by: Justin Amirkhani

I was a young, immature kid when I played Postal II. My rampant addiction to illegal piracy at the time frequently led to me playing a lot of games I probably shouldn't have, but Postal II was one of the few games I really shouldn't have played. Giving a developing mind the ability to shove a cat's ass on the end of a shotgun as a makeshift silencer is one of those things that have the potential to really mess a person up. I'm not blaming Postal II for the eventual degeneracy of my adulthood, but it's marked as one of the first times I experienced the absolute freedom of insanity…and loved it.

You can't measure a Postal game by the same metrics that you judge most titles; it just doesn't fit the industry mold. Running with Scissors has always sat on the fringes of the game development community, happily producing their own brand of irresponsibly sociopathic content with little regard for expectations of build quality or design. Like a GWAR concert, it doesn't matter if the content itself is subpar as long as it has the ability to genuinely shock and appall.

Going at Postal III with this attitude, I was okay with the game's irrational switch to a third-person perspective, its reliance on a counterintuitive morality system, and the removal of the open-exploration concept that defined its predecessor. If the game could still make me disquieted with disgust, I'd be willing to look past all of the ill-advised design choices.

Unfortunately though, whether from years of browsing gore threads on 4chan or my ever expanding psychotic fantasies, I have become desensitized to the level of shock value Postal III delivers. Something changed in the years since Postal II, and the prospect of firing semen-coated paper towels at hockey moms in an effort to make them vomit while I piss on their faces doesn't really disturb me the way it would have eight years ago.

A more refined individual might still find this brand of humor appalling, but shock value comes from challenging expectations and in many ways Postal III takes a step back from its previous incarnation in terms of just how offensive it's willing to be. I don't know what could have been added short of rape simulation that would still surprise me, but I was bracing for a debilitating punch to the balls and my thigh was hit instead.

Without the ability to make me feel sick and dissolute, my critique of the game has to fall back on conventional scales where Postal as a series has never fared well. It revels in bad design choices and lacks the production value to be considered anything more than a beta. When you're forced to look past the mask of absurdity, it's clear that Postal III is unstable and broken - just not in the ways you want.