This video was originally released on the 16th of October 2020, it was added to the website on the 4th of April 2025.
Postal 2 is one of my personal favourite games ever. It is perfect for causing mindless carnage and it is one of the most tightly crafted experiences in the FPS genre out right now. If intentional or not, Postal 2 combines combat, exploration and NPC behaviour incredibly well, causing the game to be endlessly enjoyable for some people, like myself!
I am a massive Postal fan and many of my friends are too! I played Postal 2 for maybe hundreds of hours, have gifted a LOT of copies of Postal 1, 2 and REDUX and I even bought the Postal 20th Anniversary collection, which even includes the black sheep of the franchise, Postal 3. So naturally, when I saw the announcement of Postal 4, I just had to buy the game! I was the first person to stream the game on YouTube and after roughly a year of development, I am ready to share some much needed criticism regarding the development of this title.
The first impressions I had of Postal 4 were rather positive, yet the excitement of experiencing Postal 4, the sequel to a franchise I love and garnering over 24 thousand views for the Postal 4 stream, definitely clouded my judgement for a bit of time.
After some reevaluation it became blatantly clear that Postal 4 is incredibly flawed.
THE PURPOSE #
Before I present my points to you, I want to make something clear. Running With Scissors, I have a lot of respect for you. Your studio survived for so long in a BRUTAL market only few companies can survive in. You are responsible for creating one of my favourite videogames ever. This article is not meant to be an insult directed towards you, rather a dissection and comparison from a fan that cares about the franchise and about what will happen to Postal 4 in the future.
Of course you do not have to listen or publicly respond, this is just me sharing my opinion about your product. I understand that it is unfinished and I also acknowledge that it takes a considerable amount of time to create and polish a video game. With that being said, please try to engage this analysis with an open mind. I would also be happy to get in touch with you privately to specifically detail what could be improved in Postal 4. Thanks, I hope you enjoy it.
THE CORE #
Many of the core features that one would expect from a Postal game are there. Shooting, melee, kicking and urination. The gunplay is a step up from Postal 2. The sounds are better and animations are rather nice. In addition to those core mechanics we have something new! Now the player can drive around in the world with vehicles, a great feature which must have been inspired by Postal 3. On paper the core mechanics seem good enough, because they are. It is nothing more than just a slight combination of Postal 2 and Postal 3 mechanics. There is not a real evolution in design, no real expansion in what Postal could be. At this point and maybe even in the future, I would just prefer to play the second game in the series instead of the fourth entry. The mechanics do not do enough to differentiate themselves from earlier titles. I expected Running with Scissors to extrapolate the best bits from Postal 2 and 3 to combine them and add something on top of that foundation.
The Postal 2 formula could work well with mechanics from different genres. RWS could potentially turn the game into an immersive sim. You could argue that Postal 2 already is one due to the many simulations the player can abuse to gain an advantage, so why not double down on this? The Postal 2 formula could also work if you incorporated a needs system like in the Sims. Of course a lot of generic NPCs are spawned into the world, but when taking a look at Postal 2, some NPCs are hand placed in their homes. With a needs system, those NPCs would seek out to accomplish some daily goals, just like the Postal Dude. Go and buy some groceries, using the restrooms, maybe even cooking something. Those two examples could help the player to ground themself more into the world and it would open up some gameplay possibilities. What would happen if you locked an NPC into their home? What about sabotaging the kitchen by pouring gasoline everywhere? Could you make an NPC go crazy to the point of them snapping? Postal 4 could be so much more, but RWS are playing it safe.
THE ERRANDS #
Errands in Postal 4 tend to be a bit more insane than in Postal 2. Instead of letting the player uncover the absurd happenings taking place in Edensin slowly over time, the Dude immediately goes on to collecting cats and dogs to be used as ingredients for a cook. On Tuesday the Dude also gets kidnapped by the Mexican cartel or something to help them shoot Americans over the border to Mexico.
Postal 2 handled errands differently. It put the player into situations which actively tried to provoke a violent response. The tasks are mundane everyday tasks which mostly, due to the fault of the player or not, descend into chaos. It is a different approach, which I would have liked to see in Postal 4.
It is not necessarily a bad thing that RWS is trying their hand at full blown insanity like they previously attempted with Postal 3. Similar to Postal 3, the missions by themselves are alright, but the execution of the core elements in the game is flawed. The main problem with Postal 4 is not really the combat, or the movement or the NPCs, although severely underdeveloped, it is Edensin itself.
THE WORLD #
Bigger is always better, or is it?
The world of Postal 4, Edensin, is incredibly uncompressed in its design. You might wonder what I mean when I use the word “compression”. If you take a look at other games which mastered their worlds, you can see that they try to capture a digital microcosm of human civilization. Grand Theft Auto 4 with its sprawling concrete jungle, Arkham Asylum and it’s scary representation of a hostile and irrational environment and lastly Postal 2 which simulates life in a small remote town. The connection between those three games are highly compressed maps. Postal 2 is nowhere near as big as a village, but the game uses its small size to its advantage to let the player explore their environment in detail. Arkham Asylum almost feels like an open world, despite it being a conglomerate of corridors and rooms, connected by a hubworld. Grand Theft Auto 4 also is incredibly downsized if you take a good look at the environment. The streets aren’t as wide as they should be in a big city. City blocks and buildings are miniscule in comparison to real environments too. Driving from one end to the other in this city also does not take much time at all. The game FEELS like it takes place in a mega city without sharing the same dimensions.
The same thing could not be said about Postal 4. One of its biggest flaws is the uncompressed environment the game takes place in. The space is gigantic but it is not even filled with interesting scenery or happenings. Vegetation and buildings almost seem to have been placed without proper consideration for the most part. Interesting patterns, like the circular building complexes in Mexico, have been reused too many times to be truly interesting. Another thing that becomes a big problem, is the vehicles the dude can use. The mobility scooters are nowhere near fast enough or the streets busy enough, to make driving around in Edensin fun. Driving from one end of the map to the other is annoying and devoid of any joy. Even worse, the chance for the mobility scooter to fall over and being rendered useless is very high! So have fun walking for 5 to 10 minutes to the next part of the map.
DESIGN COMPARISON #
How could these problems be fixed? It would not be easy since Running With Scissors would need to redesign the entirety of the open world, but it definitely is possible. All they need to do is take a look at games that have mastered their worlds. Keeping it focused on the Postal games, there are two games which stand out. Postal 2 which made the world highly interactive and managed to make the place feel lived in and then Postal 3 which in many cases blows every other game in the franchise out of the water in terms of level design and art direction.
So Postal 3 did something right? Yes it did! Undeniably, the core gameplay of the title is highly flawed, mostly because the game has been pushed out despite it needing more time and money to be fully realised. The game should have been cancelled, but yet here it is. Not everything about Postal 3 is bad though. The core might be rotten but some parts are rather enjoyable. One of them being the environments. Akella mastered the depiction of Postal 3’s Catharsis through an interesting mix of elevation, shapes and building styles, which all fit together perfectly like a jigsaw puzzle. The environments are not only nice to look at, but feel like they serve a purpose or solve a problem, thus making the city feel lived in. Buildings occasionally feature garden areas, have minimal yet realistic indoor decoration and thanks to Akella understanding the benefits of the Source Engine, the environments are filled with interactive physics objects.
Postal 4 is void of interesting open world design. The gigantic empty space is nowhere near filled and even if it was, the game would most likely suffer from the limitation of not having all buildings be enterable. There are glimpses of good design! The sewers are alright and flow well from one task to another and the inside of the prison also looks a bit more interesting than the majority of the game. The game would highly benefit from a serious downsizing. If Running With Scissors cut down the map size to a quarter of its original scope, they would have a much better chance at filling the empty space with interesting buildings to explore.
After a year in development I was shocked to find that the lighting still looked bad, especially for indoor environments. Many areas in Postal 4 could be fixed instantaneously if the lighting was just better! If RWS takes a look at Postal 3 in the lighting department too, the level designers could learn a lot from how Akella lit the scenes. The source engine mostly utilized static lighting, so the placement of light sources had to be thought out well. Most indoor scenes are naturally lit by light flooding into the buildings from outside. There is no environment in Postal 4 which has been carefully lit. Indoor areas look like the walls are emitting light by themselves and the outdoor environments also look rather unnatural. Maybe the colours are too saturated.
ATTITUDE #
The brand image of Running With Scissors seems to consist of “we dont give a damn, we do what we want, POSTAL 3 SUCKS!” I just hope that RWS will be able to see faults in their own products and be able to rectify those issues. Many fans and arguably Running With Scissors themselves use the Early Alpha stage of the game as a shield, explaining away certain faults, repeatedly stating that the game is unfinished. Don’t get me wrong, I understand what the Early Access program on Steam is for, but I cannot help but be annoyed at the fact that after a year in development, not much has changed in terms of core gameplay design, character models and lighting. Where did the money from the many Early Access sales go? Was new staff hired? What exactly is happening behind the scenes? I don’t know, but I can’t say that I am particularly happy about the progress Running With Scissors made here.
RECEPTION #
What is baffling is the many positive reviews Postal 4 received. The fan community behind Running With Scissors is passionate and loyal and that is cool! Yet it gets harder and harder over time to take “but its early access” excuses seriously. I personally expected quicker progress on the game’s development and less focus on superficial mechanics and excessive bug fixes.
Despite fans stating that Postal 4 is just like Postal 2 and make fun of the black sheep in the series, the reality is that Postal 4 is shaping up to be a sub standard game in the series if the many problems aren’t ironed out soon. If there is a time to change anything, it is now! The later problems are being dealt with, the harder it will be to rectify.
The announcement of Postal Brain Damaged also was a bit of a mixed bag for me. The game looks interesting and more finished than Postal 4 itself, but why hand over a spin off to another developer studio before Postal 4 is even finished? I just don’t understand.
Lastly, I would be lying if I said the price was right. Postal 4 does not deserve the 25 dollar price tag it possesses right now. There are far more indie games out there -finished or not- you could buy for 20 dollars or less right now, which offer much more value and fun factor. Adding 5 dollars per implemented day to the game also is a problematic model. Is the Tuesday update worth 5 dollars? No. Sure the cinematics look nice and the missions are functional, but the Mexico environment has just as much polish as Edensin itself. Which is not good.
RECAP #
To recap; please take another good look at the previous games you have created or designed. But also try and think about what could differentiate Postal 4 from the other titles in the series. All Postal 4 needs is to be an ok clone of Postal 2. But do you want Postal 4 to be just that?
I appreciate that you acknowledge how certain aspects of the game are, but then also try to rectify the issues efficiently and quickly. It is only a matter of time until people get annoyed. If it takes one year to finish one day, how long will it take to fully flesh out the open world and mission specific environments? I do not want to know. Maybe the studio should upscale its workforce, or the scope of the game should be drastically reduced.
With all this being said, I hope this criticism will be useful for the development of Postal 4. I want to see the game succeed, if I didn’t I would not have made this article. Thank you for taking my concerns into consideration and I wish you all the best in the development of Postal 4.