Let me preface this review by saying that CURRENTLY (10/14/2024) I ONLY RECOMMEND THIS GAME TO FANS OF THE POSTAL FRANCHISE WHO WISH TO SUPPORT RWS AND WANT INSIGHT INTO THIS GAME'S DEVELOPMENT. If you want a complete product, go back to Postal 2. Postal 4: No Regerts is... Interesting... To say the least. It does re-capture a lot of aspects that were loved by many Postal 2 fans, such as gratuitous bloodshed and dismemberment physics, to witty one-liners that leave you laughing longer than the typical copy/paste joke you get out of AAA titles that take themselves too seriously nowadays. However, there's still a lot of room for improvement (as this is barely even an alpha, but also on that note, honestly I've played FAR WORSE alphas). Allow me to break down my current synopsis of annoying bugs/glitches, as well as improvements and welcomed re-additions to older mechanics - THE BUGS: Frame Rate Drops - There must be a memory leak in the game because even with an 11th-generation i9 and a 3070, I'll go from a solid 60 frames down to 20 in about a half hour of playtime. It's not fun, but thankfully this is temporarily fixable with a simple restart. However, let's be frank, NO ONE likes restarting their game. It sucks. But on the other hand, for the state this game is in, this is beyond a minimal compromise in my opinion. The NPCs - Pathing. Modeling. out-of-sync voice lines. Aggro. Aim. Panic Meters. All of it needs refining. Sorry. Animal NPCs seem to act pretty normally though (compared to Postal 2's Animal AI), so at least we have that. The Physics - It is VERY reminiscent of Postal 2 in how ragdolls and other physics-based objects react to physical forces of all types, which I love. However, there seem to be lots of issues with clipping and velocity of objects. When I decide it's time to bring back one of my favorite Postal 2 Past-Times with Decapitated Head Golfing, as much as I want to feel like I have power behind my hits I also shouldn't launch the head at mach-fuck into the void. The same issue can be seen with hitting a corpse with a shovel at something like a vehicle. The body can connect with the hood of the vehicle and still somehow get slammed beneath it. Happens often with truck-style vehicles. THE GAMEPLAY: The Gunplay - For me, the gunplay honestly feels good. Nothing feels exceedingly overpowered (besides something like the Chainsaw, but that also comes with the suitable drawback of being gas-powered (i.e. does not include infinite uses/ammo) as well as needing to be within close range to melee the enemy) and the handling on the weapons feels perfect for an arcade-type FPS such as Postal. Also very reminiscent of the gunplay in Postal 2, which in case you couldn't tell already, I'm a fan of it. Enemy Variety - Typical enemy variety for a Postal 2 successor in my opinion, nothing exceedingly special outside of a few new changes that I do like and wish to see expanded upon: - Helicopters can now spawn when you have a high enough heat level with the police. I didn't see much use out of it yet as I was spending most of my time running from the cops and didn't have any stronger weapons than a Shotgun or AR at the time, but I'm hoping that you can take it out with a rocket launcher or with enough bullets concentrated on a certain weak spot on the helicopter or something. It would also be nice to see additional backup units spawn from these, but I did not see this happen when I encountered the Helicopter so I am unsure if it is a feature or not already. - Scooter Cops can now spawn once you reach a high enough heat level. I honestly LOVE THIS addition to the Police and their mechanics. It was SO FUCKING FUNNY the first time I heard some sirens while driving like a madman, only to turn around and see some Beach Cop PI-looking bastard chasing me down on a scooter and shooting at me. This is absolutely a welcome addition and my only problem with it is I feel as if the cops should have nitro for their scooters as well. I don't know if it would be too OP, and honestly with the current state of AI pathing it probably wouldn't be the best idea, but maybe once the AI gets there it might be cool to add a check during police chases to see if the player is on a scooter (which I'm sure is already an attribute that helps trigger the scooter-cop spawns) and then an additional check to see if their current scooter has nitro capabilities. I think it might liven up the chases since currently if you get on a straight road you can pretty much outrun them with ease so long as you have nitro and don't floor it into a wall. Regardless, I love this addition and wish to see more like it. Weapon Variety - It's very reminiscent of Postal 2's weapon variety (again, big fan, yada yada) and I feel like the more I explore, the more cool weapons I find. I hope to see even more additions (don't really need Borderlands amounts of guns, but more varieties wouldn't hurt) and I'm excited to see how things will change as development progresses. THE DESIGN: Graphics - Honestly, this is a really welcome step up from Postal 2 in my opinion. It's still rough around the edges which gives you that gritty vibe you'd get from Postal 2, but I also believe it still needs some polishing here and there. Overall though, the game honestly looks great and I'm excited to see how it will improve further. Sound - Crisp and clean and with better fidelity than its predecessors, I honestly think the sound design is one of the game's major strong points. I do still have a few small quarrels with it though: - Rats can loop their sounds in the sewer level if they hit the water or any other source of damage repeatedly, creating a horrid screeching sound that is NOT enjoyable. Probably just a bug of sorts, but still, not a fan of the screechy boys down below. - As mentioned before, there are a lot of instances of out-of-sync dialogue between NPCs. Needs polishing for sure. - The reverb ends up making everything muddy dense and clunky. This definitely needs to be tuned out of the mix a little bit indoors, or maybe separated by environment tags of sorts. Like a room full of stuff shouldn't echo as if I'm in an empty box the size of the Empire State Building. THE RATING: After my (at the time of writing) 6 hours of gameplay (I know it's not much, just first impressions really), I feel I can confidently give this review on its current Dev state and what we can take away from it. I'll be scoring this game out of 10 total points across 4 Categories; Gameplay, Design, Storytelling, and Replayability/Fun. Gameplay: 2/3 There are a lot of good choices being made so far in regard to game design, and I feel with a bit more refining we could truly have an amazing product on our hands. Design: 1.5/3 So far, so good. But there is a lot of room for improvement (but I have faith in RWS <3) Storytelling: 0.5/2 I didn't touch much on the story in this review, and it wasn't exactly because I was blown away. I think it's a good outline and a great start, but it could certainly use some revisions. Replayability/Fun: 1/2 I mean, to quote RWS themselves "It's not pre-alpha, it's Janky Alpha!". For this early of a dev cycle, this is honestly better than anyone could've hoped for. Am I blown away by it all? Not exactly. But did I enjoy what I got out of it? I certainly did. Do I foresee playthrough after playthrough in its current state? I'm not sure. TOTAL SCORE: 5/10 (Average/Not Bad) To wrap this up; I do LOVE this game so far. I'm extremely excited to see how they build the game up over the coming years and I can't wait to see what else they have to bring us. It's EXTREMELY EARLY in development, but for what it is, I think this game has a very bright future and I am happy that I'll be along for the ride.
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