CREEPINGNET'S WORLD
POSTAL II: SHARE THE PAIN/APOCALYPSE WEEKEND/A WEEK IN PARADISE
5 Years after the original Postal, released in 1997, Running With Scissors (RWS) released Postal 2: Share The Pain, which saw a marked change from the isometric, hand-drawn art-style of the original that ran on a 486 DX4 without too much trouble, now introducing us to an Unreal Engine based First PErson Shooter with a lot of open world sandbox, and a lot of options, which would grow and expand as the game matured from it's release in 2003 all the way to present. Grab a coffee, this is going to be a long one.

In the original Postal 2: Share The Pain, you played once again as Postal Dude (or P.Dude for short) during the 5 day business week carrying out various chores for his (of course) bitchy wife. These included picking up his paycheck, cashing his paycheck, getting milk, getting a signed book from Gary Coleman (who makes a cameo), obtaining a Christmas Tree, obtaining stuff to kill the weeds in his lawn. The whole tagline for the game was "it's only as violent as you are" - explaining how you could take a total pacifist route, waiting in lines, not exploring areas you should not, and generally, just doing what you were told, all the way to a flat out, full wanted level, homocidal rampage killing everyone in sight to achieve your goals.

In August 2004, an expansion pack - now referred to as DLC - was released, called "Apocalypse Weekend" - which added Saturday and Sunday missions to the story. The story here begins with Postal Dude in the hospital after a self-inflicted gunshot wound, trying to escape while having psychotic episodes of Scissors Armed Gary Coleman Zombies running around trying to knife him to death. After he gets out of the hospital, he's given a couple Government Jobs, and a few revenge missions by his former employer - RWS of course - with Creator Vince Desi and Mike J. (not me) making a cameo. The entire section of the game starts a whole "Zombie Apocalypse" trope based around topical items of the time such as Mad Cow Disease (mad cow disease) and Taliban Terrorists, eventually bringing the game to it's ultimate conclusion.....one where things get EXTREMELEY WEIRD!. This option also added some more nuclear weapons and melee weapons. HOwever, this particular part of the release made being a violent fighter a lot more mandatory in the game.

Over the course of 2005-2008, fans of the franchise started to put together the two packs into what eventually became the "AWP" expansion - aka "A Week In Paradise" or "Apocalypse Weekend all 7 days" mission - tying the newer DLC and the older "Share The Pain" release together, and adding more weapons and options to the game - allowing one to play all 7 days as a straight long mission. Things slowly started to expand and evolve from there, to a point that I kinda' lost track for about 15 years between 2008 and 2023 when I picked the game up again around it's 20th birthday with any sort of seriousness to vent my frustrations with some real life difficulties at the time (which is what keeps drawing me back to Postal again and again BTW). Eventually these fanmade modes and some of their options - including some fanmade horror expansion I forgot the name of that was totally unrelated to the original game - which gave some of it's weapons such as the Sub Machine Gun and MultiMode rapidfire pistol to your arsenal. This all eventually became the official AWP7 Expansion RWS sold.

As of 2023, it's available on STEAM and I have the same two packs I always had, and may eventually pick up the Paradise Lost expansion pack which was considered the "replacement" for 2011's "Postal III" a much maligned entry in the series. It's amazing how much the RWS guys have kept this game fresh despite now being 20 years old. In current releases, copyrighted references from the Pre-Sales fan=additions have been removed, some of which I remember being Super Mario Bros. being on all the TVs in town (now replaced with static and Channel 3 digit), some of the weapons have been altered and changed, and newer versions of the NPCs exist that look a bit more "modern" sporting hipster haircuts and accessories to make them look a little more varied and "interesting".
Psychotic Stress Relief - My Experiences
So after enjoying the first Postal in 2001 when me and a bandmate found a copy of the original + the "Special Delivery Add Ons" Postal Plus at an EB games store in Montgomery, I had the series in the back of my mind as a stress-relief medium. The thing about Postal was that it was a free form game of hyperviolence suited to someone like me who feels frustrated a lot with people being idiots. A way to act out what I REALLY Want to do to the people who I politely deal with day after day who drive me up a bloody wall (the same thoughts many people have when society has gone mad, like these days).

Okay, so as it turns out, CreepingNet has a MASSIVE, and can-be-quick, Temper. So this is one of those games I have as an outlet for those days that I'm pissed at stuff. I took breaks from it in recent years. The thing about Postal 2 though, is that it actually is "REACTIVE" as a "target" of sorts. NPC's react to your activities, and certain ones are nefarious and mean harm towards you - which creates a feedback loop of the player's anger with that specific NPC....to a point that somtimes, it's just tempting to enable all cheats, and go on a firey, explosive rampage in-game, both guns blazing, shovel's whackin' NPC's heads off, and then playing golf with them.

TBH, my favorite melee weapon of the newer lot is the Machete! Seriously, the only way they could make this game more fun, would be strapping a Lawn mower to P.Dude's chest Dead Alive style! (Cult "down under" horror movie where the main character arms himself against zombies with a gas push mower strapped to his chest).