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Apocalypse Weekend offers the same engine, but it has been updated. The load times that plagued and almost ruined the original Postal 2 are completely gone. There are load times of course, but they don’t take two to three minutes each. The levels themselves range from city streets to Middle Eastern deserts. Along the way, the player meets interesting people and participates in much more interesting scenarios.
The models for the guns haven’t changed much since the previous installment. They all look and feel the same. Also the character models still react in the same fashion. You can run around with a shovel and chop people’s heads off or cut off a leg or two; the gory fun never ends. The most impressive graphical feature of Postal 2, which carries over to Apocalypse Weekend, is the explosion visual. Drenching a car in gasoline and then running a trail down the road never gets old. They looked great in the past and they still look great today.
The game runs smoothly even on a high resolution with maximum AA/AF; this illustrates the versatility of the Unreal Warfare engine. The rest of the graphics do look a little dated compared to everything else out today. The objects and buildings in the game lack detail in some areas, but for the most part the game does its job on eye candy—you can still look up a dead girl’s skirt if that’s your sort of thing.
Sound effects are all the same. The guns don’t exactly sound realistic, but they don’t sound horrible either. It’s what you would expect from this kind of game. They could use more depth and power to them, but it doesn’t matter when you’re chopping off some innocent human’s leg.
Apocalypse Weekend changes scenarios a lot. You first wake up in a hospital with a head wound and after walking around for a bit, everything changes and becomes a nightmarish reality. You see little kids running around with guns, grenades, and a bunch of other weapons trying to kill you. The nightmares come and go throughout the game and can sometimes be annoying because those little guys are really tough to kill. Gary Coleman also makes a few more appearances in the game. He isn’t a boss but just another character to gun down or chop apart.
After a few levels pass in the game, you finally see a plot begin to form. Vince, from Running With Scissors, wants you to get a gold master game back from their former publisher. The publisher is half mentioned and when you reach the company headquarters, the first part of the name is blacked out. The interior of this building is wonderfully done. There is a lot of attention to detail throughout the entire building. You can see people walking around minding their own business, go to a kitchen and see the cooks preparing meals, run around a few offices, and finally reach the man with the gold master CD.
The reaction from the computer characters when you attack is great. They run around and scream like maniacs. If they have weapons, they go for cover and start attacking you. In a city street or a park, it can get chaotic and the resulting massacre is awesome. It’s never been more fun to kill people and watch them kill each other. In some areas you get to play with elephants and cows. The elephants are as destructive as possible; they throw people around with ease and stomp you down like you couldn’t imagine.
Apocalypse Weekend is about six or seven hours long, maybe a little less if you don’t die much or if you save up your kitty treats, which slows things down, for those really tough parts. The game is fun and if you enjoyed Postal 2, there’s absolutely no reason not to give the expansion pack a try. While the game is short, it does have its moments, which easily make up for it. The creativity of the levels and scenarios is ingenious; though the plot may be a bit thin, it doesn’t matter since the game doesn’t revolve around a story. It’s fun and that’s all there is to it.
