Postal 2

One of the major concepts of Postal 2 is that it is meant to be a "living world", a simulation of a tongue-in-cheek off-kilter town. Game characters live out their lives completely separate from the actions of Dude—walking around town, buying and selling merchandise, and even engaging in random shootouts with each other and the police.

The town features many cars but they are all "useless exploding props", according to Dude, and cannot be driven, although they can be blown up and sent flying into the air. In addition to cats and dogs, elephants are present; these animals can be shot or set on fire, with the elephants getting annoyed by the player even walking into them—causing them to trumpet with rage and attack anyone within stomping distance. A peculiar feature is the ability to pick up cats as an inventory item. When used, The Postal Dude shoves the barrel of the currently equipped firearm into the cat's rectum (cats can only be used while equipped with a shotgun or assault rifle) as a "silencer".

In Postal 2, the player takes on the role of the Postal Dude, a tall and thin red-headed man with a goatee, sunglasses, a black leather trench coat, and a T-shirt with a grey alien's face printed on it. Postal Dude lives in a dilapidated caravan trailer on land behind a house in the small town of Paradise, Arizona, with his wife, who is identified in the credits as "The Bitch". The game's levels are split into days of the week starting Monday and finishing Friday. (Unless the player chooses the "A Week in Paradise" mode in which you play the week starting Monday and ending on Sunday).

At the beginning of each day, Postal Dude is given several tasks to accomplish, such as "get milk", "confess sins", and "pick up laundry", among other seemingly mundane tasks. The objective of Postal 2 is to finish all of the tasks throughout the week, and the player can accomplish these tasks in any way they wish, be it as peacefully and civilly as possible, or as violently and chaotically as possible. It is possible, if occasionally difficult, to complete most tasks without engaging in battle, or at least, harming or killing other characters, as evidenced by the game's tagline: "Remember, it's only as violent as you are!" The daily tasks can be accomplished in any order the player desires, and the game also includes one task that is activated only when Postal Dude urinates, in which the player is tasked with getting treatment for gonorrhea after Postal Dude discovers he has the infection.

Vince Desi led the development of the game, which started in Summer of 2001. Nine people were employed full-time to work on the game.

Postal 2 received "mixed or average reviews" according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Some of the game's better reviews came from PC Gamer and Game Informer. On the other end of the spectrum, GMR and Computer Gaming World (CGW) both gave Postal 2 scores of zero, with CGW deriding Postal 2 as "the worst product ever foisted upon consumers." In response, negative quotes from Computer Gaming World's review ended up being proudly displayed on the box art of the Postal Fudge Pack. CNN journalist Marc Saltzman wrote that the game was "more offensive than fun" and concluded that "it simply goes too far, too often, and offers little else."

GameSpot criticized the game's loading times, graphics and gameplay, and the gore was called "surprisingly subdued" in comparison to contemporary games like Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix. In a middling review for IGN, author Ivan Sulic disliked the game's crude and childish humour, and dismissed the setting of Paradise as "bland". Eurogamer similarly attacked the game for being immature. Ivan Deez from IGN says that Postal Dude has a "sick mind", when referring to the source of some of the errands he has to complete. Macdonald and Rocha from Canada.com describe Postal Dude as a man whose "raison d'être was to eliminate anyone - man, woman and child - with a dizzying arsenal of weapons", but at the same time as "a misunderstood and ostracized man who takes his revenge on the world with a killing spree."