I Finished Paradise Lost DLC, Postal 2 Destroys the Competition
nerffan8000 WARNING: Like the remix segment which you can read here, there are spoilers for both Postal 2 and its DLC Paradise Lost. If you want to play this game the fun way by going in blind, you both want to ask yourself if you're ready to experience said game and skip this blog post.If you've read any of my remixes, my biggest hope is that its the Top 10 Video Games With the Most Bizarre Plots, as it's either my favorite or second favorite. If you have, you might remember that I had Postal 2 as my top pick. I had it above games like Killer 7, Plumbers Don't Wear Ties, even LSD: Dream Emulator. If there is one thing you must know about me, the more I feel the need to justify why an entry is where its placed, the greater lengths I will go to talk about it. The Postal 2 segment was one of those instances, one of my longest segments I've ever written. Now that I've played the Paradise Lost DLC, it makes more sense to write a blog post rather than give TopTens users a never-ending stream of nightmares with how long a singular segment could get.
So let's cut the crap now, I know aren't here for a commentary about my TopTens segments. The ending of Apocalypse Weekend, if you don't recall, goes as follows. After stealing nukes from a military base to dispose of RWS' competition, the Postal Dude flees from Paradise, Arizona (The main setting of Postal 2, of course) and faces off against the Mad Cow infected Mike J. After that, he drives off as Paradise is nuked into oblivion.
But then Paradise Lost comes around, the plot revolving around the Postal Dude's dog Champ fleeing from the car as he drives off. Worse yet, the Postal Dude's head wound he gained at the end of Friday in the first game and causes him to crash his car. He wakes up after 11 whole years, to go rescue champ. Oh yeah, and he has horrific visions of the future, which I'll elaborate on earlier. Consider that a sign of things to come when it comes to Paradise Lost hen you get thrust into the gameplay, and it's easy to tell from the start that Paradise Lost is different. The well-known gameplay of Postal 2 is back, able to kill any civilian you feel like while being as brutal as you want. However, you start by holding up a picture of Champ, asking if the civilians have seen him, similar to the petition signing from the original Postal 2 campaign. However, when you ask a civilian where Champ went, they lose it and run off.
It's only when you talk to the Wise Man (Who's Krotchy from Postal 2 except modified to make him look like a wise sage, I'm not even kidding!) that you get some insight as to why they're terrified of Champ. In the restaurant, you would encounter a horde of mutated dogs that attack the place, and Champ has become one of those dogs. "El Perro Loco," translated to "The Crazy Dog," is what they call his dog Champ. Outside of getting trapped in an animal control center thanks to dung from an escaped elephant blocking the exit (Don't even question it at this point), that sums up Monday. As I'm sure you have noticed, the Paradise Lost DLC has kept the bizarre characters, story, etc. from the original Postal 2; and flipped some of the characters on their heads while it was at it.
Tuesday introduces us to what Paradise is like ever since the bomb dropped, as the town has split apart into factions. The first one your introduced to is Vince Desi's faction, which wants you to get toilet paper (Which costs between $250 - $400 on Tuesday, have fun grinding for cats to pay that much; or you can steal it) and ruin the competition of other game developers like Apocalypse Weekend. Granted, this time you smash the computers the rival game dev studio has. Nothing too absurd until you finish all the tasks for Tuesday. Once checking in, Vince among others are turned into zombies. That's right, the zombies make a return here! I figured they were going to make an appearance somewhere in the game, but this early?! Once warding off all of them, you're greeted by your arch nemesis. The cow demon himself, Mike J.
Wednesday is when this game dissolves into an infinite level of insanity, that might even outclass Apocalypse Weekend. See, Mike J. is actually quite the laughable bad guy, as he has army of zombies... but is focused on getting married to a human woman, and he needs the Postal Dude to complete the wedding. What awaits you is the Winter Wonderland, an area that has the childstar himself Zack Ward as an optional boss fight if you try to get money from him for your charity. Granted, it's a scam charity, but the residents of Paradise don't need to know that! You also have to milk cows, including deceased mad cows that you need to kill in order to progress. Your reward for this? Well, at the end of Wednesday, you find out that Mike J. plans to marry your ex-wife, who ends up fighting you! Thus showing that boss fights can and will happen in Paradise Lost just like they did in Apocalypse Weekend. After this boss fight, you end up pairing with Gary Coleman and his faction of short men that plan to kill the tall.
I actually had to take a break from Paradise Lost after that, I'm not even kidding. Even as someone who's been able to put up with a lot of bizarre concepts, this one was breaking my brain. Also, there's one thing I should establish, as it becomes prominent in Wednesday especially. Thanks to your head-wound, you have a separate personality within you, that's been talking to you throughout most of the game. While he does give you advice, later on the game he becomes a little more important.
I will gloss over a majority of Thursday, because unlike the faction would have you believe, nothing too zany actually takes place. The only thing I'd say that gave my brain two million questions at once was the robotics factory. You've been assigned there to get mechanical stilts while the workers finish making the second model of the Vend-A-Cure, which in the first game was made to create a cure from urine. However, whoever programmed these robots decided to add a bit of Skynet technology because they perform an uprising and attack the workers at the factory! And of course, you end up getting caught in this mess and you have to escape the factory while taking down robots in your way. Also on Thursday you hijack a karaoke night with parodies of songs like "Oops, I nuked you again. Pressed the button, wiped out society!" to "It's getting radioactive in here, so put on your hazmat suit!" Granted, this time I wasn't questioning it, because I was too busy laughing.
Alright, now let's get to the main attraction, Friday. Unlike Postal 2, Paradise Lost only has five days for you to play through rather than a whole week. I don't feel like that matters however, Friday gives you the loopiest resolution you could ever want. The Postal Dude wakes up to find that his head wound doesn't hurt, and that's because the alternate personality in his brain becomes his doppelganger; though if you have more information about the Postal series, you'll find that this alternate Postal Dude is the same character as the Postal Dude from Postal 3! Not only does this retcon Postal 3's entire existence (Granted Running With Scissors has always made jabs at Postal 3, from Postal 2 containing a hidden steam room where the clerk comments that "here's some tips for the future, bet on the Red Sox and don't play Postal 3" to someone with a Postal III shirt with Postal III posters around the room hanging from the roof; even the beginning where the Postal Dude having horrific visions of the future during his coma is a jab at Postal 3), but it also comes out of nowhere, unless you found an easter egg that gives a vague hint as to the identity of your alternate personality. Oh yeah, and the faction you're part of in Friday is Al Qaeda, which has now turned into a peace-loving organization. Think about that for a second, a terrorist group being the most peaceful faction in a town called Paradise.
The bizarre missions continue onward in Friday, granted they aren't as bizarre as Wednesday. From pruning herbs for Uncle Dave to stealing C4 from survivalists, it isn't too bonkers. However, this is all in preparation for going through the Hellhole to rescue your beloved dog Champ. Oh yeah, and Al Qaeda goes back to being a hostile terrorist group after Postal Dude reminds them of the prophecy of getting 72 virgins, but that would be easy to see coming. Postal 2's hell is one to be added to my 10 Worst Video Game Worlds to Live In, as you're only accompanied by screams of agony and monsters like zombies, skeletons, demons, etc. And of course, there's more lava in hell then there is water on Earth. After traveling through the area for what admittedly feels like an eternity, the Postal Dude discovers the mutated Champ. After a lengthy battle with your companion dog, the cure that the Postal Dude and you as the player spent the entire game trying to obtain, to revert Champ back to normal size.
Both Postal Dudes get in an argument over who owns Champ... until Mike J. and the ex-wife barges in. Yep, the ex-wife is back to fight you not once, but three times, each time she gets more menacing and damaging. The ex-wife once beaten, gets flung into a void along with Champ, which the alternate Postal Dude refuses to go into. Not the real Postal Dude however, as he flings himself into the void to have one last fight with his ex-wife. Which means fighting you fight the ex-wife a total of 5 times throughout the whole game, this one in particular being the most uh... interesting one. To put it in perspective, the void transforms her to look like... this. And the fight's quite difficult especially without catnip, as the ex-wife has attacks that do tons of damage, and summons zombies, skeletons, etc. to fight you as well. However, once she's defeated and you've rescued Champ, both Postal Dudes end up at peace.
And then... the apocalypse comes back, as all the faction leaders declare war on each other. And there isn't any home to go to or anything like that, you're simply fleeing from Paradise. Alternatively, you can also fight the other faction leaders, but I haven't actually done that. I haven't yet, anyway. And once you escape via the trainyard area, the game ends with Stand With Fists music as the credits.
So, you could be wondering as to why this makes Postal 2 have the most bizarre video game plot with almost no arguments, and to that I say... did you even go through what I described?! This isn't one of those games like say, Michael Jordon: Chaos in the Windy City or Seaman where it's plot is bizarre purely because of the concept. Postal 2 and its DLC relish in the odd concept and create bizarre plot points beyond it. Sure the concept is all about getting basic chores done in a video game, while also given the option to kill with a variety of different tools, but Hatred has a similar concept and it definitely couldn't make my list. Paradise Lost seems to be the one that contributes the most bizarre plot-points throughout the whole series. From factions with bizarre leaders and motivations that sometimes flip the original Postal 2 story on its head, to rescuing a dog from hell itself.
These concepts also go beyond the zaniness of many other games, and they aren't one-note either. No matter how you progress there's bound to be at least one occurrence in each level that will make you question what you're playing. Even in games like Yume Nikki, there are levels like Snow World that is well within a comfort zone. Postal 2? Who knows where a comfort zone is. Whether it be visual, conceptual, etc. Postal 2 always has some form of weird occurrence that will catch anybody off guard. However, I'd consider that the main appeal of the game, beyond being as sadistic as you want. When going in blind, you'll never know what you're going to experience, and it makes for a game that you have to experience. Of course, that depends on whether or not you can stomach all the violence.
Final Thoughts:
I think I've made my points clear by now, Postal 2 paired with its DLC makes for the most bizarre video game plot out there. The only reason why I wouldn't consider it the most bizarre game in general is because Killer 7 exists, and that game is a bizarre experience with every single element of game programming. It does sound like your average ultraviolent game from the description, but believe me when I say that the description doesn't do it justice. I don't think my ridiculously long blog post did the game justice either. If you wanna know how unusual this game is, then you have to purchase it and play it. Just be sure to collect all the cats you can possibly get.
"Mission accomplished, with extreme prejudice!"
