This video was originally released on the 5th of May 2022, it was added to the website on the 4th of April 2025.
Running With Scissors gained the trust and good will of their followers by washing their hands clean of any wrongdoing relating to Postal 3 even disowning it as a Postal game altogether, and by continuously updating and supporting Postal 2 after its release on Steam. The game was overhauled by Running With Scissors, mostly by incorporating popular user created content into the Steam release of Postal 2. There also have been tweaks and even an entire expansion DLC which have been created by Running With Scissors itself, the studio now being partially composed of previous Postal 2 mod creators.
Postal 2 became one of the highest rated games on Steam of all time and the DLC Paradise Lost was quite popular, but despite the newfound worldwide and domestic popularity the studio received, Running With Scissors was facing financial troubles.
Postal Redux, the remake of the first Postal game, was generally received well by fans of the original title, but it didn’t sell well on PC or the Nintendo Switch.
The Postal XX pack, was a limited edition Collection of Postal games, yet copies of it are still sold for a reduced price to this day, which indicates that the sales did not go well.
Suddenly, one day Postal 4 gets abruptly announced and put on Steam, with Running With Scissors explaining later that this announcement was a desperation move in order to rake in more funds to keep the studio afloat without having to resort to crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter.
Thanks to the goodwill Running With Scissors earned from their followers, many red flags were looked past by fans including myself.
I am not saying buy the game now, I am just saying if you do trust Running with Scissors, if you are a fan, if you wanna support them, buy the game. If you are not a fan, if you don’t really know anything about the developers and if you want to, y’know, support the game, maybe buy POSTAL 2 instead or POSTAL Redux, y’know, games they already made that you don’t own because that’s also giving them money and they need the money, they need all the money they can get.
The Postal series is appreciated by many for being outrageous and allowing players to commit atrocities in game that would result in multiple life sentences if committed in reality. I am a big proponent of games that allow the players to be as violent as they wanted. This is another element fans love about Postal 2 specifically, the game is only as violent as you are.
When I made my critique video on Postal 4 the Tuesday update came out which I played at the time. The excitement of finally experiencing the next Postal game wore off and what I was left with was concern. So I decided to create my video and put it out there sending it to RWS.
So here we are again. It has been over a year and a half since I uploaded my critique of Postal 4, and roughly two and a half years since the release of the game into Early Access on Steam. I professed that I would be taking another look into Postal 4 after hitting 1.0 and hearing that the game was set to release on April 20th rekindled my interest for the project, yet it was impossible for me to stay optimistic. My perception of what Postal 4 is and could be was marred by my previous experiences with the game and by the conduct displayed from Running With Scissors. Back in 2020 I was afraid that RWS were using Early Access as a shield to deflect criticism, I was worried that the core foundation of the game was broken and it should have been a priority to get right and that Postal 4 was merely trying to become a clone of Postal 2, a game that mastered AI interactions and world design. At the time Postal 4 couldn’t even be a good Postal 2 copycat, but surely after many updates the game must have improved!
Let us cut the crap. Postal 4 was a red flag since the day it was released into Early Access. It is yet another example of how disastrous the lack of quality control on digital storefronts really is. The game was bought by thousands of naive fans, like myself, out of loyalty and the promise of a good product later on in its development cycle. Those are not good reasons to justify buying a product, even an unfinished one. And I learned that the hard way. The game was sold through hype and brand loyalty and I am complicit in having aided RWS in marketing the game and justifying the broken state it was released in by streaming the initial release of Postal 4 to my viewers and perpetrating the mindset of excusing shortcomings on the promise that they would be fixed later. I want to apologise for that. I never want to let that happen again.
I think it’s a bit different because there the deal in my opinion is like, “hey, we’re making this game, we need funding! you help us fund the game, meanwhile you get the game at a reduced price” so I think that POSTAL 4, once it’s finished, maybe it’s going to cost 40 bucks! Why 40? I think the game will be worth 40 bucks, it will be worth much more than it is worth now.
I don’t recommend anyone that expects anything near a finished game to buy this game right now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying buy the game now, I am just saying if you do trust Running with Scissors, if you are a fan, if you wanna support them, buy the game.
The Sequel to the worst game ever. The Postal Fudge Pack. Slightly better than boxed Syphilis! Those were once phrases used to satirise critics who did not understand what Postal was about, angry politicians who fought to get Postal banned nationwide in the US and it was also an act of embracement regarding the silliness of Postal 2. But now Running With Scissors apparently couldn’t care enough to deliver a finished product, because they would “rather get high” or something along those lines. Many fans also seem to have the impression that previous titles like Postal 2, are far worse than they actually are and I think that is a result of continuous conditioning conducted by Running With Scissors. Remember guys, the game was not only in Early Access, but JANKY Early Access after all! Don’t ever expect any quality from Running With Scissors! Why? Well, the game was in Early Access bro, of course it sucked. Well the game left Early Access recently, so it must be a better experience. It is about time we take a look at the 1.0 release.
The Game - Overview #
It is hard to find nice things to say about this game. Is having pretty cool gun animations a quality that makes a game playable? Is writing filled with poop jokes and mind numbing plot progression commendable? Is the overreliance of badly implemented Dynamic Lighting and Screen Space Reflections good? Is the amateurish level design anything to write home about? How about the overly simplistic mission design paired with broken scripting and game breaking issues? After only playing through Monday and Tuesday without any cheats whatsoever, I then started using speed cheats and after losing all my items after a hard crash on Wednesday I also had to use an all item cheat to get an arsenal back in order to complete the Kunny Island mission due to the game spawning me back into the mission with a wiped inventory. Even mission related items were wiped, which resulted in me having to skip Wednesday altogether in order to play the other days of the week. Honestly, I should not have bothered. Postal 4 is void of polish and I could not find enjoyment in it.
The only positive things I can say about this game is that whoever is responsible for the weapons might as well be involved in AAA projects as they are skilled animators and the guys who worked on the user interface and various 2D graphical assets ranging from animated icons to static graphics are incredibly skilled in graphic design and are rather good artists. The talent is there, but RWS are not using their skills accordingly and that is sad to see.
Let us explore the game further by first delving into one of the more important aspects of a Postal game, which would be the design of the world. Edensin is big. For quite a few players it is too big and sadly both building and population density are sparse. It takes a long time to get from point A to point B and while even Postal 2 had some problems with its world design, those problems mostly consisted of not knowing where to go as Paradise felt a little bit like a labyrinth in certain parts of the town; I still have problems trying to find my way to the church for instance. Paradise was small, but managed to achieve the feel of a reactive, crime ridden town. Edensin however does not even feel like a town. How buildings have been placed since the beginning of the project make the place feel like a conglomerate of different little settlements which are connected by roads. Paradise was easy to navigate through and the environments felt like they served a purpose and made sense. The Dude wakes up and goes over to the arcade, then stops by Lucky Ganesh and then goes to the mall. Edensin lacks these interesting places and a common starting point. While a police station, a mall and small stores exist throughout the town, you cannot really do much with them, nor are those places interesting from a gameplay perspective or visually distinct enough to differentiate themselves from the rest of the game. The mall in Paradise is a big area which is entirely different to the industrial complex, which is even more different when compared to the bank district. Edensin, and Mexico are rather similar, despite featuring different NPCs and structures. In the end Mexico, just like Edensin, is just a conglomerate of different small settlements which happen to be connected by roads in the middle of a canyon landscape.
For interior locations the black sheep of the series managed to impress. Postal 3’s Catharsis featured lived in feeling environments with cosy, southern looking architecture, compact winding streets and an appropriate number of pedestrians walking around town. The Source engine not being capable of reproducing dynamic light sources at the time, meant that Trashmasters needed to utilise baked lighting technologies in order to make the game look good. Outdoor and indoor environments in Catharsis consistently looked great, due to the lighting being placed with intention and needing to be baked into the textures.
Environments in Edensin cannot compare to Catharsis or Paradise. Interiors pretty much all look unfinished. Light often leaks through the roofs illuminating the upper parts of some walls, while the Ambient Occlusion battles against the light, further disjointing the visuals of the game. Overall, the game has massive problems with art direction. While the background scenery can look almost painterly and feature a realistic blue-ish tint in the distance, trees, NPCs and Buildings mostly stick out like a sore thumb. It seems as if Global Illumination was turned on, but nothing else happened after that. The game does not play with lights, and does not have any design in terms of lighting for the most part. Due to Running With Scissors not using baked lighting technologies, and due to them not understanding how dynamic lighting should be incorporated into the game, the outdoors and indoor environments do not come across as believable. By the way, when looking at the architecture of Edensin, I do not get reminded of the rural southern United States, if anything many buildings would fit into a suburb right outside of a city up north. Really, despite the vegetation and dusty environments, the architecture of Paradise and Catharsis are far more consistent in representing southern aesthetics.
Coming back to the lighting, we can see many issues. Dynamic lights, just like the ambient occlusion are proximity based and fade in when walking into an area. The transitions are obvious and jarring. Windows feature a horrifying mixture of ugly blue-ish translucency, broken Screen Space Reflections, and on top of that cube map reflections at times. The best designed areas of the game are either seemingly unaltered store bought assets with store bought enemy rats, or designed one off environments with broken or uninspired lighting as usual.
The overworld has other issues. Running With Scissors cannot get level streaming to work in the Unreal Engine for some reason, so they resorted to using incredibly long unstable loading times to load into areas instead. A friend of mine and I experienced crashing on load over and over again trying to enter certain areas, which made some days incompletable for us. Either through a hotfix, or through luck we got past those issues. It gets worse. Many buildings cannot be entered and have fully rendered interiors. Other places like the area that lazily rips off Fallout New Vegas features big buildings with fully modelled interiors which seem to be rendered at all times, reducing performance even more.
Performance wise the game is abysmal. The game seems to suffer from memory leaks as the game appears to be running worse and worse as the runtime increases. Microstutters, lag spikes, instability, all in a game which looks like someone’s first Unity project.
NPCs are ugly, have broken AI and don’t even feature any disabled states which Postal 2 already possesses.
Cinematics are ok animation wise. Both the 2D animated ones and the 3D animations, but they do not save Postal 4 from mind numbing writing and eye sore inducing visuals.
The third person perspective just does not work. Let us compare the third person camera of Postal 4 to the one of the previous main title in the series. Postal 3 does not have a good third person perspective. It is floaty, awkward and very far from precise. It is ok as Postal 3 features a complete animation set for any action you might want to commit to. Melee combat is a pain but ultimately can work consistently enough despite bad hit registration. The third person camera is functional. It’s not good but at least it works. In Postal 4 a majority of necessary animations do not exist in third person, enemy AI changes when switching back and forth between first person and third person views, making it harder for melee fighting enemies like Sewer rats to hit the player, hitting anything with melee weapons seems nigh impossible, movement in third person looks like absolute shit and some weapons are absolutely broken in third person too. Besides, in third person melee weapons are broken and don’t reproduce impact sounds on walls. Before you even suggest that the third person perspective is an afterthought no one cares about, remember that RWS are intending on releasing a Coop mode for Postal 4. This means that RWS have to nail the third person animations. Besides, if the third person experience is shit because it’s an afterthought, it shouldn’t exist in the first place.
In the sound department the game is an utter failure. The main three voice talents of the game, Rick Hunter, Corey Cruise and John Saint John all did a decent job at voicing the dude, but beyond that the sound design of the game has many issues. The other voice talents are largely forgettable. Most sounds seem to be reused sounds from Postal 2 and Postal 3 which is incredibly lazy and how a lot of music and SFX have been implemented into the environment also seems quite amateurish.
So what else is there to say? The situation is looking grim, really. The game’s only little accomplishments are neat guns and neat UI and 2D art. That is it. Criticism during Early Access wasn’t taken to heart, no progress whatsoever has been made in bettering the world of Postal 4 or getting certain necessary technologies working, like lighting and level streaming. The game is nowhere near finished, and what is absolutely hilarious is that one of the lead designers of the game, a person known as MarphitimusBlackimus on YouTube, wrote this on my previous critique on the game kind of somewhat acknowledging my critique but ultimately dismissing it:
Most of these issues are already keenly known as the game is still in development, as is persistently stated in the corner. The demand for new content and optimization far outweighs the requests to polish the core mechanics, so you are in the great minority in that regard. The core mechanics will, of course, be focused on later because they’re nowhere near done to begin with. And Brain Damaged has no effect on POSTAL 4’s development.
This response irked me for a long time. Let us break this down.
Most of these issues are already keenly known as the game is still in development, as is persistently stated in the corner.
I am not a stranger to the Early Access model, and I criticised the game in order for you guys to be able to better it while you still could. Now you have shipped a game you claim to be complete and it would be a pain in the ass to throw out pretty much all levels you have and redesign them from the ground up while also redoing mission scripting. There is no way you are going to make big changes now, as those changes would be way too expensive and laborious past 1.0. My point also was to highlight that you are hiding behind the Early Access label, which you flawlessly broadcasted once again writing that comment.
The demand for new content and optimization far outweighs the requests to polish the core mechanics, so you are in the great minority in that regard.
Early Access exists for a game studio to get more funding in order to finish the game. How you structure what you do first and last is of course up to you, but it shouldn’t matter what the fans want in a game right now for you to be able to work those issues out. Maybe figuring out the core of the game and finalising the open world while developing the game would have taken a year or two longer to finish the game, but at least you would have a better world map, ironed out core mechanics, and maybe even the Coop mode you plan to implement post 1.0. Speaking of a finished game, am I right? You don’t even have any additional options for the game ready and instead decided to keep them greyed out in the menu. Funny.
The core mechanics will, of course, be focused on later because they’re nowhere near done to begin with.
Well that was very clearly a lie as the core of the game seemingly has not improved by an iota before it was released as a finished product.
And Brain Damaged has no effect on POSTAL 4’s development.
You clearly don’t understand why I mentioned Postal Brain Damaged. I was annoyed at the fact that a third party studio was contracted to work on a Postal game after Running With Scissors had such seemingly horrible experiences with outsourcing. Frankly, maybe it would have been better if that game studio aided Running With Scissors in making a better Postal 4 instead; They clearly know how to design levels, create fun gameplay and how to use the Unreal Engine.
My criticism has 100% reached the developers, but sadly my advice fell on deaf ears one and a half years ago. Now many problems are arguably unfixable, as it would take too much time and effort to truly make Postal 4 great.
I have other problems with Postal 4. For one, the fan reception and how people see and review the game. Most positive reviews of Postal 4 feature little insight or any form of commentary from the reviewer who only played the game for 1 to 5 hours on average, writing something along the lines of “The game is just like Postal 2 and Postal 3 sucks” yada yada yada. So basically most reviewers seem to blindly advertise a game which they do not even play, but because they are loyal fans they absolutely have to defend the game made by their favourite studio. Funnily enough one of the most accurate reviews of Postal 4 on the internet was conducted by IGN.
Everything Travis Northup is saying is absolutely reasonable and accurate. But the fans seem to disagree, essentially making fun of the review and talking down on the reviewer, despite him being a person who previously played Postal 2 and even enjoyed it. Such a massive negative reaction for an honest review is quite disheartening.
Other reviewers who also dislike the game seem to give Postal 4 some big passes. Here are some statements from GmanLives.
Yeah, it is kinda hard to really criticise these POSTAL games for being sloppy and janky. Because for a lot of people that’s really what makes them so endearing, I know it’s definitely been the case for those last couple of games, which I think really seem to ride that line on being so bad that they’re good.
POSTAL 4, again, definitely teeters a lot in both directions but also to the point that it really doesn’t feel like a full release at times…
Why is he being so lenient? To contrast this niceness, here are some harsh critiques relating to the GTA trilogy Definitive Edition, especially relating to the visuals of the games.
This whole release has just been a bit of a mess, to the point that they’ve even had to pull the PC version down to sort out some issues with the Rockstar Launcher.
Not the best start to what should’ve been a great trip down memory lane for a lot of people and an easy introduction to the original trilogy for others.
You don’t need to have spent a great deal of time in any of these games to see that something has gone horribly wrong here with the remaster, because all of these elements from the billboards, the storefronts and the signs, through to most importantly the character models, look like they’ve been slapped together by someone who wouldn’t give a flying fuck about the end result.
This remake or remaster or whatever the fuck I’m supposed to be calling it runs on the Unreal Engine 4, which in comparison is about the most generic engine in recent years, and to me it’s always one that’s blatantly obvious when it’s being used. There’s just always the same looking water, reflection and lighting effects every time.
Worth A Buy, a reviewer especially known for his brutally honest opinionated critiques, also seems to be letting Postal 4 off the hook a little bit.
Now speaking of how the game ran, it’s nothing special to look at but after tweaking a little bit the game ran great for me, well, that’s not quite right… It had a few frame drops now and then, not a lot but I had a few…
These guys both seem to be Postal fans who are disappointed about the state Postal 4 was released in, but I think their reviews have been written, or presented in a way to present certain realities about the game in a nicer way, or in the case of the GmanLives review it was said that it can be hard to criticise the game fairly as fans like jankiness. Both reviews also completely failed to mention the ridiculously expensive price tag that was slapped onto Postal 4. I always was in opposition to the escalating prices for each major update in Early Access. I will demonstrate why.
This is Blade and Sorcery. This game only costs 20 Euros and it is updated relatively frequently. This is an Early Access game and the price always stood at 20 Euros as far as I am aware. The game has its own issues, but it is polished in most regards, features incredibly fun gameplay and even got massive gameplay updates which improve the game even further! This game undercuts Postal 4’s price by roughly 13 euros, while featuring a better executed gameworld, innovative and thought out gameplay and much better performance. The game is rated as Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam for these reasons.
This is People Playground, a game that costs about 8 Euros. It is a ragdoll sandbox game in which the player can experiment with weapons, blood transfusions, building contraptions and of course killing or injuring your ragdolls. The game doesn’t feature a story mode, or any form of campaign, so the fun the player has is derived entirely from player created interactions. The game was accurately priced for the amount of content it offers. While the game is relatively simple, the mechanics have been designed incredibly well, many options are there to explore in this sandbox, to the point where they might even become a little bit overwhelming. The game also features a Steam Workshop that allows players to download contraptions and modifications from other players. The game is rated as Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam and undercuts Postal 4’s price by 25 Euros.
This is Madness Project Nexus, a game that was in development for many years by a small indie development team. It was a highly anticipated sequel, or reimagining, of a Newgrounds Flash game that harbours the same name and in many ways it shows how Early Access Indie game development can go right. It is a product of crowdfunding and allowing only a limited number of people to purchase early builds at a reduced price with limited marketing before the game was officially released. The game never was available for purchase on Steam, but people could buy a key of the game on the developers website. Project Nexus costs about 21 Euros and it is filled to the brim with content with a story mode campaign and an arena campaign, both featuring well thought out level design and fun combat mechanics. At the time I played the game during release it had many performance issues, but they did not deter me from playing the game as I found the gameplay to be fun. Madness Project Nexus is rated as Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam and undercuts Postal 4’s price by 12 Euros.
This is Timberborn, a city building game that is currently in development and sold in Early Access with a 21 Euro price tag. Timberborn is about Beavers building a Beaver society, it is a cute city building game with a focus on climate shifts which drastically affect the settlements the player is trying to maintain. The game is still quite buggy and far from finished, but the core mechanics of the game are fleshed out and the game is quite fun despite lacking content. This game has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam and undercuts Postal 4 by 12 Euros.
This is Wolfenstein YoungBlood, a more controversial game in the Wolfenstein series. The game is a co-op shooter developed by Machine Games and Arkane Studios which at its release cost 30 Euros and now only costs 20 Euros. Youngblood is controversial for deviating away from the main Wolfenstein titles. Fans were displeased with the game to the point where even a big shitstorm happened around it resulting in a Mixed perception on Steam. While fans of the series did not enjoy this entry too much, I personally loved it. It has problems in regards to replaying the same few levels over and over again, but the gameplay is solid and tech wise and level design wise there is nothing to complain about.
This is the Mafia Definitive Edition. This game is a bit rough around the edges, but for 40 Euros it packs enough bang for the buck! Mafia excels at delivering a cinematic crime story set in the breathtaking 1930s Los Angeles and it puts an emphasis on combat and driving. Where the game does fall short a bit is in the graphics department, as I have experienced quite a bit of artifacting in the image despite my game being set to the highest graphics options, but those problems aside, Audio, animation work and gameplay are all solid. The game is Very Positively received on Steam and costs about 7 Euros more than Postal 4.
This is Postal 2. It is a game you can frequently buy on the Running With Scissors store website for about 2 Euros. This game is everything Postal 4 is aspiring to emulate and more. The game features incredibly believable AI interactions, I would even wager that the game was revolutionary in terms of AI at the time it was initially released. The game is provocative, riske in terms of what it has the balls to satirise and implement as gameplay features. The game has great progression through the days and features good enough combat and very well executed level design. Postal 2 seems to be on sale very frequently and if it is on sale it undercuts Postal 4 by 31 Euros. It also is rated as Overwhelmingly Positive on Steam.
And this… this is Postal 4. A game priced at 33 Euros which just left Early Access. The game features underdeveloped core mechanics, decent feeling combat, but severely lacking level design, disjointed art direction, bad writing and to top it all off, horrible technical execution which not only leads to bugs but also horrible performance. The quality the game was released in should not be representative of a 1.0 release, or should ever be worth anything over 10 Euros. I understand that Running With Scissors is an indie studio, but most of the games I have brought forth as examples have been developed by Indie Studios as well and all of those indie games cost less than Postal 4 while offering way more in terms of content, entertainment value, and technical prowess.
Even other studios like ACE Team for instance have been surviving for decades through developing all sorts of titles and releasing new innovative games, such as The Eternal Cylinder and their upcoming game called Clash which is a sort of successor to their earlier Zeno Clash titles. The Eternal Cylinder costs 24 Euros and it also uses the Unreal Engine 4 with perfect level and asset streaming by the way, so RWS you might wanna call ACE Team up if you guys need help in getting that working.
Then we have Oddworld Inhabitants who have been doing whatever the fuck they wanted since the PS1 days. Their games always have been strange and after a long hiatus they are back and releasing games which are on a completely different calibre for an indie Studio. Oddworld Soulstorm is their newest title which will soon be coming to Steam. On the Epic Games Store the game costs about 32 Euros and features highly detailed cinematics, good gameplay and great visuals and audio.
So when Postal 4 is compared to other games in the same price category which are also out of development or even when it’s compared to many cheaper games which may or may not be out of Early Access, it sticks out as a product which lacks quality more than others. Even if you found your enjoyment in Postal 4, I would encourage you to think about how much the product should actually be worth. 33 Euros is too much given the poor technical quality and lacking design, especially when comparing Postal 4 to games which are in its own price range like Oddworld Soulstorm or Terminator Resistance.
If there is anything I want to achieve with this analysis, it is that more people open their eyes in order to realise what they are allowing to be passed on as normal in the games industry. Releasing unfinished games with the promise of finishing them later wasn’t the norm until the Early Access model was introduced to Steam. In the post Early Access world we are all aware about certain projects which were abandoned by their developers and even high profile games such as Cyberpunk 2077 which have been released in a broken state while many players excused the shameful state the title was released in. Let us not encourage developers who cannot bother to release good quality products by buying their products.
Even if a title is still in Early Access, if you see that no progress or very little is being made, do not buy the product. If an Early Access experience prices itself too generously, maybe it is better to hold off on your purchase until it is fully released. We should also inspire change for how refunds should work for Early Access titles. Early Access exists to fund a project with a promise of having the product be finished later. Games like Postal 4 and other Early Access titles, should have a much more generous refund policy before the games hit their final release. Maybe it would be reasonable for Valve to look into Early Access games, if they met their promised targets, if customers are happy with the progress and if the developers of a game are using the Early Access model in good faith; If something is off, Valve could instate a second refund window either at 1.0 release or after years of a perpetual Early Access state. I am pro consumer and I have even more radical suggestions regarding Early Access refund policies, but I think this one is reasonable enough on its own.
Also, love can make you act like a fool! Even if you are a fan of a particular game franchise or studio, always try to evaluate if the game you are buying really is representing something you would like to support. Legal Persons, like RWS the company or another good example being Valve who own Steam, only care about the bottom line, so buying a product is enough endorsement of a corporation’s business practices. I do not endorse the release of broken and unfinished products into storefronts. I do not support companies violating the Early Access model by preemptively exiting it while admitting that the game is not actually finished but the studio needs money. And finally as a Postal fan, I just expected more, in every department. Better combat, more risque satire, great world design and AI systems, not a story which has been made up on the spot which is filled with bidet jokes that were already stale years ago. I wish I could refund Postal 4 and I implore you to not ever buy it.