As a gamer who loved (and still loves) Postal 2, this game is a sad, broken embarrassment of what should've been.
6 years later, Postal 2 came out, and it too was a hilarious, fun, open-world FPS that never took itself seriously, and had one of the best weapon-sets of any FPS I had ever played. I still play it to this day, and played it quite a bit in anticipation of this installment.
Imagine my surprise when out of nowhere Postal 3 was announced as being released in time for Christmas. I immediately shelled out my $40 plus $15 shipping to get the boxed edition, and almost right after that I experienced the first of many disappointments with this game.
I got an email from Mike Jaret, the game's producer, informing me that there was a massive screw-up with the replication process they used to manufacture the discs, and each and every boxed edition's Disc 1 had a pressing error that resulted in the disc being unable to install the game files. I wrote him back, completely understanding the situation as it wasn't their fault, and asked to be sent the disc anyway, as I could download the remaining game files off Steam once I entered my key. Sadly, the rest of the disappointments I experienced from here on out can totally be blamed on them.
After spending a day and a half having Steam download about 14GB of game data, I was finally able to start it. I was greeted with the usual company splash screens, and then what, honestly, was one of the coolest menu screens. Postal Dude chilling in a recliner, looking at a crappy TV with the menu options. In a way, I kinda appreciate the fact you don't need a high-end gaming rig to play this on decent settings, but that appreciation will wear thin very quickly amid all the glitchy artifacts and random crashes (there isn't a "chance" it will crash...it WILL crash..a LOT).
You start on a bridge with zombies and soldiers, trying to stop you from crossing into town. You barely get through the movement tutorial, and then comes the first of what will seem like a hundred cutscenes, each one poorly built, with your mouse cursor coming along for the ride in every single one.
You get to play with a few introductory weapons, and test out the pre-alpha-quality collision detection. Even peeing in this game sucks now, because you get to pee for all of two seconds before your bladder runs dry. Oh, and good luck fist-fighting anyone, if you manage to hit something, I salute you.
After crossing the bridge, they realize you're a human being (oh yeah, they hammed in some zombies I forgot to mention), and they ask you to guard a button, which starts a total Ren-and-Stimpy situational ripoff for those of us old enough to remember the "History Eraser Button" episode from the show. I wanted to see if the game would actually progress without hitting the button, as the Postal Dude starts complaining that he wants to press it. I quite literally waited a good five minutes and got nowhere, so I hit the button and it finally progressed the game...no wait...it didn't, the game crashed after that.
So after restarting, and waiting through another 4 minutes of crappy load screens filled with "facts" and tips that scream "I'm trying too hard to be funny.", it restarts. Then, with minimal story telling, I'm given a job as a tissue vacuumer (yep) in a sex shop. After filling the vacuum with "used" tissues, an amateur Sarah Palin caricature comes in and start trashing the place with her protester group. You then have to use the Alt-fire to shoot the used tissues at the protesters and shoo them out of the place. Fun right? Not even close.
When the characters talk during the cutscenes, their faces are static with their mouths moving, like they did back in the PSOne days. The voice acting is amateur at best, and the new Postal Dude voice is super annoying.
The shooting gameplay is okay as long as you're using a gun, anything else like melee, thrown weapons and movement is more or less broken. The cover system will actually help get you killed.
RWS really screwed this one up. They had it developed overseas by Akella, and looking at Akella's portfolio, they have a lot of experience and are far from incompetent, so the only ballpark conclusion I can come up with is that RWS couldn't afford to even have it developed properly overseas, so Akella churned out whatever crap they were willing to program with the pittance that RWS was giving them.
The game even makes fun of itself for it's horrible AI, which tells me that they were aware of the crap-job that this game was becoming and decided to roll with it. Some people may find that funny, I however think it's a giant insult to those of us who paid decent money for a game we had been very patiently awaiting since it was promised to us back in 2008.
RWS I think has really lost focus. Their site is now some cheap knockoff "man-o-centric" website, and the Postal series deserved much better treatment than it got with this installment. And while cheap humor is a staple in the Postal series, the previous titles at least had good, functional gameplay to go along with that cheap humor. This game was sold completely on it's humor and self-deprecation, and it failed miserably.
When a game has been in development so long that two of it's main pop-culture humor targets (Bin Laden and Gary Coleman) died in mid-development, this game really shoudl've been buried along with them and started over. RWS has already stated that they can't afford to port console versions, and I hope they really don't. Something tells me this is the end of the Postal series, and it's a sad note, but if this is what we're gonna be fed, then maybe it's time to end it before it gets any worse.