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PC Games (Games) Entertainment Games

Postal 2 Not Violent Enough? 44

Posted by CowboyNeal from the not-postal-enough dept.
An anonymous reader writes "An article from Joystick101.org is claiming Postal 2 is not violent enough to be called a success. Everyone knows that the game failed to live up to expectations, but could more violence have made things better?" I just found Postal 2 to have load times far far longer than any other game I'd played of late, and my own impatience forced me to quit early.
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Postal 2 Not Violent Enough? More

Postal 2 Not Violent Enough?

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  • No comments, and the site won't load... I'd guess the staff at joystick101.com are going violently POSTAL right now ;)

  • This is insane (Score:2, Insightful)

    by molotovcD ( 626566 )
    It is ridiculous that violence is even sugested as the reason for failure. Games that have good gameplay, regardless of the violence sell best. Games with good storylines, then games with good graphics follow. The violence isnt even a selling factor, I can name many games that hae flopped due to violence, because they had nothing else.
    • I due agree with you. There are times when I violent game is exactly what I want to play. The original doom was great for when I wanted to relieve frustration/anger/etc. But I wouldn't buy a game just for the violence. There must be more to it. Even when I just want mindless violence, it does no good without good graphics and sound. Great storyline makes it that much better.
    • Ok then explain the massive success of the original soldier of fortune which was a mediocre 1st person shooter at best, but thrived due to the ability to throw knives into someones crotch. oh and then after that explain why mortal kombat was played ten times as much in the arcade as street fighter even though the later was an obviously superior fighter. Meanwhile street fighter did much better than mortal kombat on the snes since they took the blood out of mortal kombat there.
    • I picked up a copy of this in Thailand for a buck, and it is an unmitigated piece of crap. The game sucks, the graphics and sound suck, the loading is garbage, everything about this game sucks from the minute you load it into your machine. There is a reviewer down here in AZ, where the publisher of this game is headquartered who was obvioulsly on the payroll, they sent him all over the country to shill for this game and lie about how great he thought it was. He used to have a radio show here where he was

  • Postal (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rgonsalves ( 656276 ) on Monday June 02, 2003 @11:06AM (#6095943)
    I read this article yesturday. Basically, the reason they said it wasn't violent enough is because there is little or no shock value so the game has no total value.

    People have beening torturing and killing hookers in GTA3 and VC for awhile now so there is no spectacle with Postal 2.

    The author suggests that since the developers (Running with Scissors) were going for ultra-violence then they should have made it over the top instead of just a little more violent then the rest.

    The game is mediocre at best anyway. They are just trying to capitalize on the spectacle of violence.

    -RPG

    • they should have made it over the top instead of just a little more violent then the rest

      Wow, I think Postal2 is way over the top already. So far over the top that it is actually funny at first, and afterwards just plain boring. I mean, ok setting fire to people looks cool when u do it the first couple of times, but then you already know what's going to happen so it loses it's thrill. Apart from violence, Postal2 has not many qualities that attract gamers I think. The graphics are common, the missions ar

    • The game is mediocre at best anyway. They are just trying to capitalize on the spectacle of violence.


      Well, duh. The original game sucked, the only reason it got any attention was the controversy. I suspect that the poor sales are because the people who were suckered into buying the first one knew to keep away from the sequel.

  • I doubt it's the load times... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ivan256 ( 17499 ) * on Monday June 02, 2003 @11:09AM (#6095960)
    I just found Postal 2 to have load times far far longer than any other game I'd played of late, and my own impatience forced me to quit early.

    You had to buy it to find out there were bad load times. The publisher doesn't care if you ever play the game, only that they get your money. As far as they're concerned you've cast your vote in the "loved it" column.

    Since there are no stores left that take returns on software, I'm surprised they even bother trying to make good games anymore. All they really need to do is make a really cool box and buy some reviewers and go back to using the (now free) original quake engine.

    • Stores that take software back. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by @madeus ( 24818 ) <slashdot_24818@mac.com> on Monday June 02, 2003 @11:51AM (#6096261)
      Actually quite a few stores - like GAME - take games back for a full refund (e.g. GAME take any game back within 10 days for *any* reason).

      Depending on the game, they may be required to give you a refund under existing consumer protection laws - I took 'Need For Speed' for the Game Cube back because it was unfit for the purpose for which it was sold, namely the frame rate was so low it was utterly unplayable. I explained this to the store where I bought it and they said, yeah, okay, and I got my refund.

      This is true of any game with glaring gameplay flaws or that performs poorly on a system which is recommened on the box.

      If it's really not fit for purpose, take it back (within a reasonable, timely period, like 48 hours) state your reason and demand a refund.
    • You know, I never got this whole graphics engine thing. Why is the graphics quality of a game so limited by its engine?
      I know that nowadays we have fancier shading and lighting effects but shouldnt any decently-coded graphics engine be capable of, at the very least, accepting any kind of mesh or texture, no matter how low or high its resolution is?
      IMHO polygon count and texture resolution are the main factors in graphics quality, the rest is mostly icing on the cake.
      Especially with so many ppl turning off a
      • You know, I never got this whole graphics engine thing. Why is the graphics quality of a game so limited by its engine?
        I know that nowadays we have fancier shading and lighting effects but shouldnt any decently-coded graphics engine be capable of, at the very least, accepting any kind of mesh or texture, no matter how low or high its resolution is?

        The Quake engine had some severe hard-coded limitations. Now that it's open-source, there are a lot of people out there that have gone in and changed this, and
  • Who says violence can't improve game sales? I'm quite sure that a friendly salesperson at the checkout with a stack of game titles and their choice of chain saw or flame thrower would do WONDERS for their sales (provided checkout lanes were far enough from the exits anyhow.
  • Its more of a context thing when violence would have helped the game out.
    More violence in a game like tetris would not help it sell course still be funny how they would add violence to a game like tetris. But in a game like postal 2 where violence is expected and the main selling point the lack of it could be seen as a turn off. A racing game should have fast cars, as a puzzle game has puzzles and well a violent game should have violence. Since we all know postal has nothing else to offer really.

    • Why not rape? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Milktoast ( 3812 )
      I think that the article is interesting in that it opens the hypocracy that is violence and videogames. Why shouldn't rape be alright if murder is acceptable?
      • Alright, here's a pitch in case Carmack is reading:

        Game title: Therapist

        Game starts out, you are a psychologist, you see a few patients. The some weird voices start talking in your head, telling you to do things. Insert more weird crap like from Momento or Pi, the player themselves shouldn't know what is going on.

        Anyway, bottom line, you become a serial rapist, etc etc. Would sell millions of copies.

  • The Postal Dork (Score:3, Funny)

    by nicksthings ( 678040 ) on Monday June 02, 2003 @01:15PM (#6096967)
    Postal 2 was a failure in my eyes because the game just wasn't very good. A bad engine with annoying load times, ugly graphics, and the most obnoxious, loathsome main character to ever exist = a recipe for crap. "The Postal Dude?" Come on, how lame can you get? Is this supposed to be some Stereotypical-Uber Nerd's wet dream or something? A cigarette smoking, leather trench coat wearing, profanity spewing, software developer working, gun toting, faux bad ass? Oh, he's so cool! He shot his air conditioner, said something "politically incorrect" and peed on something! *giggle* I sure wish I had the balls to do that!

    • Bad Engine (Score:2, Informative)

      by Milktoast ( 3812 )
      Didn't they use the new Unreal engine for the game? I'd hardly qualify that as a "bad engine" just poor implementation.
      • Point taken. But the fact that it looks terrible and takes ages to load (which is does multiple times in one area alone) don't help it's case much.

  • Here's your violence, Sir! (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    While bouncing through this Postal 2 [gopostal.com] site I found the Severance mod [postalnetwork.org].

    Description:
    You can now shoot limbs off of people and corpses, right down to their little midsections. Different weapons have a better chance of removing a limb and being closer will improve your chances, except for the sniper rifle which ignores the distance check. Pistols will sometimes remove limbs whereas shotguns will frequently remove them (at closer ranges).

    I think that's pretty violent. Maybe too violent.

    -Bloody Coward
  • In Computer Gaming World's 20 some-odd year history, they've never given a zero star rating... until Postal 2. 'Nuff said.

  • It did have violence (Score:2, Insightful)

    by bmnc ( 643126 )
    and lots of it, but the thing is that ppl (gamers at the very least) dont stayed awed by ANYTHING for very long, certainly not some cheesy violence. When I bought SoF2, and started chopping open someone's head, I felt vaguely nauseous. 30min later I was dismembering without any compunction at all. The same goes for Postal2, it has heaps of (novel) violence on Mon and Tue, but by then you'll have tapped *everything* and it gets boring. Any game which relies upon 1 aspect such as mediocre as violence and go

  • A friend picked this up, started it and decided it sucked and gave it to me. Technically it seems to be about the quality of a homebrew mod or total conversion for the old Unreal engine. Collisions with the environment are weak... example being, some parked cars you can walk pretty far into and others the collision region is outside the object.. there is a bunch of stuff like this.

    Once you past the engine stuff, I thought the story was OK. For me, it got insanely hard after the 2nd day and I had to chea
  • JEESH!!

    What ELSE could it have so that it could be regarded as "more violent" ??

    The only thing left is the ability to rape the chicks, FFS!
  • I spent 8 minutes downloading the demo, 3 minutes of installing and load times, 3 minutes or play and 1 minute of uninstalling. The loading times bothered me and I didn't enjoy the bad locational damage. I shot a cop in the head 5 times and they didn't die so I had to finish the job with the shovel. Plus the twon and character were annoying. It was a waste of 15 minutes.
  • The author hit the nail on the head. he decribed exactly how i feel about this game. It is basically a 3d Postal 1. There were so many opportunities where thye could have made it so much more shocking, and sadly they wimped out. I was dissapointed.

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