Video Game / Postal 4: No Regerts

Postal 4: No Regerts is a 2019 video game by Running With Scissors. It is the fourth entry in the Postal series, following Postal III (or more properly, Postal 2's DLC Paradise Lost).

Set some time after the events of Paradise Lost, Postal 4 sees everyone's favourite hapless everyman, the Postal Dude (now having the option to be voiced by returning actors Rick Hunter and Corey Cruise, plus Zack Ward from Postal (2007) and the newly introduced Jon St. John, AKA Duke Nukem) and his trusty companion Champ lose their car, trailer, and all of their worldly possessions, leaving them homeless and forcing them to make ends meet in the gambling city of Edensin, Arizona. Along the way, he spends yet another week doing errands for a number of strange individuals, making a number of friends and enemies, all leading to a chance meeting with whoever's pulling the strings behind the scenes...

Running With Scissors released the game on Steam's Early Access platform to avoid making the same mistakes that befell Postal III during its development, as well as making it a way to involve the community in the development process. It was first released in Early Access on October 14th, 2019 with Monday. Further major updates were released on August 19th, 2020 (Tuesday), January 27th, 2021 (Wednesday), June 19th, 2021 (Thursday), and November 22nd, 2021 (Friday). The game left Early Access on April 20th, 2022 with Version 1.0, and continues to be frequently updated. Ports for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 were released on March 21st, 2023.

Trailers for the game include: Early Access Launch Trailer, Early Access Trailer 2, Tuesday Update, Wednesday Update, The Cure Update, Thursday Update, Leaving Early Access, and Launch Trailer.

---

Tropes in this video game include:

• As Himself: Civvie's voice lines as the drug dealer are all provided by him. Carter Cruise also provides her voice and likeness for her appearance, and per the norm, so do Vince Desi and Mike J.
• BFG: The M60 fulfils this role to a T, with a high ammo count, devastating damage, and the ability to cut NPCs in half. The Dude can even dual-wield it!
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Many possible rewards for completing Rampages, ranging from new robe colours to the Dude's outfit from Postal III.
• Apocalypse How: Of the Local Area variety. Halfway through Friday, due to a doomsday cult poisoning the water supply, the entire populus of Edensin has gone postal.
• Bottomless Magazines: Like Postal III, this is fully averted. All firearms now require reloading, but at least the reloads can be pretty fun (especially if you inhale some catnip).
• Boots of Toughness: Alongside his Cool Shades and pins, the Postal Dude's boots are one of the only things left of his old outfit after he was carjacked.
• Boss Battle: Another returning mechanic from Paradise Lost, with some being optional rather than mandatory. In order of appearance:
  • Tuesday: Spike the Dog
  • Wednesday: Tinklage, Kunny, and Carter Cruise
  • Friday: Commander Hardrock, Vince, El Plago, Mike J, and The Postal Dude Sr.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Of a sort. Introduced in the 1.0.8 update are Permits, items that, when bought, allow the Postal Dude to open carry and fire weapons without drawing attention to himself.... so long as he avoids shooting cops. The most expensive of these at $5000 is the Extremely Small Weapons Permit, which lets the player roam Edensin with their fly unzipped with nary a consequence.
• Broomstick Quarterstaff: To help with his job of cleaning up the large piles of feces and urine around Edensin, the Postal Dude can be armed with a mop that he treats like a kendo staff, even spinning it around if he's taken Vitamin X.
• Bullet Time: Played With; the Hunting Rifle's rounds can be steered if the Dude's high on catnip.
• But Thou Must!: On Thursday, one of your assignments to vote in an election between two candidates who are not totally stand-ins for the primaries of the presidential elections in 2020 in the United States. During this election, you cannot vote for the Democratic option at all. The election is rigged and any time you try, the ballot glitches out until you choose the Republican candidate.
• The Cameo: Civvie 11 appears twice in the game. Once as Doug, one of the radio callers and again As Himself being Edensin's local drug dealer.
  • Zack Ward and Gary Coleman cameo in the game's intro, flashing back to the events of Postal 2. Doubles as Celebrity Paradox since Ward can also be selected as a voice for the Dude.
• Chainsaw Good: Another returning weapon from Postal 2, reintroduced with the Friday Update.
• Chekhov's Gun: On Tuesday, one of the Dude's errands is to get some milk. On Friday, you can use the same carton to skip the final boss fight against the Dude's father.
• Cutting Off the Branches: No Regerts follows the Escape ending of Paradise Lost, with the Postal Dude booking it out of Paradise with Champ in tow before its final destruction.
• Demoted to Extra: Krotchy. After having a big role in Postal 2 and its expansion pack and even Postal 3, he is reduced to collectible plushies, a hint-giver of sorts, his face being on pins and graffiti, and appearing as a TV gif. Kunny ends up taking his role as the mascot in Edensin.
• Distaff Counterpart: Krotchy finally gets one in the form of Kunny. Larry the Crab also gets one in Lizzie the Lobster.
• Diving Kick: The game introduces a diving kick attack, usable by kicking while running and jumping. The Dude thrusts both legs forward and sends anyone unfortunate enough to be struck flying backwards.
• Epic Flail: The Rattler is part Sinister Sickle and this, thanks to a large chain that connects sickle and large, studded weight club together. If the Dude uses the weight to attack people from afar it'll instantly knock them down and make them ragdoll.
• Expy: Another Postal series staple:
  • P. Tinklage is a very thinly-veiled expy of Peter Dinklage, in particular his role as Tyrion Lannister. He's even wearing a similar outfit!
  • The Skeevy Hotel Owner is clearly based off the G-Man, down to having the same speech pattern.
  • El Plago is a parody of Bane, in particular Tom Hardy's portrayal of the character from The Dark Knight Rises.
  • Vince's appearance this time around is partially based on Don Vito Corleone.
  • "The Boss" is an homage to Mr. House from Fallout: New Vegas, using a similar monitor and base of operations.
• Flare Gun: One of the many weapons the Dude can arm himself with, it fires a flare that sets people on fire. Ammo for it scarce, and the weapon itself is even scarcer, unless you stock up on them at vending machines.
• Forced Transformation: As part of Tuesday's errands, the Dude hallucinates himself turning into a cat after inhaling a few too many drugs during a delivery.
• Gag Penis: Weaponized with the Dilbow, a recurve bow that fires... well, three guesses.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Like in III, you can pick up body parts from NPCs' corpses and use them as temporary makeshift weapons.
• Guns Akimbo: Returning from Paradise Lost, the Dude can equip himself with a drink called "Akimbo Power" that lets him dual-wield the firearm he's currently holding.
• Hand Cannon: The Desert Eagle returns as the game's basic handgun and alongside it is the Revolver, now based on a Smith & Wesson 629 Stealth Hunter.
• Hillbilly Horrors: The Mountain Men of the Dark Lodge on Thursday. The fact that their homes look like something out of the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, gory furniture and all, is pretty telling.
• Homeless Hero: "Hero" is definitely stretching it, but the Dude is left homeless after he got his car and trailer jacked, leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back: a purple bathrobe, his pins, a t-shirt, his underwear, boots and shades.
• Homemade Flamethrower: The Dude's local Fire-Breathing Weapon this time around is a large, plastic watergun named the "Spurt'N'Squirt 9000"◊. It not only has one of its large tanks filled with gasoline but also has a pilot light as well! The weapon has alternate ammo types, like water and urine (originally vomit). Amusingly the inventory icon for it shows the barrel of the watergun partially melted.
  "Capable of drenching your targets with any number of liquids, palatable and otherwise. Custom modified with a pilot light attachment to produce some improvised fiery results!"
• Irony: One of the Rampages involves you pissing on or burning copies of Postal III. Your reward? The outfit from that very game.
• Inherited Illiteracy Title: If the game has any regerts, they're certainly not about its title.
• Ink-Suit Actor: As above, played straight with Carter Cruise, Vince Desi, and Mike J. Downplayed with Zack Ward, however, who only provides one possible voice for the Postal Dude, as well as an outfit based on his appearance from Postal (2007).
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: During the KDTF radio station, there are calls by a conspiracy theorist and a loopy caller that reference new playthroughs and NPCs looking the same.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Subverted on Friday. The Postal Dude cuts off The Boss's revelation, figuring that was where he was headed when he called him "son". Not at all helped by The Boss already looking like an aged version of him.
• Machete Mayhem: The machete returns as a part of the Postal Dude's weapons, now taking on a much more homemade appearance (most likely made from a lawn mower blade). Like in Postal 2 and Postal III, the player can throw it to turn it into a Precision-Guided Boomerang.
• The Mafia: The main faction The Dude works for on Thursday is the Syndicate, a shady group of gangsters and criminals that control Edensin, led by Vince Desi.
• The Man Behind the Man: To ludicrous levels, almost bordering on parody. To wit:
  • Wednesday reintroduces Mike J, who as the mayor of Edensin is implied to be the driving political power in the city.
  • Thursday reintroduces Vince, now the mafioso of the Syndicate, which is implied to really be running Edensin behind Mike's back.
  • Friday introduces The Boss/The Postal Dude Sr, who is not only Vince's boss, and as such the true power in Edensin, but it's shown he also is the Dude's real father and has Mike J and El Plago in his employ.
  • The Pacifist Ending even lightly suggests the Skeevy Hotel Owner is one to The Dude Sr, of all people.
• Molotov Cocktail: A series staple, and one of the weapons the Dude has at his disposal.
• More Dakka: The Friday Update reintroduces the M60 which first made an appearance in Postal III and as expected it can lay down the lead like nobody's business, mixed in with the Akimbo Power drink and you can deliver twice of that!
• Multiple Endings: Two of them.
  • Normal Ending: The Postal Dude kills most of the heads of Edensin per Postal tradition and escapes the town with Champ while it's undergoing its own local apocalypse. As the duo dejectedly leave without gaining back their lost car and trailer home, they are accosted by the mysterious stranger yet again, now under the guise of a used car salesman. Whom sells them their lost possessions (with Postal Dude a little too dim to get that he was being screwed over), the duo then ride off into the sunset.
  • Pacifist Ending: Unlike the first one, this ending has no narration and is mostly the Dude talking to Champ (and himself). After being dejected on not being able to find their stolen home, the mysterious stranger approaches the two and gives them their home with no strings attached even complimenting the Postal Dude's ability to make it through Edensin's insanity without causing too much carnage. This ending also as has an interesting amount of Surprisingly Creepy Moments in comparison to the normal ending, having a number of references to the original Postal.
• Mythology Gag:
  • The final line in the first Early Access trailer is the Dude commenting "this looks worse than boxed-up syphilis" - calling back to the original CGW review for Postal 2, which gave the game zero out of five stars while saying that only trying to sell "boxed-up syphilis" at retail would be a worse product than it.
  • A special reloading animation for the pump-action shotgun calls back to the one for the Beta Shotgun from Postal 2's 2013-onward patches, where the Postal Dude grabs several shells and tries to mash them all into the gun at once.
  • The Thursday Update added the Rattler, a sickle and mace◊ strung together by a chain, based on the cover art for Postal X (the 10th anniversary collection).
  • Version 1.1.1 introduced the Dilbow, a counterpart to the Penetrator from Postal: Brain Damaged.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: The candidates in the "Vote For Governor" errand, while not directly based on any real person, are clearly inspired by the current Presidential candidates at the time, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
• Nonindicative Name: The Pigeon Mine is more of a grenade or bomb than a mine since it breaks open once thrown, and there's no alt-fire to place it down like the standard grenade.
• Once an Episode: In classic Postal tradition, Friday ends with another apocalypse occurring, this time as the result of a doomsday cult poisoning the town's water supply.
• One Bullet Clips: Played in the traditional, Call of Duty-styled manner. You now have to reload every weapon after a set number of shots, and they each have separate animations for reloading from empty or replacing a still-half-full mag, but your total ammo for a weapon is all in one pool that is drawn from when you reload, rather than consolidating them into separate magazines, and as such reloads at half a magazine neither make you lose ammo nor let you keep a round in the chamber.
• One-Handed Shotgun Pump: Like in Postal 2, when using Akimbo Power with the Shotguns, each shot has the Dude pump the shotgun one-handed for obvious reasons.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Like in Paradise Lost, the Postal Dude and Champ hightail it out of Edensin after killing The Boss and triggering the apocalypse (again).
• Shotguns Are Just Better: Shotguns obviously make a return and are just as devastating as ever. Joining the arsenal is The Fournicator◊, which is a quad-barreled shotgun and probably one of the most destructive weapons in the Postal Dude's arsenal, being classified as a Heavy weapon at that too.
  "Featuring four barrels, nearly twice that of your average double barrel shotgun, the Fournicator is guaranteed to make short work of any stampeding eleplant hordes, nuclear families of rhinos or any land-dwelling whales you may come across or your money back!"
• Shovel Strike: Continuing from Postal 2, the Dude can use a shovel as one of his trademark weapons. It started out as a serrated one, but this was phased out starting from the Tuesday Update, due to taking on a more Postal 2-style aesthetic to it.
• Shout-Out: Another staple in the Postal series, with some standout examples:
  • The game's initial cover (pictured above) and the Dude's default outfit are a homage to The Big Lebowski.
  • When going to work in the sewers, the opening cutscene has the foreman tell the Postal Dude to get into his HEV suit, a clear nod to Jon St. John's role in Opposing Force.
  • The Revolver's Dude-Eye mechanic is an obvious rip on the Dead Eye Targeting mechanic from the Red Dead series.
  • The Mop looks and works similarly to the one from Viscera Clean Up Detail, being able to clean any sort of liquid spills, such as blood, urine, feces, and so on, although unlike in that game, it can be weaponized here.
  • On top of the Polling Station, jars of urine can be found next to the Hunting Rifle. Seems like the Sniper rolled into town for a bit before the Dude got there.
  • The artefact the Postal Dude collects during the Treasure Hunter errand on Friday looks a lot like the titular object from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even looking alien in appearance, although instead of looking like a skull it looks more like the alien on his Postal 2-era shirt.
  • The store music for "Us R' Tools" is called "A Total Home Improvement", if that wasn't enough the song also makes use of Tim Allen's infamous grunts.
  • El Plago is an obvious parody of Bane, having the exact same respirator (over his luchador mask) as Tom Hardy's portrayal of the character in The Dark Knight Rises.
  • The house you wake up in Thursday, not only has massive The Texas Chainsaw Massacre-esque decor but also has a Twin Peaks-based room on the basement. It's even called the Dark Lodge, making the Twin Peaks reference all the more apparent.
  • The cheat code to acquire the Fournicator is called TheDudeSlayer.
  • The new grenade model introduced in version 0.9 has a Krotchy/Kunny keychain on the pin (which is a smiley face).
  • The meth lab hidden under the pet store is almost identical to Gus Fring's superlab.
  • The song "A.D.I.D.A.A. (All Day I Dream About Andy)" is very obviously a parody of "A.D.I.D.A.S. (All Day I Dream About Sex)" by Korn.
  • As well, "Be A Japanese (Weeb Anthem)" is also a parody of "Turning Japanese" by The Vapors.
  • There are multiple graffitis of the Dopefish found through Edensin, though they are red rather than green.
• Sinister Scythe: Well, sickle, but the Rattler is definitely this, being able to chop limbs off with ease and even be thrown at people. The Dude can even use it as a grappling hook at certain points around town.
• Spectacular Spinning: When taking Vitamin X, the Dude will spin the mop so fast that it can deflect bullets like a shield.
• Stock Ninja Weaponry: While the Dude himself isn't a ninja, the Rattler definitely brings to mind the kusarigama.
• Surprisingly Creepy Moment: Featured in the Pacifist Ending of all things. After the creepy guy gives Postal Dude his things, he turns pitch black, grows angel wings, and takes off when the Dude isn't looking. Then, as the Dude and Champ drive off into the sunset, it suddenly transforms into the "eye" that formed the loading screen for the Ending level of Postal 1 and Redux as the screen and sound distort.
• Take That!: There's a Rampage challenge where the objective is defacing copies of Postal III. Completing it unlocks the Dude's outfit from that game.
  • Another Rampage challenge involves destroying a crypto bank decorated with NFTs, which says a lot about the developers' opinions of them. Completing it will give the player a cash reward of "real money".
• Technology Marches On: Something of an Invoked Trope, reflected in the game's inventory system. In Postal 2, the map, newspaper, and stats were split across three items, reflecting the technologies of 2003, whereas here they're all readily accessible from the Dude's phone menu, showing the jump in technology between games.
• The New '20s: The game's setting; while the year's ambiguous, due to the COVID-19 (sorry, PIVID-20) references, and the game's release window (Early Access in 2019, full release in 2022), it's clearly dated to no earlier than 2020 and at least no later than 2022.
• This Is Reality: When confronted by Vince on Thursday, the Dude says he could just refuse his offer. Vince quickly snaps back, telling him it's not like "the movies".
• Throw-Away Guns: Reloading the MAC-10 while high on catnip has the Dude look over the gun for a second before tossing it aside and then grabbing a fully-loaded new one out of nowhere.
• Toilet Humor: As the page image, which was the game's initial cover art shows. It wouldn't be a Postal game without piles upon piles of jokes related to crap and piss, with bidets now having joined the roster.
• Unorthodox Reload: Being high on catnip will have the Dude reload his firearms in strange ways, with a few being either Shout Outs, Mythology Gags, or just plain insane.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The Boss's is milk, of all things.
• We Can Rule Together: Subverted on Friday when the Postal Dude asks "The Boss" (really his father) if he engineered everything to make him join him; The Dude Sr. flatly says "no".
• Wham Shot: When the Postal Dude confronts The Boss at the end of Friday, he finally reveals himself...wearing an almost identical trenchcoat to the Postal 1-era Postal Dude. "The Boss", as it turns out, is the Postal Dude's father. His real father.
• Wide-Open Sandbox: In the same vein as Postal 2, but expanded because of Edensin's larger map size compared to Paradise, and to a lesser extent Catharsis, including optional errands, random encounters, collectible dolls of Krotchy, Kunny, and Larry, and Rampage challenges scattered across the city.

---

"I regert nothing."