Postal 4: No Regerts Review

ign.com:

Maybe I’m supposed to hate Postal 4: No Regerts. Maybe that’s sort of the point. Developer Running With Scissors describes it as a sequel to “the worst game ever,” Postal 2, renowned for its vulgarity and rough edges. If the goal was to make one that’s even worse then that’s certainly been achieved, but that gag doesn’t mean it’s ever fun to actually play. Even for the novelty of a guilty pleasure, like watching a really bad movie for a laugh, Postal 4 only ever disappoints – if I could somehow forgive the corny writing, bad graphics, awful gunplay, and constant bugs, it would still be incredibly difficult to enjoy any game that hard crashes every hour or so. Whether you’re in on the joke or not, there’s nothing on offer here except pain.

Postal 4 bills itself as a satirical open-world shooter that wants to push the limits with a raunchy, over-the-top style and a crass subject matter in the vein of South Park. The main difference is that South Park usually backs up its outrageous ideas with smart writing and some kind of coherent message or meaning behind the madness, while Postal 4 almost never sticks the landing. Its sophomoric, cringe-inducing writing is mostly made up of pointless sexual gags and literal toilet humor, and it all feels like it was spewed out by a fourth grader who just learned their tenth naughty word. There’s one part where you have to unclog a sewer by smacking huge piles of feces with a shovel and another where you visit a vagina-themed amusement park for no discernible reason. It’s embarrassingly juvenile stuff to be sure, but if the dialogue were at least well-written or clever along the way I’d have no problem with that. It isn’t. Instead it’s got all the subtlety and nuance of an enraged ape