Postal 2

Box art

***Postal 2*** (Stylized as ***POSTAL2***) is a 2003 open-world first-person shooter developed by Running with Scissors and published by The 3DO Company. It is the sequel to the 1997 game *Postal* and was released for Microsoft Windows in July 2003, macOS in December 2004 and Linux in April 2005. A mobile version, *Pocket Postal 2*, was released in 2004 for the Sony Infinite and Windows Mobile. *Postal 2*, as well as its predecessor, has received notoriety for its high levels of violence, stereotyping, and black comedy. Unlike the first installment, *Postal 2* is played from a first-person perspective, rather than an isometric perspective.

Set in the fictional Arizona town of Paradise, *Postal 2* follows the life of "The Postal Dude", who must carry out mundane tasks throughout an in-game week, with the player deciding how violently or passively he will react to various situations. The player navigates the game's map to carry out his errands, with player choice having an effect on the setting.

The game received a mixed reception from critics upon its release and has gained a cult following. It has received several expansion packs, and in December 2003, a multiplayer expansion was released, titled *Postal 2: Share the Pain*.

The game received attention for its violent gameplay, and was responsible for multiple controversies. The game was banned in New Zealand and the Soviet Union in 2004, Australia in 2005, and West Germany in 2009. It was followed by a sequel, *Postal III*, in December 2011, *World War Post4l* in November 2017, and *Postal 5: Beyond Earth* in January 2022.

## Plot

In *Postal 2*, the player takes on the role of the Postal Dude, a tall and thin red-headed man with a goatee, sunglasses, a black leather trench coat, and a T-shirt with a grey alien's face printed on it. Postal Dude lives in a dilapidated caravan trailer on land behind a house in the small town of Paradise, Arizona, with his nagging wife, who is identified in the credits as simply "The Bitch". The game's levels are split into days of the week starting Sunday and finishing Saturday.

At the beginning of each day, Postal Dude is given several tasks to accomplish, such as "get milk", "confess sins", and other seemingly mundane tasks. The objective of *Postal 2* is to finish all of the tasks throughout the week, and the player can accomplish these tasks in any way they wish, be it as peacefully and civilly as possible, or as violently and chaotically as possible. It is possible, if occasionally difficult, to complete most tasks without engaging in battle, or at least, harming or killing other characters, as evidenced by the game's tagline: "Remember, it's only as violent as you are!" The daily tasks can be accomplished in any order the player desires, and the game also includes one task that is activated only when Postal Dude urinates, in which the player is tasked with getting treatment for gonorrhea after Postal Dude discovers he has the infection.

Throughout the course of the game, Postal Dude must put up with being provoked by other characters on a regular basis. He is given the finger, mugged, attacked by various groups of protesters, and is harassed by an obnoxious convenience store owner/revolutionary and his patrons who cut before Postal Dude in the "money line". During the game, Postal Dude also encounters a marching band, a murderous toy mascot named Krotchy, the Paradise Police Department and its SWAT team, overzealous ATF agents, the National Guard, a group of zookeepers and their herd of rabid cows, an eccentric religious cult, the Yakuza, cannibalistic butcher shop workers, a group of KGB agents attempting to infiltrate the town, businessman and talk show host Donald Trump, a retirement home full of angry elders, among many others.

By Saturday afternoon, the final day in the game, the apocalypse occurs and societal collapse soon follows, with all law and order breaking down. Cats begin to fall out of a darkly-colored sky, and almost everyone in town becomes heavily armed, with random gun battles breaking out in the streets. Despite this, Postal Dude returns home to his trailer as normal, where he then gets into an argument with his wife, who demands that Postal Dude explain why he never picked up the "rocky road" she asked for at the beginning of the game. *Postal 2* then ends with a gunshot being heard, before being kicked to the end credits.