Postal 4: No Regerts Review – Nothing But Regrets

The Steam web page for open-world first-person shooter Postal 4: No Regerts markets it as, “The long-awaited true sequel to what’s been fondly dubbed as ‘The Worst Game Ever,’ Postal 2!” If developer Running With Scissors’ aim was to stay as much as this legacy and perhaps even outdo itself, then it succeeded with aplomb. Postal 4 is an abysmal online game. It’s mind-numbingly boring, its fight is unenjoyable and lifeless, its humor is unfunny, and it is tormented by myriad technical points, glitches, and crashes. This is a collection that gained traction by courting controversy at a time when pearl-clutching over online game violence was world information. Postal 4 cannot even declare to be problematic, as its bloodshed is notably tame by at this time’s requirements, and any jokes that is perhaps thought-about offensive are too centered on lazy stereotypes to be thought-about noteworthy.Postal 4’s fundamental setup sees the Postal Dude return alongside along with his loyal canine companion, Champ. After taking a pitstop and forgetting to lock their automobile, the pair’s automobile, trailer dwelling, and all of their earthly possessions are stolen, leaving them stranded in conjunction with the street with nowhere to name dwelling. Fortunately, the fictional city of Edensin, Arizona is situated simply over the horizon, so the unlikely duo head there in quest of employment and their stolen gadgets.Much like earlier video games within the collection, you are given a unique set of errands to finish every day, from Monday by means of Friday. These are largely menial duties like altering lightbulbs within the sewer, convincing folks to signal a petition, and taking over the mantle of a jail guard for the day. Others are barely extra uncommon, together with one errand that duties you with launching disillusioned Americans over the Mexican border utilizing a makeshift catapult. The one factor all of those aims share in common–and I am unable to stress that is enough–is that they don’t seem to be enjoyable to interact with in any method, form, or type. This might be intentional in some circumstances, however to what finish? Postal 4 does not provide a satirical critique of capitalism or something like that; the sport is simply designed round boring busywork that proves simpler than any sleeping drugs. Eventually, these odd jobs add increasingly firefights, whether or not you are getting concerned in shootouts with border patrol brokers or an anti-bidet cult.Gallery Combat would add a tinge of pleasure if it weren’t irredeemably dangerous. Enemy AI is the primary wrongdoer hindering Postal 4’s first-person taking pictures, nevertheless it’s removed from the one one. Your foes tend to run towards you in a straight line and instantly overlook you exist, or clump collectively in a gaggle, immobile, ready to be killed. The Postal Dude’s arsenal consists of a well-known assortment of pistols, shotguns, and rifles, none of which really feel satisfying to make use of outdoors of the revolver–because it enables you to dispatch a number of enemies directly like Overwatch’s Cole Cassidy. All of the weapon varieties lack the punch and sense of influence you’d count on, which is partly because of the flaccid sound design, and aiming down sights feels overly clunky and stiff in a method not many shooters do. The boomerang machete and pigeon mine are the one weapons that veer away out of your bog-standard firearms. The former enables you to chop off limbs by chucking a machete that comes again to you, whereas the latter unleashes a swarm of pigeons that can rip aside any close by foes in a feathery fury. The Fournicator sounds prefer it is perhaps outlandish nevertheless it’s basically only a shotgun with 4 barrels.Aside from being dumb and outright damaged at occasions, the AI additionally soaks up bullets, making many of the weapons really feel decidedly weak. Guns just like the M16 alleviate this considerably, however discovering ammunition is nigh-on inconceivable except the enemies you are preventing are utilizing the identical weapon themselves. You should purchase ammo at merchandising machines situated round Edensin, however the sport does not make discovering them simple. The in-game map is terrible, being each cumbersome to navigate and missing in any related info. The merchandising machines aren’t situated on the map; in truth, the one icons that do exist are for retailers that always serve no perform outdoors of being set dressing. It’s additionally uncommon that you will ever end up drowning in money, so buying only a small quantity of ammo will empty your pockets in a rush.As a results of all this, I spent many of the sport utilizing pistols as an alternative of something extra highly effective, and every handgun’s tepidness is simply exacerbated by Postal 4’s behavior of artificially inflating the problem by throwing dozens of enemies at you directly. Dying is inconsequential since you do not lose any progress and may merely run again to the place you had been after respawning, however slowly killing the entire sport’s braindead enemies remains to be a monotonous chore.Outside of operating errands and taking pictures folks, you may spend the remainder of your time traversing the city of Edensin. The map is massive sufficient that getting wherever takes some time, and Postal 4 ensures that getting round is purposefully irritating. You can hop on a mobility scooter to journey barely quicker than the Postal Dude’s operating velocity, however discovering one is not as simple as you may count on. There are loads of mobility scooter rental stations dotted across the map, however hiring one prices $50, which is not an insignificant sum of money. Charging for these autos is very egregious once they normally disappear when you enter a cutscene or depart them alone for too lengthy, so you may spend a lot of your time merely looking for an deserted scooter you possibly can commandeer without spending a dime.To make issues worse, Postal 4 is riddled with technical points, significantly when traversing the open world. It’s an unsightly and dated-looking sport, but even on a robust PC the body price struggles to maintain up. Quick-saving can be a necessity as a result of it continually crashes to desktop. Some of those crashes are fully random, however there are others I may simply replicate. One errand, for instance, takes place in a theme park and duties you with disabling all of its energy bins. I used the sport’s cumbersome platforming to show all of them off with out alerting the gun-toting workers, however the final one was situated midway up a rollercoaster. I assumed that using the ‘coaster was the one method to attain it, however each time I interacted with the cart, the sport would instantly crash. The similar factor occurs with the opposite two rollercoasters within the park. In the top, I resorted to taking pictures the ability field, which then alerted the entire close by enemies. You can feasibly full the sport as a pacifist, nevertheless it’s tough to take action when the non-lethal strategy is damaged.The similar is true throughout your aforementioned shift as a jail guard, as you are given a baton with an elective non-lethal mode when you do not wish to mindlessly kill everybody. I attempted subduing the entire prisoners utilizing this, however in some unspecified time in the future it stopped having an impact, forcing me to change to a deadly possibility as an alternative.One of the extra frequent points happens when getting into a brand new space of the open world. There are loading screens between these areas, and the sport has a behavior of putting you inside a mountain when passing by means of them. The solely method to escape is by reloading a earlier checkpoint, however even this does not all the time work as supposed. On a number of events, I spawned right into a damaged model of the world the place many of the atmosphere had vanished. The solely factor you are able to do on this occasion is maintain reloading till it will definitely decides to work. Even this may not be sufficient, although. At one level I managed to load again into the sport, solely to search out that I had shrunk right down to about two ft tall.There are many extra points apart from these. There was one errand the place the sport broke and would not let me choose up a mission-critical merchandise; on quite a few events bullets will simply cease doing harm; and at one level the sport crashed on the finish of a degree after which locked me contained in the closed-off atmosphere after I loaded again in. It’s a large number, and lots of of those shortcomings have been current all through Postal 4’s tenure on Steam Early Access, with no fixes in sight.Gallery According to the developer, quite a few modifications are being made to enhance efficiency and add options. These vary from new meshes for some characters and subtitles for various languages, to a physics go and improved automobile fashions. Maybe squashing bugs can be on the agenda, however at this level it’s miles too late, contemplating their frequency and severity.Whenever you are not bashing your head in opposition to your keyboard due to Postal 4’s quite a few crashes, you may be doing so due to its terrible makes an attempt at humor. Here’s a fast rundown of the primary subjects Postal 4 finds hilarious: Poop, female and male genitalia, intercourse, animal cruelty, and Mexicans. Now, I take pleasure in darkish humor, and there is loads of bathroom humor that tickles my humorous bone, however that is bottom-of-the-barrel stuff for the bottom widespread denominator. To offer you an instance, “That’s a lot of shit,” is the punchline to seeing a number of shit. Jeff Goldblum already delivered this joke with higher execution 29 years in the past.One errand revolves round hosing away piles of poo to cease a gaggle of Mexicans from utilizing them as a secret ingredient of their tacos. Never thoughts the truth that Mexican meals is wonderful, that is simply unfunny, racist, and trite. There’s one other gag the place some indignant white ladies run over two Mexicans–notice a theme right here?–in their truck, simply to allow them to assault me whereas yelling about cultural appropriation. Obviously, this is not sufficient to even induce a smirk, and is simply outright dangerous. Most of the humor in Postal 4 would nonetheless really feel at dwelling in Postal 2, a sport that got here out in 2002, and it would not have been humorous then both.Even the latest popular culture references within the sport are nonetheless pretty dated, with nods to the likes of Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, and Twin Peaks. There’s one out-of-the-blue boss struggle the place it’s important to kill a Peter Dinklage facsimile who begins by sitting on a Game of Thrones-esque throne that is additionally a rest room. Why Peter Dinklage, you is perhaps asking? Presumably as a result of it is easy to alter his title to “Tinklage.” That, and the truth that the collection has a precedent for making enjoyable of little folks. Somewhat surprisingly, the voice performing is pretty respectable for essentially the most half, particularly contemplating the fabric the solid has to work with.Postal 4: No Regerts is devoid of humor and something near approaching enjoyable or participating mechanics. The solely issues it has in spades are fixed technical points that solely compound the sport’s prolonged guidelines of egregious shortcomings. Running With Scissors may think about this assessment a badge of honor, contemplating that the sport being dangerous is seemingly a part of the gag, however do not for a second assume that Postal 4 even touches the realm of “So bad, it’s good.” There’s nothing redeemable about this sport. It’s a genuinely terrible expertise that needs to be averted in any respect prices.