Even in High on Life, where you have the opportunity to shoot an annoying kid, you have to then speak to his mother as your weapon prattles on about how what you did was messed up. In the Yakuza series, you can bash goons over the head with bicycles, but your protagonist is also kind to old ladies and considerate enough to deliver toilet paper to folks with tummy aches. (Shepherd isn’t going to allow you to murder his whole crew just for the lolz.) In the years since Postal 2, players have come to expect more nuanced characters with goals, feelings, and motives. Story-driven games like Mass Effect or The Witcher 3 change depending on the choices you make, and force you to consider the consequences of your bad deeds. The game is a meta-commentary on daily life, showing us that we all have the choice to be a person who contributes positively to society or a destructive monster. The game gives you a choice: you can play as a pacifist, standing in line at the bank and spending your money on milk, or you can be a psychopathic murderer who takes everything you want. The story takes place during a mundane week, completing tasks like getting some milk or cashing a check. Postal 2 is a little bit deeper than that, but only a little. “The idea was, let's make a game about a guy who basically goes postal and have it be really fun and fast, action-paced." “The idea was to go out and make the most outrageous video game we could and a game we would like to play ourselves,” founder and current CEO of RWS Vince Desi told Tucson Weekly in 2002, after the release of the first Postal. Like most violent games, you get a rocket launcher. Just this month, the developers released a free update to Postal 2 to add some modern bug fixes and Steam Deck compatibility. In the two decades since its launch, Postal has spawned four expansions and two sequels - which have some of the lowest scores of all time on Metacritic. Ultimately, the law was struck down, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing that it infringed on their first amendment rights. In 2011, Supreme Court justices were forced to play Postal 2 in order to rule on a 2005 California law banning the sale of violent video games to children. It was banned in Australia, Sweden, New Zealand, and Germany. Postal 2 instantly became the target of political discourse, due to its over-the-top action, racism, and off-color jokes. In today’s market, AO or Adults Only-rated games mainly exist in the Hentai section of Steam, where getting too much blowback can cause a game to get pulled. Made in an era before games were made by teams of hundreds with pristine PR departments, Postal 2 is just too obscene. But without Postal 2 and that era of dude-bro games, we’d never have come to that conclusion. The gaming industry has moved past over-the-top action and stereotypes, choosing not to alienate huge swaths of its audience just for the memes. Though fondly remembered by some, these games are looked back at with fear and cringe. Postal 2 has a legacy in the same vein as Custer's Revenge or BMX XXX, both titles that were more offensive than they were fun. In retrospect, it’s the last hurrah of a bygone era when games were primarily marketed toward edgy young men, complete with misogynistic mascots like Duke Nukem and Leisure Suit Larry. As the decades have gone by, gaming has become more inclusive. It sold more than five million copies at the time, but Postal 2 could never be made today. A gimp suit in Postal 2 because the game held nothing back.
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