Look I'm not a fussy gamer. Of course, if I'm spending £70 on a AAA title I'll want a bit of spit and polish but, like anyone, I'll always cut smaller, independent studios some slack. Arizona-based studio Running With Scissor is never going to have the resources or money to put out the next Elden Ring so I went into Postal 4: No Regerts with what I thought were appropriate expectations.
All you want from a game like this is some silly fun. If it's rough around the edges, even intentionally so, that's just part of the deal, maybe even part of the charm. So with that said...
But that was twenty years ago, and in 2023 we are harder to impress and significantly more difficult to shock. 
Set in the fictional American city of Edinson, Postal 4 sees the titular Postal Dude and his dog Champ stranded in town after getting their RV pinched. As with previous titles, the game is split into days with you trying to earn money through increasingly bizarre jobs.
Edinson is your typical Midwestern town, there are stores, there's a police station, there is a Hotel called Anu's Inn, and a street called Morningwood Drive (Morning Wood is a euphemism for an erection). You get the idea, very silly but a neat little playground to muck around...
Well no, because Edinson is utterly dead. 
NPCs trudge around oblivious to everything that isn't two feet from their face, occasionally stopping to perform a pre-scripted animation like throwing up or yelling 'Asshole!' at nothing and no one.
The streets have cars but no one drives them. Police will give chase and trigger a wanted system but you'll barely notice and the pedestrians do that early 2000s thing where they panic, run for a few yards, and then carry on with their day.
Combat is boring and repetitive. Enemies have the survival instincts of a cabbage, standing motionless until you're in direct eyesight and close enough to see their expressionless faces.
Then they'll charge you, still expressionless, wildly swinging, until you put exactly four bullets in them. There are no headshots in Postal 4 so they'll come at you with holes in their heads but they're just as likely to get caught in doors or just fling themselves off bridges. 
Traversal of the map is a ballache as the game will just halt to load another area, there's no clever hidden cut or animation (you know like Resident Evil did twenty-seven years ago). The game simply stops, gives a loading screen then says "The Move is completed" which I swear reads like a line of code they just didn't bother to take out.
If you're very lucky your vehicle will spawn back into the game with you. Sometimes it won't. One time I crossed the invisible line, endured a loading screen and my mobility scooter was gone. The nearest vehicle was back the way I came so I went back, got the loading screen, bought another scooter, returned, got the loading screen, and lost it again. Then I turned it off and watched Star Trek: Picard
(Star Trek: Picard is suddenly really good. Can I review that instead?) 
By all accounts, the PS5 version is less buggy than the PC which... I mean... thoughts and prayers.
The game makes decent use of the Dual Sense's haptic feedback which surprised me. Nothing to write home about but you get the clunky pressure when pulling a trigger which still can't trick you into thinking the guns have any weight to them, but it was a welcome addition. The weapons aren't nearly a fun as the vitamins which allow you to kick NPCs into the horizon - I'll admit to loving that.
In fact... Postal 4 sort of, kind of, started to threaten to win me over and I actually began to doubt myself.
Was all of this the point?
Is this just a game about kicking people off the screen?
Was I supposed to be annoyed while hosing down enormous literal piles of shit?
During that elongated section, I found myself chuckling at how the game was so obnoxiously wasting so much of my time. I could have been learning a language or fixing that cupboard door but nope... hosing down shit.
I kept thinking of those outsider art exhibitions where the artist slaps you in the face, making you a part of the 'piece' and garnering rapturous applause.
Is Postal 4 art?
Or is it just a shit game made for people who find that charming?
I dunno... despite also existing just to stir everyone up I remember Postal 2 feeling like a real game, not like something two teenagers threw together in a month and uploaded to NewGrounds. 
There is some satire buried in the murk that deserves some mention. I say satire, but it's just someone saying 'Grab 'em by the pussy' which is something a US President once said. There is also a section where you have to fling Mexicans over a giant wall which is nowhere near as clever/shocking/funny [delete where applicable] as it sounds.
On paper, I can see the appeal of Postal 4 -No Regerts (The title is my favourite part). There's a place for toilet humour, mindless violence and over-the-top silliness but there are simply far too many games out there that do it so, so much better.
Any of the Grand Auto Games will give you all the US satire you could want in incredibly realised cities. Just Cause will allow you to create absolute mayhem with fantastic physics and an arsenal of weaponry. And if you want the all-out ridiculous then look no further than Saints Row's "Dubstep Gun".
There's nothing here that you haven't seen before. In fact, Postal 4's worst sin is that it isn't even particularly offensive. There's nothing here that comes close to what Trey Parker and Matt Stone managed to get into South Park: Stick of Truth.
It's hard to be too annoyed at Postal 4 when Running with Scissors themselves advertised it as the sequel to the worst game ever made. It's almost charming how little they care how rubbish you think it is... which is sort of cool... but they want money for it. At least those art exhibitions serve champagne.
So, on reflection, is Postal 4, intentionally rubbish or unintentionally rubbish?
It's Both. It's really rubbish.
SUMMARY
Crude but not naughty enough, violent but not mindless enough, Postal 4 is just... shit. 
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