General Information
Postal is a 3D shooter with mainly isometric, but also some top-down levels featuring hand-painted backgrounds. Gameplay and interface are similar to first-person shooters of the time in most, but not on all counts:
- Movement is always relative to the orientation of the player character ("The Postal Dude"). The player therefore must always be aware of the direction the character is facing, which can be difficult on the isometric maps.
- There are eight weapon slots, each with a fixed amount of maximum ammo. The default weapon is a weak machine gun with unlimited ammo.
- Contrary to first-person shooters, however, the goal is not just to stay alive and reach the next level, but to kill a given percentage of the armed NPCs on the map. Only then the exit to the next level is activated.
There is no plot as such. The presence of a moving van on the first level suggests that the Postal Dude has been evicted from his home and is therefore "going postal", but no background story evolves during the game. However, the manual hints at a possible backstory (the Postal Dude believes the town's population has been infected by a madness plague), and an endgame video implies that the Postal Dude succumbed to his psychosis and is now incarcerated in a government facility.
Read more about this topic: Postal (video game)
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