Postal 4: No Regerts

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Postal 4: No Regerts
Studio Running with Scissors
Publisher Running with Scissors
Senior Developer Mike Riedel
Erstveröffent-
lichung		 October 14, 2019 ( Early access )
platform Microsoft Windows
Game engine Unreal Engine 4
genre Ego shooter
medium Download
language English

Postal 4: No Regerts is a computer game from the US development studio Running with Scissors . The first-person shooter is part of the Postal computer game series and has been available in an early access version since October 2019.

action

Postal 4 takes place a few years after the last part of the game series, the add-on Postal 2: Paradise Lost . After the destruction of his hometown Paradise, the protagonist of the game series, the Postal Dude , drives around aimlessly when his car is stolen from a gas station in the Arizona desert . He reached the nearby town of Edensin on foot and tried to build a new life there. The game represents five days that the Postal Dude spends in Edensin.

On the first day, Monday, the Postal Dude sets himself the task of finding a job. In the Edensin employment office, he is offered three positions for which he can audition in any order: one position as a sewer worker, one as an animal catcher and one as a prison guard.

Game principle and technology

Postal 4 is a first person shooter in a three-dimensional environment. The game world is displayed from the perspective of the player, who can freely look around by moving the mouse and move around the game world using the keyboard. Technically, Postal 4, like Postal 2, is based on the game engine Unreal Engine , but no longer on version 2, but on version 4 , the latest at the time the game was released. The game world is open , which means that the player can already close it Explore the beginning completely and tackle your tasks in any order. The game is temporally divided into days of the week, and the player is assigned tasks each day that have the character of simple errands, such as going to the employment office or doing shopping. When working through these tasks, the player repeatedly finds himself in situations in which he is confronted with violence or in which violence promises an easier or faster solution of the respective task.

Different firearms, cutting and throwing weapons are available to the player, typical of the genre, which he can capture from opponents or find them at predefined locations in the game world. He also has an inventory and can collect and use items that give him advantages in the game, for example by replenishing his life energy. Characteristic for the games in the Postal series are an exaggerated, comic-like depiction of violence and the use of everyday objects as weapons. Postal 4 draws on some elements of the series and lets the player put living cats as silencers on pump guns and shoot the heads of peaceful passers-by off the torso. Some new weapons have been integrated into the game, so the player can let tame pigeons chop up opponents or use water cannons to fire gasoline to then ignite it. For the first time, the player has a vehicle with an electric wheelchair . With this he can move faster than on foot and also run over passers-by.

Production notes

The previous game Postal III stood out from other games in the series in that it was a third-person shooter and was not produced by Running with Scissors itself, but by the Russian publisher and developer Akella for the first time. The game received negative reviews from both critics and buyers, which led Running with Scissors to stop selling it themselves and distance themselves from it. For the successor Postal 4 , the company relied on the first-person principle and produced the game itself. The game was first announced on October 14, 2019, unusually at the same time as it was published in the Early Access program of the online sales platform Steam . The misspelling in the subtitles (instead of "No Regerts" it would have to "No Regrets" ( No Regrets ) are called) is a play on the popular Internet presentation of spelling errors in tattoos. Initially, the players only had the tasks of the first of five match days. Interested parties were able to follow the progress of further work on the game via a website created with the Trello project management software . The publication of a final version is still pending (as of December 2019) [out of date] .

For the role of Postal Dude, none of the rather unknown voice actors from the previous parts of the series was used, but with Jon St. John a well-known voiceover who appeared as Duke Nukem in the game series of the same name and several central roles in Call of Cthulhu : Dark Corners of the Earth and Runaway 2 - The Dream of the Turtle .

reception

The English-language magazine Hardcore Gamer assessed that Postal 4 was a “playground of immorality”, against which the Grand Theft Auto games, which were sometimes criticized in the media for their portrayal of violence, appeared “morally edifying”. The game combines genre-oriented game mechanics with exaggerated humor and is all in all a "terrible game for terrible people" that fans of the series should not miss. The Gamer pointed out that Postal 4 follows the design line of the predecessor games in that a non-violent game is the most challenging in terms of play, but in principle a possible way. The magazine was astonished that Running with Scissors, which in the past would never have held back on current political developments with snappy swipes, were downright apolitical in Postal 4 at the time of the test. For the further development of the game, editor Bella Blondeau called for improvements to the combat system. The French magazine Jeux Video noted that "the DNA of the game series (in Postal 4 ) continues", which manifests itself, among other things, in the possibility of "mistreating" the inhabitants of the game world in a variety of ways. Giga.de was astonished that Postal 4 was actually accessible to German buyers against the background of the indexing of the previous games by the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People . The German-language games magazine Pixel saw "violence, gore effects and many politically incorrect views" as well as "very black humor" and advised sensitive minds against the game as a result. The magazine praised the humor and freedom of action of the game based on the early Early Access version, but criticized the graphics as out of date. The German-language media magazine Geek-Pool highlighted “crisp, spiced dialogues” and “wonderful situation comedy” and praised the more complex mission objectives compared to the previous games. However, the magazine highlighted numerous technical inadequacies, especially in the area of ​​graphics, and assessed that at the time of the test, the game was "even too expensive as a gift (...)."

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 4Players.de: Postal 4: No Regerts - Completely over-the-top "Over-the-Top-Shooter" started in Early Access. Retrieved December 21, 2019 .
  2. ↑ a b PCGames.de: Postal 4: No Regerts - Wacky Shooter announced and in Early Access. Retrieved December 21, 2019 .
  3. ↑ a b PCGamer.com: Postal 4 announced and launched on Steam Early Access today. Retrieved December 21, 2019 .
  4. ↑ SteamCommunity.com: Postal 2: Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved December 21, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b Giga.de: Indexed game series surprisingly receives a sequel - namely Postal 4. Accessed on December 22, 2019 .
  6. ↑ HardcoreGamer.com: Postal 4: No Regerts is A Not So Terrible Game for Terrible People. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  7. ↑ TheGamer.com: Postal 4 Preview - Sign This Petition. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  8. ↑ JeuxVideo.com: Postal 4: No Regerts fait une sortie surprise sur Steam en accès anticipé. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Pixel-Magazin.de: Postal 4: No Regerts - the Postal Dude is back. Retrieved December 21, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Geek-Pool.com: Preview - Postal 4: No Regerts. Retrieved December 22, 2019 .