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Postal 3

Despite the fact that they always end up being unbearably awful, I’ve always found myself drawn to the Postal games simply because I’ve always liked their concept in theory: dark satire done in an incredibly politically incorrect way, in which smart commentary on pop culture is subversively hidden under a bunch of seemingly vulgar jokes. Maybe it’s raising expectations a bit high to expect some sort of hilariously funny bit of satire, but Postal games have been around for 15 years now. Surely the team making them has grown at least a little bit in that time.
   
Of course, any hope is put to bed about two minutes into playing the game, when you’re already being given the opportunity to run around peeing on everything you see. That’s the extent of Postal 3’s subversion: the ability to use your urine as a projectile weapon. The game remains as poorly written as ever, consisting of nothing but the laziest attempts at shock comedy this side of a Tucker Max book, and it just bombards you with a never-ending wave of cringe-inducing gags that leave you feeling embarrassed for anyone who could’ve possibly thought they were funny.
   
Unfortunately, unfunny writing in a game isn’t that rare, and it’s something that could possibly be overlooked if the game were any fun to play. Postal 3 is an unfinished, dated mess which frustrates far more often than it entertains. Each game in the Postal series has tackled a new perspective — the first game was a top-down isometric shooter, the second was first-person, and this one does over-the-shoulder third-person, a choice which seems to have been made solely so the game could introduce an incredibly pointless cover mechanic which you will hardly ever use. The entire game seems to have been designed at random, with vague ideas and superfluous mechanics stitched together with no care or thought put into making anything even remotely resembling a cohesive whole.
   
It’s even more of a mess from a technical perspective. The list of problems you are guaranteed to face is gargantuan: the game crashes often; the loading screens are frequent and long; countless bugs and glitches make it feel incredibly unstable; the AI of every other character in the game is distractingly terrible — it just goes on and on. Making things worse is the fact that the game has a self-deprecating sense of humour about these problems, cracking jokes about its own AI problems and weird physics as if being nearly unplayable is part of its charm.
   
I still believe there is a kernel of a good idea in Postal’s concept — I want a genuinely funny, irreverent shooter with a subversive streak. Unfortunately, it’s clear that this series will never be able to deliver anything even close to that successfully. The only joke Postal 3 pulls off is getting you to pay $40 to play it.

Bits & Bytes
   
After numerous delays, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Future Soldier — a futuristic take on the tactical shooter series — will finally be seeing the light of day on May 22 for the 360 and PS3.
 
   
Mel Stefaniuk is a writer who can tell the difference between Mario and Sonic.