the Only Sane Man, and goes on a bloody rampage, shooting it out with cops and soldiers—and inevitably inflicting a lot of collateral damage along the way. The 2003 sequel Postal 2, doesn't play itself nearly as seriously. The Postal Dude is now married and lives in a trailer park, and the game covers what has to be the weirdest week of his life, as every day the simplest errands become life-or-death battles. (Cashing his paycheck? Robbers invade the bank and he gets caught in the crossfire. Returning a library book? Anti-book protesters set the library on fire with him in it.) There is an expansion pack (Apocalypse Weekend) with its own campaign that covers Saturday and Sunday of The Postal Dude's weirdest week, with new weapons and characters. A popular Game Mod, included in later releases of the game, titled A Week in Paradise backports Apocalypse Weekend's enhancements and additional weapons to the base game, as well as merging the two campaigns and adding some extra content for good measure. The games are not only controversial, but have also been panned by critics, mostly by reviewers who were offended by the game's content, such as Robert Coffey of Computer Gaming World who wrote that "until someone boxes up syphilis and tries to sell it at retail, Postal 2 is the worst product ever foisted upon consumers", a quote that has since been included on the boxes of re-releases. The series as a whole has developed a Love It or Hate It reputation with its mixture of shock value and generally fun, cathartic gameplay. Postal III, which is built on the Source engine, is co-developed by Running With Scissors, TrashMasters Studios, and Russian developer/publisher Akella. It was announced in 2006, and was finally set to be released worldwide via digital distribution on the Steam store Christmas week on December 20, 2011. As per possible mandate by Akella, three retail versions were released in Russia on November 23, 2011. Hard copies and Steam CD Keys are available for purchase on the Running With Scissors online store. It should be noted that the PC version was released unrated due to Akella not wanting to pay for an ESRB rating. The game had to wait until February 17, 2012, to get a rating, and until then, you couldn't actually buy it on Steam. Console versions for both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are to be available at some time in 2012, should RWS find an American publisher. While versions for both Linux and Mac OS X were announced in 2006, those versions are possibly on hold indefinitely.
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