Postal: Brain Damaged Review (Tethkerchoen)
the postal series has adopted a different gameplay style in nearly every installment. moment to moment, brain damaged easily plays the best. visually, brain damaged's art style easily looks the best. fundamentally, the game is built around slide-jumping and grapple-hooking through enemy fire, reflecting projectiles, popping pocket powerups and dispensing incredible firepower, in order to pick off hostiles from most to least threatening.
variety is the watchword here. the levels are well-made and each feel different to play from the next. wide open arenas flow into hazardous platforming segments, into downtempo labyrinths, into entrenched enemy fortifications, into environments that sideline gameplay to inject a hint of storytelling. there are a host of thematic enemy types that attack in different ways and present different challenges (or opportunities). the weapon roster is small for a postal game, but it's a lean, streamlined and flavorful armory of different tools for different situations. the devs are clearly fans of DOOM clones, and this game, though not innovative, is still an original and solid take on the genre, and wouldn't make for a bad choice to introduce a new player to boomer shooters.
going in, i was worried that an outsourced dev team in a far-removed time and place wouldn't be able to capture the sense of humor from postal 2 that the series has struggled to recreate, only to find, if not a recreation, then a surprisingly authentic adaptation. the game's enemies (outside of references to past postal lore) are all dreamlike caricatures of american stereotypes and memes, both contemporary and ancient, in a way that makes the game feel instantly dated - which, for a series that still takes shots at senator lieberman in the year of our lord 2022, is absolutely part of the appeal, and i'd go so far as to suggest that, in the 2020s, an american team couldn't possibly have pulled it off as well as a team like hyperstrange operating out of eurojank country. their outside perspective on american culture brings us a broad and varied assembly of american idiots to slaughter. i swear it's been at least a decade since the last time i saw the "atrophied lard ass with cheeseburger and supersize diet coke" or "lispy virgin fantasy nerd with psychotic symptoms" stock characters in an american video game, but here they are in postal: brain damaged, and they each have their own niche as visually and tactically distinct enemy types alongside more modern characters like "5G sleeper agent vaccine zombie" and "2nd amendment yosemite sam". it's like a cross-section of all the types of lovable goofball sheeple that america has spawned over the 21st century.
recommendation: if you like postal, play brain damaged. if you like boomer shooters, play brain damaged. if you like surreal imagery with a side of old pop culture references, play brain damaged. if you like making fun of americans, play brain damaged.