YMMV / Postal 2

• Awesome Music:
  • Paradise Lost have some pretty nice songs. The menu theme and the thin Bitch fight's songs for instances are quite cool.
  • There's also Uncle Dave's Room and the Map Menu music from Postal 2. The former being a frankly bitchin' metal instrumental and the latter being an easy listening piece that teeters on Sweet Dreams Fuel material, and both clashes with the morbid and occasionally disturbing nature of the game and fits with the Lighter and Softer tone compared to the first game.
• Best Boss Ever: The Thin Bitch fight at the end of Wednesday in Paradise Lost. She's fast but not overly so, attacks only with a katana which means you can make it a melee fight if you wish, and there's an awesome song during.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In Paradise Lost, a bomb shelter is opened beneath the Lucky Ganesh, and a horde of gimps come out, vowing to "kill all post-apocalyptic abominations." The Postal Dude either kills them all or runs past them, and nothing is ever seen or heard of them again.
• Breather Level: Lower Paradise and the retread of the Publisher Office Complex in Apocalypse Weekend, since they come right after the hair-yankingly frustrating Military Base. After a long, boring complex with only a few worthwhile weapons to replace everything you lost and no medical supplies where their presence is actually needed or would even make sense, these two are one last chance to for the most part just cut back and chop unsuspecting bystanders apart with a machete with little fear of being ventilated by the entire National Guard, with only the occasional zombie forcing you to actually put effort into things.
• Critical Dissonance: Postal 2 has an "Overwhelmingly Positive" consensus when it comes to User Reviews on Steam. That said, according to this review, critics were much harsher during the retail, pre-Steam days.^note For reference, that Computer Gaming World review was the first ever zero-star review they gave - only two others received such a dishonor, and they were for being some of the least-finished games to ever pretend to be ready for release.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Many of the game's jokes fall under this. Pissing on people? Threatening to kill someone's dog if they don't sign your petition? Attaching a cat to your machine gun? And a good number of the Postal Dude’s lines? Check, check, and check.
• Cult Classic: Mainly Postal 2, as it is the most well developed compared to the first and especially the third game.
• Demonic Spiders: In higher difficulties, any enemy armed with an MP5, a Machine Gun or a shotgun is extremely dangerous for you to face. They can kill the Dude in a few seconds if you don't use cover. They're also able to block melee weapons, though fortunately there's still a large enough gap to hit them with one.
  • In the main game, anyone armed with a rocket launcher is a priority target. They're able to rapid-fire heat-seeking rockets, unlike you who needs to fully charge the rocket launcher before being able to do so.
  • Red-robed Terrorists are sturdier than the normal variant and more heavily armed. They can lay the hurt on you quite hard if you don't have something to dispatch them quickly.
  • Army Soldiers in Apocalypse Weekend are much sturdier than in the normal week and can melt through your health in seconds if you don't take cover. They're also immune to the Sledgehammer's head-smashing blows, but they'll be stunned for a few seconds instead.
• Even Better Sequel: Depending on one's opinion of the first game, Postal 2 is either this (if they simply enjoyed the many gameplay additions) or a Surprisingly Improved Sequel (if they didn't like the first game for its jank and high difficulty).
• Franchise Original Sin: Postal 3 and 4 have been heavily criticized for being extremely buggy, especially at release, the former being a complete mess of a game, and the latter being horribly optimized and often considered to have not taken proper advantage of its Early Access phase. All of the same can be said for this game, having launched with loads of glitches and extremely long load times, up to and including the engine itself crashing under fairly regular circumstances, which was even worse with the Expansion Pack Apocalypse Weekend, becoming particularly infamous because the game's most famous mods required that expansion and thus crashed roughly every 20 minutes. The difference was mainly in that Postal 2 launched in 2003, running on the then-brand-new Unreal Engine 2 at a time when it still wasn't as well-understood to anyone outside of its designers, and a shooter of its sort of scale hadn't really been done before. What also helps is that the game eventually received several optimizations following its rerelease on digital storefronts, aided by a decade's worth of hindsight in how to work with the engine, and the game almost never crashes now, even in the infamously-unstable expansion. Postal 3, however, ran on the Source engine in 2011, more than seven years after its introduction when it should have been well-understood enough to result in a more stable game, but it didn't - although it had the excuse of a Troubled Production where much of the work was outsourced to a Russian developer who had to lay off their most competent dev team almost as soon as they started work on the game due to a downturn in Russia's economy. Postal 4 didn't even have that sort of excuse, being an in-house development that launched in Early Access, but continued to have bugs and poor optimization right up to its full release despite having two and a half years to fix these issues as they came up, with several commenting that it left Early Access too early.
• Game-Breaker: A game with such a wide range of weaponry as Postal 2 definitively some stuff that can break the higher difficulties wide open.
  • The humble Gas Can is surprisingly helpful in most situations. It can be obtained within the first minute of gameplay, has an excellent ammo efficiency, a large ammo pool and it allows you to set anyone on fire before they can react. Most civilians are screwed once set on fire and they'll spread it to anyone they touch. Just be careful to stay out of their way while they run.
  • The sawed-off shotgun is an extremely powerful close-range weapon that can, and will, instantly kill anything within its (fairly long) kill radius. The sheer amount of pellets fired out of the gun will comically blast anyone struck by them into a pile of gore, and the fast reload and low damage fall off makes it a mainstay of your arsenal once you obtain it. Fittingly, it's a secret weapon that can only be obtained in a few hidden areas, but if you know where it is, it can be found as early as Monday! Tellingly, if was one of the few weapons that ended up getting nerfed in the 20th-anniversary update, now firing both barrels and reducing the pellet count per shot, yet as A Buff Wizard can attest, it is still one of the best guns you can get.
  • The sledgehammer becomes this for one simple reason: It can instantly kill almost any humanoid enemy in the game by smashing their heads into paste. Even the deadlier foes in the game like SWATs and army soldiers, while immune to being instakilled with it, are still stunned for a moment from the heavy blow to the head. It's also perfect for killing Zombies, as they can only be killed by destroying their heads and it's the only one of the three Apocalypse Weekend melee weapons that is designed to do just that without having to lop it off first.
  • Apocalypse Weekend's Machete is one of the deadliest melee weapons in the game, capable of severing limbs and heads from far distances by throwing it at people. Unlike the Sledgehammer and the Scythe, it will try to return to the Dude's hand. Once you have one of these, you will become a one-man blender of destruction, completely unstoppable even on Hestonworld and above.
  • Catnip Tins. Though the game only mentions their Mundane Utility to attract cats, they can also be consumed. Doing so vastly slows the flow of time for a minute, allowing you to tear through hard firefights like they were butter.
  • The Police Uniform will allow you to carry weapons in public, maim and kill people without consequence, freely waltz into other people's houses, and even make hate groups ignore you. Any scripted sequence which involves player getting attacked by police is effectively neutered, and player can simply walk by them without incident.
  • The Chompy cartridge for the Bass Sniffer radar is generally Too Awesome to Use due to rarity, but is somewhat more common in Paradise Lost if you know where to look. The main important thing about it is that it makes you impervious to damage while you play, Chompy kills the target in a way that can't be directly traced to you by NPCs, and the timer pauses between kills, allowing you to survive even the toughest Zerg Rushes It's also useful for avoiding damage in the mine cart ride sequence, since they can still hit you now and then even if you're crouched in the cart.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Dogs. They're fast, small, usually come in numbers and can drain a lot of your life if you are not careful. A good swipe with a bladed melee weapon can dispatch them quickly, though this is not totally recommended when there are large numbers of them around you and they're probably also accompanied by people with guns.
  • The mutated spinning cats in Apocalypse Weekend can be a little annoying, though not to the extent of the dogs, since they do damage more slowly and can simply be kicked off.
  • The zombies in Paradise Lost are much more annoying than their Apocalypse Weekend counterparts. This is mainly because of their increased tendency to spit projectiles at you from a distance repeatedly.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There are several - lighting yourself on fire makes the instant-death fire harmless, dogs can float up ladders to get to you and propel you skyhigh, and one well-aimed rocket lets you skip the "Confess your sins" and "Uncle Dave's birthday" chores.
  • You can prevent the Parents for Decency from storming the RWS HQ after you collect your paycheck just by dropping a grenade in the path of the one guy who rallies them all to violence. When the in-game cutscene plays, he sets it off and dies, and the rest just stay there. It won't prevent some scripted protesters from showing up to attack if you try to exit out the front door, but it does mean you won't get shot in the face the instant you regain control of yourself and have much fewer people to fight off.
  • The petition errand usually has civilians run and panic when the Dude asks them a third time by threatening them. However, if the Dude does this to a hate group he has not angered yet, they will sign the petition without fail. This also applies to everyone on the Hestonworld difficulty and above, as they no longer panic and instead attack on sight when threatened, thus they can't run away when asked a third time. This could bring up a funny possibility of the Dude's threats actually working by having them sign it.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • One of the selling points for Paradise Lost was the reprise of Rick Hunter's role as the Postal Dude, and the description is "No bogus imposters here!" (in reference to Hunter being replaced by Corey Cruise for Postal III). Due to scheduling conflicts with Rick's radio job, the Dude's role was given to Jon St. John for Postal 4: No Regerts. Corey would also reprise the role for Postal: Brain Damaged, as he lost his radio job due to the COVID-19 Pandemic and neither Hunter nor St. John were available.
  • The toilet paper errand became significantly less funny after the real-life toilet paper shortage due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Zack Ward appears in Paradise Lost, largely referencing his Former Child Star days and the fact he played the Dude in the film, being an optional boss encounter after the final boss with him deciding to become the "real" Postal Dude. Zack Ward would eventually be integrated as a voice option in Postal 4: No Regerts.
  • As the Easter Egg entry on the main page points out, there is a house containing Postal III posters, a fat guy who hanged himself, a fallen chair, and a computer. The computer was running Postal III, crashed, and has a message that says "Amazing Game Development has caused the program to stop responding", with the options being "wait for the game to get better?" and "uninstall and install Postal 2 and hope for Postal 4". Fast forward to October 2019, RWS announced Postal 4: No Regerts and released it on Steam's early access platform. If only that fat guy went for the second option and waited.
  • If you're undergoing health pipe withdrawal, the Postal Dude will say "I don't feel so good."
  • One of the Dude's famous quotes is, "Sign this petition or I'll follow you home and kill your dog." John Wick would go on to prove that following up on that threat can end very badly for the culprit.
• Memetic Mutation: "Hi there, would you like to sign my petition?" ^Explanation One of the most memorable moments from the game is the petition errand on Tuesday, due to the Dude's requests for signatures escalating quickly (you can ask any one person three times, with the Dude starting cheerful for the first time, getting bored/annoyed for the second, and outright threatening to kill them and ask a surviving family member or follow them home and kill their dog for the third) and the usual first reaction from citizens when asked (they will only ever politely apologize or flip you off while shouting "no way, you freakin' pinko!"). Edits are often made of the Dude asking characters from other media to sign his petition, such as Tohru, Sergeant Arch Dornan or Lady Dimitrescu.
• Nausea Fuel: You can pee on things. Peeing on people generally causes them to throw up violently, with some fairly advanced liquid physics for the game's time. On Friday, the Dude gets gonorrhea, and his urine becomes green and burns when you pee, which guarantees that people you pee on will throw up in reaction. And it's possible to decapitate someone as they're vomiting, causing it to continue to spew out of their neck stump (only for a moment as of the Steam release, however).
  • The police will pick up and eat any donut they happen to come across. You can drop a donut, pee on it, and the officer who eats it will throw up right after eating it. There is even an achievement for doing it.
  • The entire front porch of The Postal Dude's trailer home is covered in dog droppings, since his pet dog Champ lives out front.
  • Even most of the public restrooms blatantly feature excrement on the floors and sinks, suggesting that the citizens apparently have no value for public decency and hygiene whatsoever.
  • The cats and dogs in S&M gear near the end of Apocalypse Weekend.
  • The elephant taking an immense dump on the animal rights group woman in Paradise Lost, which completely blocks your normal exit.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Postal 1 and Postal III, though controversial in their own right, never caused the same level of moral backlash that Postal 2 did. Postal 2 was a huge target of hate by Moral Guardians for its vulgar content, and is as a result was banned in many countries.
• Polished Port: The Steam re-release of Postal 2 has widescreen support, mod and workshop support, and plenty of support from the devs, including fixing almost all of the crashing bugs, though at the cost of non-workshop mods such as A Week in Paradise (it's integrated in the game itself, however missing the extras and weapons).
• Salvaged Story: While Running With Scissors had stated it was such, Paradise Lost makes it official that Postal III is not part of the series' canon. For those who liked Corey Cruise's portrayal of the Dude, however, he also appears in the DLC as a major character, which shows RWS weren't completely getting rid of Cruise's take on the Dude either.
• That One Boss:
  • The fight with Krotchy on Thursday can be really painful if you don't have explosives and aren't willing to give him all your money to skip it. Krotchy's suit makes him completely bulletproof and highly resistant to most melee weapons from the front. He's also armed with a rocket launcher and has a massive healthpool, which makes him a formidable opponent. Unless you ingest Catnip.
  • The third and final fight with the Bitch in Paradise Lost is especially agonising. For starters, she is now a huge demon, and all of her physical attacks really hurt. As you may expect, her damage-taking capabilities have greatly increased, to the extent that it may well take everything you've got to finally put her down. While her physical attacks may really hurt, she can now breathe fire and randomly spawn disease gas. Both of these are even worse, since the fire is ridiculously accurate and will suck your health alarmingly quick. And if she spawns the gas, then kiss your ass goodbye, since you'll often be dead before you can even fathom what hit you. The only "attack" of hers that isn't horrible is when she sucks you into her mouth, with your health slowly draining until you can shoot the weak points to get out. Taking all of this into account, she'll also start spawning mooks for you to avoid as her health drops, including kamikaze-bombing skeletons. AND she can make herself invincible by spawning Gary Coleman heads to act as a shield. And she will. Not. Stop. Yelling. At. You. Get ready to see her flipping you off after you die a LOT. It makes the Dude blowing her to kingdom come with an I.E.D so much more satisfying after that horror!
  • Champ is fairly difficult due to his size and the power of his attacks. You must quickly drain his health, use the syringe on him, then repeat two more times. If you're not quick enough with the syringe, Champ will fully regain his health, forcing you to waste ammo draining his health again.
• That One Level: Some areas can be teeth-grindingly frustrating if you're left at a disadvantage.
  • The Ghetto Liquaa Brewery visited in Wednesday is filled to the brim with Rednecks armed to the teeth and complicated conveyor belts and falls that can quickly end you. It's also a No-Gear Level that forces you to get your stuff back quickly before you get riddled with bullets.
  • Meat World, specifically the final stretch where you have to fight your way back out of the building that is now swarming with cops and SWAT. After you've likely used up all the health items in the area and the SWAT are much tougher and better-equipped than the butchers you just fought. If you thought to equip the policeman uniform, however, it's not an issue, as they just let you stroll out.
  • Apocalypse Weekend's combo of the Terrorist Training Camp and the Military Base are one of the hardest parts of the game, especially in higher difficulties. Both are hellish Marathon Levels in which you have to fight hordes upon hordes of Terrorists, army soldiers, the occasional Gary Coleman hallucination, and zombies while you search for the nuclear warhead to blow up Paradise with. Worse is that the latter, like the Brewery, is a No-Gear Level, not to mention that there are far too few medkits, barring one specific alcove late in the level that has so many of them it seems like the game is outright taunting you. Fortunately, as of the Steam release it's more tolerable, as the devs took the time to add some of the new weapons even to these levels, which gives you actual good options for taking out soldiers.
  • Escaping the Running With Scissors Church in Paradise Lost is maddening, especially if you have the game set to Average difficulty or higher. The zombies in the expansion are annoying as all hell, not just because of the constant projectiles they spew at you with insane accuracy, but also that their attacks drain your health fast. Expect to be forced to take cover more often than any other point of the game during this part.
  • The Survivalist Camp in Paradise Lost is stuffed full of angry Survivalists who can and will shrug off most anything you throw at them, from explosives to fire, to say nothing of their bullet resistance. Not to mention how they come in packs, and one right at the end is rapidly firing seeking rockets at you from a ridiculous distance. Those without a hunting rifle are left with no recourse other than to take cover in the tents, since even a couple of explosions will kill you insanely quickly.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • Postal 2, which came out in early 2003, is a unique case of The '90s spilling over into the following decade. It includes parodies of the 1993 Waco siege, a cameo by Gary Coleman As Himself so well after his stardom had fallen that even reruns of his shows had all but disappeared, and a very '90s depiction of the controversy over violent video games, most notably in that it makes several Take That!s at then-Senator Joe Liebermann, whose relevance on the subject had quickly faded by the 2000s, while Jack Thompson is never so much as hinted at, even in the Apocalypse Weekend expansion which released just one month before the "Hot Coffee" scandal brought him to the height of his relevance. This is mixed, however, with many Ripped from the Headlines references to The War on Terror, including terrorists who all look like Osama bin Laden, and Apocalypse Weekend heavily featuring open conflict between them and the National Guard, whose conduct echoes several controversial quotes and actions of the early days of the Iraq invasion, such as shooting everyone in a terrorist training camp on sight (claiming that if they shoot someone who's surrendering it was "probably" an accident) and detaining all the survivors without trial. It's all so heavy-handed that it can now be seen as a parody of America's early days of vulnerable yet intensely-xenophobic paranoia following the attacks.
  • The game's rerelease over digital storefronts in 2013 and the Paradise Lost DLC from 2015 add another decade to the pile. The base game has an achievement referencing a controversy surrounding the game's appearance on Steam Greenlight (a service which was shuttered in 2017), and there's an Easter Egg dedicated to advertising a remaster of the first Postal, which came out in 2016. Paradise Lost has an arcade game called "Equality Simulator", a clear jab at "social justice warriors" made when people who identified as such were still universally targets of ridicule and the controversy surrounding Depression Quest was still recent; the game also features a cameo from controversial journalist Milo Yiannopolous, just two years before he wound up losing support due to his statements on pedophilia.
• Vindicated by History: Somewhat for Apocalypse Weekend. Back in the day it was infamous for being a bad follow up to the original game for a variety of reasons, among it the much harder difficulty in ways that were simply not fair and its highly-unpolished state, often rewarding you for failing to get through another tough level by immediately crashing; the only upsides were the gameplay additions, specifically the new melee weapons and the much-improved gibbing/limb removal system that came with them, enough so that the only reason people even acknowledged the expansion was for the A Week in Paradise mod that backported its updates to the base game. Since the game's rerelease on Steam and the heavy bugfixing that went on because of it, many of the crashing bugs have been patched up and the difficulty has been more or less unintentionally rebalanced with the new weapons leaving the Dude better-equipped than he originally would have been in some of the more frustrating levels like the Military Base, which eliminates a good deal of what made the expansion so hated. It's still not good by any stretch, especially compared to the more wide-open base game or its own followup in Paradise Lost, but it's not soul-crushingly bad anymore either.
• Win Back the Crowd: The Postal 2 expansion Paradise Lost suffered a little due pre-release due to the fact that the original Postal Dude voice actor Rick Hunter was being replaced and that the expansion would be delayed with no news on when. This however changed when a March 2015 update by the developers not only revealed the official release date of April 27 for the game, but that Rick Hunter would return as the voice actor.