Postal 2 - PC

The warning that this latest first-person shooter comes emblazoned with reads: 'Not approved for consumption by children, senators, religious leaders and/or other easily damaged psyches, those seeking to establish political careers and/or possessed of delusions of grandeur. If accidentally exposed, flush eyes with water and induce vomiting.' Which goes some way to explaining the game's rather controversial content. To 'go postal' generally means to go on a killing spree, a phrase named after a postal worker who did just that when overreacting somewhat to getting the sack. Postal 2 puts you in a similar situation but leaves the decision up to you, giving you the option of unleashing a torrent of violence across a small town or, well, to not do so.

You start the game having a bit of a barney with the wife and then have to set off across town in order to carry out a few minor objectives: collect your pay cheque from work, cash it at the bank and then buy some milk. Simple enough? Wrong. Upon arriving at work (a games developer by the name of Running With Scissors - see what they're doing here?) you are given the sack and, to make matters worse, the offices are then besieged by an army of armed protesters. At this point in the game the acquisition of a gun is none too difficult, so you are then left with the almighty decision. What you do from here on is entirely up to you.

You still have certain objectives to carry out but the game generally involves freely exploring open-ended environments, whilst interacting with over 100 non-player characters such as marching bands, dogs, cats, police, civilians and even the real life 'he's-really-old-but-still-looks-like-a-small-boy' bloke Gary Coleman. How you go about carrying out the tasks and interacting with the characters generally depends on your own mentality. The fact that both passive and aggressive approaches are possible means that Postal 2 is as violent as you are.
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