Postal III

Postal III

Postal III is a third-person shooter video game developed by Running with Scissors, Inc.. It is the third game in the Postal series.

Overview

The game was released for Microsoft Windows, and is going to be released for Linux, and Mac OS X, making it the first Source based game to be released for Linux. PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports were announced in later stages of development , but it has been recently revealed that a lack of budget is holding these ports back.

Gameplay

Postal III continues and expands upon the sandbox-style design of its predecessor, Postal 2, as well as including motion captured performances by a wide array of celebrities, including Ron Jeremy, Jennifer Walcott, Sergei Mavrodi, and Randy Jones, and as appearances by Uwe Boll (director of the Postal film), Osama bin Laden, and Hugo Chávez.

Plot

In Postal III, The Postal Dude emigrates to Paradise's sister town of Catharsis as he previously blew up Paradise with a nuclear bomb. Due to the economic meltdown, the Dude drives into town and becomes stranded by the fact he can not even afford a tank of gas. He then must find work and do various odd jobs to escape the town.

Through the course of the game the player can chose one of two paths, the "bad path" which includes joining in on the schemes of Mayor Chomo and Uncle Dave, or the "good path" which involves the Dude joining the Catharsis Police force. The game will take place in a fairly linear and cinematic way, although the players actions will affect the outcome of the story and the game. Although the "good path" will be more difficult to play, it will offer more story line and a longer campaign.

Development

Unlike its predecessor, Postal III is not based on the Unreal engine but rather on the Source engine. Also, Postal III is a third-person shooter, in contrast to the earlier entries in the series (Postal 2 being a first-person shooter and Postal being an isometric 2D game).

Early gameplay footage of Postal III being played at E3 2008 revealed new weapons such as "The Badgersaw", a nail bat, an M60 machine gun and the return of the gas can and matches from Postal 2. A new weapon concept is a test lab monkey which reacts to a laser being pointed by the Postal Dude. Product manager Mike Jaret revealed in an interview that there will be "special vehicles" in the game such as Segways.

Postal III was developed under the working title Postal 3: Catharsis until October 18, 2006, when the finalized title was revealed to be Postal III.

In a 2010 interview with Joystiq, Running with Scissors founder Vince Desi said that the game would likely be released in the first quarter of 2011. He added, "It's in the final stages in Moscow, I don’t think it will come out this Christmas."

In a late 2011 interview with QuickJump Gaming Network, level designer Tim Wambolt revealed that the development team does not have enough money to hire a studio to do console ports of the game at this time.

The game was released on November 23, 2011 in Russia and was supposed to be released on December 21, 2011 worldwide in downloadable form on Steam.[13] However, for unknown reasons the Steam store has yet to make the game available for purchase. The game can still be purchased from Direct2Drive, GameFly and the Running With Scissors official store but requires Steam activation. Austrian game distributor Gameware will be releasing two boxed editions on December 23, 2011. 

System Requirements

Minimum 

Supported OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP

Processor: Pentium 4 3.0GHz

Memory: 2 GB for XP / 4GB for Vista – Win 7

Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with 128 MB, Shader model ATI X800, NVidia 6600 or better

Hard Drive: At least 16 GB of free space

Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card, keyboard, mouse 

Recommended

Supported OS: Windows® 7 / Vista / Vista64 / XP

Processor: core 2 duo 2.4GHz

Memory: 2 GB for XP / 4GB for Vista – Win 7

Graphics: DirectX 9 compatible video card with Shader model 3.0. NVidia 7600, ATI X1600 or better

Hard Drive: At least 16 GB of free space

Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible sound card, keyboard, mouse

As Far As I Can Tell

"As Far As I Can Tell" the game is TOO SHORT! I mean, 2 hours of gameplay? ... Ok, now let's get serious. 

The game is freaking funny, BUT, to follow the good, neutral or bad path you only have to play 2 hours. That means, finishing the game with all the challenges and all three paths = 6 hours of almost the same scenes. 

All in all, the game is quite nice, despite the control witch is kind of medium-hard. 

I give it a 8 out of 10 for gore, fun and story line. I recommend it for Postal fans. 

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