POSTAL 2

POSTAL 2

Eternal Damnation: Steam Edition
My review of Eternal Damnation
One of the worst mod I was given to play. It feels like there was work done, that's for sure, but the result is abysmal.

Story:

I couldn't finish the game because of many bugs, but from what I could tell, it looks like it was written by a 15 year old. No offense, but it's really old hat, and the inconsistencies in the storyline make you feel uncomfortable and giggle nervously at times. Even the willing suspension of disbelief doesn't help.


Gameplay:

The classic, like the game Postal 2 itself, the only thing I find nice in all this is the fact that it allows us to reload the firearms, which was missing in Postal 2 a bit. Sometimes, a simple hammer is able to one-shot a zombie when bigger and more massive (and therefore more lethal) weapons aren't doing the job against them.


Level Design:

This is the part where it makes the most consensus to me. It feels like a lot of work, as the mod is especially lengthy for someone who would have level designed the game by himself (this is just a guess). I myself had to work alone on projects and I know how time consuming and tedious it is to do everything by yourself, but this is too much. The environment is ugly, that's a bit normal coming from a game running on UE2, but most of the time, the structures are just inconsistent and not realistic.


Settings/Cinematics:

What shocked me the most was the train scene, where the cinematics are just too long and annoying. Example: the roof collapses and there, a 15 seconds cinematic to explain that a roof just collapsed. At that moment, I was mostly screaming "who cares, let me play for ♥♥♥♥'s sake".

Another scene that made me burst out laughing so much because it was so stupid and unrealistic, is the moment when we arrive at the father's circus, and the protagonist's car makes an extremely long jump in distance, taking a completely unreal angle , and the worst thing is that there is no cut, which makes the thing extremely long (fortunately you can skip the cinematics)


Voice acting:

A very amateur voice acting that reminded me of the old days when I was hanging out on amateur dubbing forums. In the case of the protagonist, he is just not credible at all, and it seems that the voice actor has forced his voice to sound more insane and aggressive. The insults repeated when killing people become quite tiresome in the long run, and we just want one thing: that he shut the hell up.

Furthermore, something really upsetting is the fact that during some cinematics, you can hear the computer noise of the voice actors in the background and that you can hear mouse clicks at the end of each audio files. This proves that there was no sound adjustment, nor correction and removal of the background noise (which is the ABCs of sound mixing).


Musics:

I would say that half of the music is just pathetic, and the other half (mainly the electric guitar and bass musics) has REALLY unused potential. Putting in a single level a music that repeats itself in a loop is possible, but you mustn't screw up and for that, make a particularly long music (more than 6 minutes at least), which is not the case. As a result, we end up with a music that loops and is endless.

I could go further in the criticism of the music, but it would really be a question of taste, but to summarize, the person who made the musics was either not much engaged in the project, or crushed under the mountain of things to do, or inexperienced.


Conclusion:

In conclusion, I find that this mod had an incredible potential, but that it was spoilt by the inexperience and the lack of human ressources. To be avoided at all costs, however, if one day, a remake of this mod exists, I would be ready to play it again to see if it has improved.
Last edited by VinylTheDuster; Jan 31, 2023 @ 8:25am
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Showing 1-3 of 3 comments
VinylTheDuster Jan 31, 2023 @ 8:30am 
And sorry if I don't write flawless English, it's not my main language.
axakiono Jun 23, 2023 @ 5:32pm 
press C to cringe uncontrollably
Udo Krawallo Nov 1, 2023 @ 2:55pm 
Not sure what you where expecting. I enjoyed Eternal Damnation despite it´s flaws. Yeah sure, some parts are unrealistic, but then - uhm - it´s Postal 2, right? They dropped realism(if there was some of it) with Apocalypse Weekend. Aside that, considering it´s age and that back then modding wasn´t as sophisticated as today with stronger hardware, lots of better voice actors(I´m ok with the John guy and he delivers a good job as psycho IMHO), more music and all that stuff(like AI generated speech), it´s ok. The last part was a bit lackluster, have to say that, all the undead fighting was rather tedious and the end is also a bit hamfisted. This felt like a cheaper version of AW. Level-wise I prefered the subway tunnels and the mall over the church stuff at the end. Still, better than P4.
Anyway, everybody can have his opinion, and even if I don´t agree, I respect yours.
Last edited by Udo Krawallo; Nov 1, 2023 @ 3:00pm
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