Hi, my name is dead_heather, and I'm a GAMER. 'NUFF SAID. [this line is a reference to a very hilariously bad steam profile from when i was younger. visual context wil be provided.] Like many other gaming content creators, I've been in love with video games since I was very young. Unlike many other gaming content creators, I suck total ass at video games. Yes, pretty much ALL teenagers suck ass at video games- I suck even compared to them. (It doesn't help that one of my very few IRL friends is an E-Sports player). When I started playing games, I was young, somewhere around age 6. When I played the Wii, I would get... violent. Screaming-and-punching-my-mom-violent. I was the raging alcoholic of Lego Batman fans. Eventually, my mother decided she would rather not be physically abused, and grounded me from video games. For five years.
So there I was, in a cold. barren, videogame-less world. I had been deprived of the pride and joy of my childhood... or had I? The exceptions were mostly small: going to friend's houses and asking to play consoles in 30-minute bursts, eating Nutella Sandwiches and playing Minecraft PVP with a boy who I would later find out was sexually harassing my best friends, stealing copies of Game Informer magazine from my teacher's son inbetween his playthroughs of Assassin's Creed because she said he "wouldn't notice". She was right. However, none of these were my biggest big refuge, my holy grail of gaming. That honor went to the family laptop. First, a stupidly slow, clunky Dell, and then a slightly less slow, clunky HP. Obviously, the PC wasn't stronger than the consoles my friends owned. It was just more accessible. Once I got old enough, I had school assignments that I could pretend to do on the PC. And my mom liked my friends, so she allowed me to "show them stuff on the computer", which was usually a game of some kind. Like I said, it was terrible and slow, and I was inexperienced, so I quickly became acquainted with the world of flash games. I'm talking Cool Math games. I'm talking Cooler Math games. I'm talking Addicting Games dot com. I'm talking Newgrounds, which I definitely should not have been on. I'm talking Liveleak, which wasn't flash nor game but provided similar levels of entertainment. Those weren't the only... "nefarious activites" done on the computer either. Yeah. That's how you make a messed up kid. My parents would eventually find out about some of my behaviors. and try to block my internet access. I got around it. They would install like 30 other things, and would try to install them again on the computer I eventually owned. I also got around these. I was starting to get much more familiar with computers than your average kid. I wasn't quite The Computer Guy yet- that role was reserved for my friend David Zacharias- but I was a computer guy. Nowadays, I'm a Linux user and cybersecurity freak. Me punching my mom in the stomach when I was like 6 eventually resulted in me becoming a Linux user. If you're seeing this video and I'm not the one who sent it to you, you're probably also a Linux user and/orphysically abusive. But that's another topic. For now, let's look at a snapshot- me, entering middle school with a growing interest in tech, my screwed up tastes as voracious as ever, and on the hunt for REAL video games.
"Oh no. Oh god, no! Stanley, it’s a collection of reviews from Steam, the online video game distributor!"
I don't remember exactly when or why I first became interested in Steam. In fact, despite any impressions I may have given off, I don't remember a lot of stuff. Besides the fact that most of this happened more than 5 years ago, I also have HELLA suppressed memories. I do have some ideas of what MAY have attracted me though- the Source and Unreal engines. You might be asking yourself, "what 10 year old child cares which engine a game runs on?" THIS [insert image] 10 year old child, that's who. I was interested in game development and was researching a lot of lightweight engines. Of course I found Gamemaker and RPGmaker, but those didn't have enough viscera. I needed something that could handle the raw energy factor of the games I wanted to play. Or create. Mostly play. Happy Wheels wasn't going to get me my fix anymore. I wouldn't discover the RPGmaker horror scene until many years later, despite loving creepypastas and "tumblr humor" and pretty much everything else associated with that scene. So I was left to turn to old PC shooters. And what better storefront is there for old PC games than Steam? At some point I made an account for the site and I'm not sure how long the buffer was between me discovering Steam and making an account, as I gave my old account to a friend at a few years back. I'm still in contact with this friend. Last time we talked, he called me a tranny and unfriended me on Discord. Frankly, I'm afraid to risk messaging him and losing all the game library he shares with me over Steam. That original account had over 100 games on it, because I would go absolutely feral on the yearly Steam sales. I was like a little rat, but instead of stealing fake eggs from the wreath on your door because I'm convinced they're real eggs, I was buying old shooters off Steam. And I have surprisingly distinct memories of buying ONE of these shooters. One night, whilst searching for something to waste all my money on, I saw a compelling article title. "Most Violent Video Games of All Time". You can bet your treasured personal belongings that I clicked that link faster than I could die in CS:GO. Most of the games listed on there were less than helpful. Many were console games. Manhunt 1 and 2 always popped up on lists like those. One entry did stand out though. It was a PC exclusive. The graphics were terrible, so it wouldn't be too difficult to run. The description told of controversy and infamy. The screenshots told of gore and glory and also piss. It was called Postal 2.
For those of you unaware of the absolute hellscape of Postal 2, it's a 2003 first person shooter inspired by immersive sims such as Deus Ex. It was created by indie game development studio Running With Scissors, and is the indirect sequel to their 1997 isometric crime simulator, Postal. In Postal 2, you play as the Postal Dude and run errands for your wife in the hick town of Paradise. You're given free reign to approach your tasks however you'd like and to exploit the broken-by-design game engine to create violence and chaos. If that sounds familiar, that's because that description also applies to Cruelty Squad. Both of those games are also an over-the-top satire of America, or a normal depiction of Arizona. I didn't really care about any of those aspects of Postal as a kid, though. I liked the dismemberment engine. I liked beating my neighbor to death with a shovel. I liked the infinite catnip pot cheat. I liked running circles around cops while Postal Dude yelled jokes I didn't understand about Chuck Heston. That's another great thing about Postal 2- Postal Dude is a stupid character, and he KNOWS he's a stupid character. He's like Duke Nukem, if Duke Nukem had self-awareness and spent his free time watching The Gary Coleman show instead of bench pressing women. I know that if I wanted high-quality satirical crime-simulators featuring well-written lead characters, I could have played Grand Theft Auto. I already owned the "golden age" trilogy of GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas. Though... their campaigns felt too restrictive. In GTA III, I felt forced into the story. In Vice City, I died every time I "tried to swim". In San Andreas, the RPG system taunted me every time it dropped my stats. In all of the games, I seemed to be punished for experimenting. It's worth noting that I've revisited all of these since, and they're all fantastic, San Andreas in particular. Please play them. They just weren't what I was looking for at the time. You couldn't piss on the cops in those games, that's for certain. And yeah, the piss mechanic was 1000% a big part why I enjoyed Postal. It was a stupid attack to make my dumbass laugh, with enough tactical depth to justify its use to my disgusted friends. Now that I think of it, that description kind of applies to the entire series. It's stupidity- with DEPTH.
This point effectively begins this retrospective. I wrote this to reflect on the messy feelings I have for this messy franchise. However, I've written it so that even if you're aren't familiar with Postal, you'll still be able to enjoy the video and maybe even gain some interest in the series. If you are familiar with Postal, this video isn't a formal review or analysis, so you'll be able to get something out of this as well. Either way, I've timestamped the video to make it easy to skip around if you don't care about a certain topic. I have plenty to talk about. Finally, I'd like to add that I am NOT talking about the series in chronological order. The order of the video is based on how I thought it would flow best. With that, I give you: My Love Letter to Postal.
i have yet to write intro to this section!!!!!!!I loved Postal 2 dearly. Yet, as the years went on, I fell out of touch with the game. Maybe it stopped being effective shock content. Maybe I convinced myself I had "outgrown" it. (I have never outgrown anything. I still listen to TheComputerNerd101.) In any case, my gaming habits would largely pivot towards indie gaming and Team Fortress 2 in the coming years. They were the newest, cheapest content that my hardware could handle. I semi-inherited the Thinkpad P51 my father owned in my early teens, and who knows! Maybe I didn't feel a need to play Postal anymore. My fandom for the game went dormant for four years. It sat in my Steam library, collecting metaphorical dust... In my senior year of high school, I joined a Discord server. For the latter three of my four years of high school, I went through some heavy shit and barely came out standing. I wasn't fit to be interacting with people face-to-face and had a very negative presence online. Still, the internet was my best social option. By my senior year, my head had cleared up enough to have a healthier online interactions, even if my real-life social capacity was still lightyears away from where it used to be. I joined a Discord server because an acquaintance sent it to me, and much to my surprise, I actually began integrating with these people and making proper friends. I had never stopped using the internet, but only had about 3 "real friends" in a sea of volatile acquaintances. For the first few weeks of the server, the active members would call almost nightly. It was during one of these calls that I began digging through my Steam library for something to play. Every gamer was still reeling off of the explosive release of Ultrakill, so retro shooters were IN right now. I hadn't played on the computer in a hell of while. To the best of my hazy depressed memory, I hadn't been playing much at all. I needed something to do while in call, though, and so I picked up a copy of Post Void and decided to dig through my Steam library. By random chance, Postal 2 caught my eye. For the first time in four years, I booted the game up and fell back into it almost instantly. The game, in all of its wonderous jank, still fits like a glove.