The original Postal 2 was more of an antisocial behavior simulator than an actual first person shooter. Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend attempts to provide a much more linear and traditional first person shooter experience. Therein lies the biggest flaw in what is mostly a mediocre expansion pack. This could have been a great expansion pack if it had added the new areas and weapons to the core game and continued the sandbox/Grand Theft Auto-style mission-based play. Instead, the new weapons can’t be imported into the old game, and you can’t visit all of the old areas of Paradise. In fact, the game is almost completely linear now, and the city itself only has one map. This one map ties together all of your various missions, which only open one at a time. This is a huge disappointment, and it shows that perhaps Running With Scissors misunderstood what made Postal 2 enjoyable. This game also reuses some of the maps a few times and has tons of backtracking. As an open-ended humorous game, Postal 2 is unique and fun. As a traditional mission-based first person shooter, it’s mediocre, and can’t compete with the likes of Half-Life 2 or Far Cry. You start off this game on Saturday in the hospital. Your first mission has you escaping from the hospital while you avoid all sorts of hallucinatory Gary Colemans who mostly just throw grenades at you. Overall, this opening sequence is long and boring, which is representative of most of the game. Some of the game’s missions have you trudging for what seems like forever through repetitive and dull environments. The worst offender is an abysmal military base level that has you fighting national guard troops for about an hour. This level also has almost no health packs in it and is impossibly and annoyingly difficult. The game adds a scythe and a sledge hammer, both of which can do a lot of damage. The best new weapon, however, is the machete, which is probably the highlight of the expansion pack. With the alt-fire button, you can throw it and it will boomerang back to you. This means that you can hack a few people’s legs off by throwing the machete and watching it boomerang around through a few people. Sometimes you can throw the machete and cut off a guy’s leg, and then watch the thing bounce back off of a wall and cut off the guy’s arm. This portion of the game is surprisingly polished and does a lot to take the game’s sick premise even further. This is an example of a mechanic that would have been an excellent import to the core game, but once again, it wasn’t. Some mission goals and some of the enemies that you fight are unique and zany, like the whirlwind psycho kitties and the Turet’s Zombies. Like the core game, Apocalypse Weekend can be funny when it wants to be. One mission, which seems like a gigantic slam on Postal 2 publisher Whiptail Interactive, is quite amusing. Or rather, I should say, will be amusing to you if you thought that the first game was funny. The humor is pretty juvenile, but still clever at times. The laughs are fewer and further between though, and they deserve a better game than this. When Postal 2 came out in 2003, its production values were average to above-average. This expansion pack has no discernable improvements in the graphics or audio, which makes them forgettable. There is a disappointing lack of new objects and character models and skins in this game. There is also a disappointing lack of new sound bites for NPC’s and The Postal Dude. The greatest redeeming factor of this expansion pack is that it costs only 20 bucks. For this, you get an experience that lasts 6-8 hours, which is not bad for the cheap price. You’re going to have to keep your expectations low when you buy this game though. Instead of making the original game better, Running with Scissors put together a bunch of mediocre levels with a couple of laughs spread here and there. Apocalypse Weekend has a few bright spots, but it’s mostly a sub-par waste of time.
Other Helpful Reviews for Postal 2: Apocalypse Weekend
My god, the game just gets better and better. A straight-on continuation from the last, incredible game. I can't get enough of it. I eagerly await the next in the series. My god, this is a must-have for any PC library.... Read Full Review
the game has alot of humor and gore wich makes a great budget game and a funny story it now has movies in grainy and ok graphics. the game use's a 2003 unreal engine so the game cannot compare to games like half-life 2 ... Read Full Review
