Postal Redux Review

Killing for the Sake of Killing

‘Killing for the Sake of Killing’ should be the underlying title of this game. Postal Redux is a HD remake of the classic Postal game. The description of the game says that you control the Postal Dude as he fights to survive in a world gone mad with violence. However, when I play this game, I feel like a psychopath fighting my way through hordes of cops and soldiers. On Steam, one of the common user definitions is a Psychological Horror. That is what the game feels like. I feel like a complete psychopath when I play through Postal Redux. Although this is not my kind of game, I still did enjoy playing it.

SO MUCH BLOOD!

Postal Redux is a very simple game. You simply have a variety of weapons (7 to be exact) plus a few grenades and land mines. Your goal is to run around and shoot everybody who is in your way. Once you have eliminated the hostiles you can move on to the next level. In Rampage mode you rack up kill streaks and get a total score at the end. The controls on PC were very easy to understand right away. You run with WASD and spin and shoot with your mouse. You get a little hit marker when you are able to shoot the person you are looking at. This game was very easy to understand and super easy to play. A few of my friends tried playing it and right away they knew what they were doing.

I was lucky enough to receive a review copy of Postal Redux. The developers told me that they focused more on the Rampage mode than on the campaign. However, once I played the first three Rampage modes, I decided it would be best to try and play through the campaign anyway to see what this game is like. When I started out in Rampage mode I had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. Once I got into the campaign, I still had no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it. I was simply running around and shooting people for no reason. The campaign offers no explanation as to why you are doing what you are doing. It simply hints as to what happened at the very end (but I won’t spoil it for anyone). As I played through the Postal Redux campaign, I had no attachment to any kind of story. I basically just played through each level and killed all the people that were trying to kill me. The entire campaign took me roughly one hour to play through. One of the achievements is to beat the entire campaign with a total play time of 30 minutes or less. So, the campaign can be beaten very quickly.

Ostrich?

There is another weird thing with Postal Redux. On some of the campaign levels, the camera seems to be at a more top down approach than before. In some levels you are looking more at the side of your character and others you are looking at the Postal man’s head. I do not know why this is a thing in the game but it was not appealing. It made the top down levels feel weird and messed with my shooting a little bit. There is also not a lot of variation throughout the game. Once I had played through the campaign and beaten the Rampage levels, there was not a strong desire to play the game again. The Rampage mode does do a great job of making it feel like an arcade. I am constantly trying to figure out how to get a bigger score and rack up more kill streaks. But, once I got a decent score on Rampage and had beaten the campaign, I had no desire to play Postal Redux again. There are 16 achievements in Steam and I got 4 of them. I did not have the desire to try and go and get the rest of them.

Different Camera Angle then the others.

Postal Redux is ranked highly Positive on Steam. People that played the original Postal and like these kinds of games will love Postal Redux. Although this is not my kind of game, I did have a good time playing through it. I feel like it is repetitive and the replay value is low. But, the first time was a lot of fun. With a price of only $15 USD, it might be worth picking it up and trying it out. The developers of Postal Redux have said that they will launch more content for the game later. But at the point it is at right now, it is a decent indie shooter.