izigame.me

I was pleasently surprised by this game. The initial impression of Postal 2 was poor. I thought in the first hour of playing: "what the heck did I buy, this is a sandbox about a guy walking around a city and killing people and stealing for no reason". I thought the graphics was outdated and also the gameplay and atmosphere, because it all resonates with how the world was in the beginning of the 2000s, and now many things are passe' or discovered as fake news. Like the afgan jihadi terrorist who supposedly destroyed the twin towers. But that is another subject.
But the thing is...the more you play, the more this game surprises you, and the more you enjoy the incredible comedy, humor and surreal atmosphere.
Basically, this game lets you live 5 days ( + 2 additional one-linear action days with linear enemies ) in a small surreal town called Paradise. You wake up every morning and your wife sends you to do a few tasks. Theoretically, you don't have to kill anybody if you don't want to. But in that case, the game will be relatively short. Each task is relatively quick to do- for example: take some money from the bank, buy some milk, go confess at the cathedral, get an autogram from Gary Coleman, pickup the laundry, pay the traffic ticket, return a book to the library etc.....
The great thing about this game is how it surprises you with out of the ordinary events: like when you go to the bank a robbery starts and you are in the middle of a shootout, when you go to the cathedral muslim jihadist make a terrorist attack, when you go to the library some protestors invade and attack everyone, when you go to the pakistani store you discover it has a terrorist nest in the upper floor. In most cases you have to defend yourself, so 1) you are actually forced to have some weapons beforehand (to steal from someone), and 2) while you defend yourself against the attackers in the chaos that ensues you often end up hitting/killing the police agents and civilians bystanders as well, so then everybody attacks you and the killing spree can start.
The town name is Paradise, but so many tragic events happen - that is just an example of the paradoxical contrasts in this game.
There are so many comedy moments. Like the parade downtown that gets bombed by Bin Laden, the anti-gaming protestors that shout "games are bad, they make you mad!". One of the task is to make as many civilians sign a petition to "make congressman play violent games". Also just interacting and listening to people in the streets is fun. For example, you can piss on them and then they throw up. It's difficult to describe how humorous this game is to those who didn't play it.
The game uses a "wanted" level system like in GTA. The more you do violence, the more you are wanted by police and army forces so they will send more forces to counter you. You can just hide and wait out untill the wanted level dissappears.
The town is fairly big, it has many parts, and each new day some new urban subdivisions are added. You can just walk around like in a peaceful relaxed way or you can kill everybody in each subdivision every day, or you can just take out a few -it's all up to you. All people respawn after you leave and re-enter each subdivision.
The game is good at presenting the atmosphere from the beginning of the 2000's, and throws many pop culture references at you. Also the music is very good. It has many quality soundtracks, one for each urban subdivision or even for some specific place. The arcade stand music for example is legendary. There are so many soundtracks that became famous and that people listen at youtube, in order to quickly relive some Postal 2 atmosphere (when they don't feel like beginning another playthrough).
Some described Postal 2 as a funny sandbox. I would also say it is a surreal experience. It's very difficult to describe it's uniqueness. I can certainly recommend everybody to try it and see if you can resonate with this cult game.