[Review] Postal 4: No Regerts

Renowned for blending outrageous humour with equally outrageous gameplay, the Postal series has carved a unique niche in gaming culture. Postal 4: No Regerts aims to continue this tradition but stumbles significantly in execution.

It eagerly embraces its anarchic spirit, yet the overall lack of polish alongside questionable design choices detract from its gameplay and humour, leaving much to be desired.

The game puts you in control of ‘The Postal Dude’, the returning series protagonist, who finds himself in the town of Edensin, Arizona, after a thief makes off with his trailer-home and all his possessions. Your job is to find a way to make ends meet and retrieve your stolen vehicle.

Our protagonist is brought to life by four different voice actors, and you have the opportunity to choose who voices the character for the entire game. Each actor delivers great performances that add a layer of entertainment to the experience. Among these, three have voiced ‘The Postal Dude’ in the past, be it in the past entries or in the film adaptation of the first game.  Most of the other main characters are voiced, but they are at best all right, and nothing really stands out. There are also constant lines of dialogue on repeat from main characters and NPCs alike, which gets annoying pretty quickly.

Right from the start of the game, you are bombarded with an information cluster. All at once, you are presented with overwhelming menus, tasks you need to perform, and objectives to complete. The introduction is heavy on reading and practical, straightforward instructions are noticeably absent, making the initial learning curve steeper than necessary. This is only the first stumbling block in a series of perplexing design decisions that continue throughout the game.

The game seems to operate under the assumption that players will instinctively grasp its mechanics, even though it has different controls than games within its own genre. This presumption leads to an experience of trial and error, as players are left to understand the mechanisms to execute actions without adequate guidance. There are many instances where the game requests the player to perform new actions like dropping a bone to lure a dog or holding a gun and an item at the same time, utilising controls that haven’t been introduced. While some instructions are buried in the menu, many are not mentioned at all. As a result, those moments of realisation, “Oh, this is how it’s done”  are too often preceded by confusion and needless complexity.

As a first-person shooter, the gunplay is nothing special, although some guns like the pistol and the shotgun have smooth and accurate handling. Shockingly, there isn’t anything that outlandish about the selection of weapons. The most bizarre weapon you get is a cage of pigeons, which unleashes a flock of pigeons that attack enemies upon release. You are also able to attach a cat at the end of some of your weapons to silence your weapon, which is entertaining, but I would have expected more as the rest of the weapons are your standard military firearms. On the plus side, weapon animations are notably smooth and well-executed.

The town of Edensin is vast but vacant, presenting itself as a sandbox that expects you to create a lot of your own fun with over-the-top mechanics. Yet, it lacks meaningful objectives. There is no sign of compelling narrative threads, or rewarding interactions, and as such the world quickly becomes monotonous.

You spend your time riding mobility scooters through empty spaces, with little to explore or interact with, going from point A to point B. Engagement requires purpose, even in a game centred around anarchic freedom, and here it struggles to provide players with reasons to invest in its world or the consequences of your actions. This coupled with a landscape riddled with bugs, the open world feels more like an unfinished world than a playground of possibilities.

You do, however, come across many NPCs who behave like zombies — walking on the road, slouched, unresponsive. As you drive around, they unpredictably walk out in front of you, offering some chaotic entertainment, which some might find entertaining. While you can engage in crude behaviours like urinating on NPCs, the novelty quickly wears off due to the lack of substantive gameplay elements to support it. When the decision to rely heavily on erratic NPCs, not just as a bug but as a feature, is the shining mechanic of the game that only provides the devilish freedom you come to expect, the NPCs become an annoyance a few hours into the game. Seeing NPCs moving around aimlessly like a headless chicken and hearing the repetitive voiceovers from the surrounding crowd whenever you whip out your gun, quickly gets old.

Some of the game’s more glaring issues are its bugs and inconsistent mission designs. Tasks that should showcase the game’s anarchic fun, like corralling animals, are plagued by poorly programmed NPCs and unresponsive objectives that fail to follow the game’s established logic. Rather than engaging and challenging players’ skills or strategic thinking, these missions often challenge one’s patience. I started running into a ton of issues with bugs and glitches early on in the game. Missions weren’t progressing, and I’d have to use a cheat from the developer on their website to advance to the next chapter. On top of that, anytime you would walk around the map, the game would freeze quite often to load the area you are about to enter, which not only looked displeasing but would sometimes crash whilst attempting to load.

Furthermore, the checkpoint system is severely flawed. I encountered many particularly illustrative moments where, after succumbing to enemy fire and respawning, I was met by the very same enemies that had ended my previous run. This time, however, I was resurrected with minimal health, setting the stage for a never-ending task of trying to escape a situation that felt very punishing. There are many instances where the game heavily disrupts the player’s immersion and progression due to unrefined mechanics, and it is even hard to imagine the fun that could have been, had the game’s mechanics and execution been more polished.

The earlier titles were notable for their blend of dark humour and open-world freedom, allowing players to engage in the game world with a level of unpredictability that was both shocking, amusing, along with offensive. While Postal 4 grapples with the challenges of continuing its traditional vision, deeper scrutiny reveals that not all shortcomings stem from execution alone.

At the heart of the game lies a series of conceptual missteps, ideas that, even if better executed, would likely fall short of delivering a compelling gameplay experience. Central to these issues are the game’s disengaged and uninspired open world, and its missions, which are mundane despite the attempts at extremity. One mission involves going down to the sewers where many homeless people live to unclog pipes. You find out the pipes are filled with huge piles of faeces, and you start digging them out with a shovel. This ‘over-the-top’ task’s novelty wears off very quickly due to repetitive mechanics, predictable outcomes, and a lack of meaningful consequences. The rest of the mission tasks you with changing lightbulbs and turning valves, all of which do nothing to elevate the experience.

The comedy leans too heavily on a narrow range of jokes, primarily of a sexual nature, which mostly fails to hit the comedic mark and feels like a missed opportunity to explore a more varied and impactful comedic narrative. Ultimately, the game’s spirit aligns with the series’ rebellious roots, but fails to deliver a compelling or enjoyable experience.

While its attempts to shock and entertain are evident, the game serves as a reminder that true innovation requires more than just bold ideas. It demands a thoughtful understanding of what makes a game truly engaging. Amidst brief moments of entertainment, Postal 4 feels half-baked. The unpredictability and over-the-top mechanics become quickly overshadowed by their inconsistent execution and a novelty that wears thin, revealing a depthless experience more annoying than enjoyable over time. As it stands, it left me pondering what could have been, had the game’s core concepts been as meticulously crafted as its anarchic aspirations, making it a title that is best left undelivered.