Postal 2 - Share the Pain Demo for GNU/Linux

fredan writes "Icculus has posted this news on his site: 'Just in time to relieve all that Holiday stress, a demo version of Postal 2: Share the Pain is now available for GNU/Linux systems.'"

Comments

Re:what??

[Pyro226]

Games for linux? What's next? Games for Macs?

Check out Ambrosia Software. They've made a lot of great Mac games (Escape Velocity Series), and they are starting to port them to Linux (Maelstrom).

I set up a mac emulator on my Windows box just so I could play some of their games.

Re:what??

[Epistax]

I agree. I was going to get an old mac to play escape velocity, then they released it for PC.

Re:Linux Games

[Tsali]

Which is somewhat ironic...

The profit margin on a game is pretty small if you can ever get one to publish. Add on support and testing due to N combinations of drivers, and games are very labor intensive. Now, throw on N combinations of N programs for N linux distributions, and you have yourself an absolute nightmare. That's why you see console games more quickly - less testing on bad hardware.

Compound on the fact that game players are PHB's in their own right in the sense they can ask for features, features, features, and not demand another cent out of it.

The only way you'll see games on Linux is if someone does the following (and if someone has, we need better marketeers...)

- A somewhat standard architecture (OpenGL springs to mind)...
- A standard *BSD* toolkit using that architecture. People should be able to try to make a buck from it. This implies a somewhat standard language (or at least a standard messaging protocol (CORBA)). Candidate would be C++, although it would be nice to see others.
- A dedicated group of people to do it with.
- Someone comes up with some neat ideas that they would want to work for free on.

For only 2% of the market, you'll rarely see stuff in the stores. Best Buy carries zilch and MicroCenter carries a handful of Linux apps. If 2% of 2% wants to buy a game that only 2% of that target group wants, you'll have a hard time finding 2% of the developers willing to contribute.

That said, it is more possible if Linux picks up market share and attitudes change. In the meantime, we're stuck.

T.

There's a bugzilla for it too

[Via_Patrino]

There's a bugzilla for it too, here.

Re:lets all rejoice!

[artemis67]

Postal 2 was nominated to be one of the Most Embarrassing Games of the Year by GameSpot...

OTOH, it DOES have Gary Coleman in it!

Don't bother

[dswensen]

I love Rockstar Games and the GTA series remains one of my all-time favorites. I respect the fact that Rockstar makes its living being as controversial and over-the-top as they feel like, and generally don't compromise. To some extent, I can even get behind the fairly brainless conceit of this game (you're a psychopath, go hit people in the head and light them on fire... mission successful!)

But I've played this demo, and it's pretty much junk. Dated graphics (and I say this as someone who is not a graphics whore), clunky control scheme, animations which are satisfyingly gruesome the first time but quickly grow repetitive... all in all I think I liked the first Postal better, and honestly that was not very much to begin with. Sure, peeing on everything in sight is fun for awhile (just like in real life!), but the novelty wears off pretty fast. And I say this as someone who's killed many, many hours running over people in GTA3 and trying to find all the hidden jumps, etc. -- so I have a pretty high tolerance for repitition.

If this demo is representative of what the final version of Postal is going to be like, the game is going to be a serious failure. I hope that's not the case, because it seems like the fine folks at Rockstar could do much better than this (and have, years ago now).

One reason to like this game ...

[timothy]

Is the whining USPS reaction to the Mad TV sketch about going postal (the concept).

The post office should lighten up -- after all, it's only a joke. Everyone knows that it doesn't really happen.

timothy (whose father and grandfather worked for the post office and escaped bullet wounds)

Bad taste

[Avian visitor]

Like some other guys here I find this game a horrible example of bad taste.

I believe our civilization is digging it's grave with stuff like this. With violent video games we are teaching younger generations that killing little figures on the screen is nothing bad.

Some earlier posts said that games are not about reality. I certainly agree with them that most (if not all) people will never think about repeating actions from a game in real life.

But think again how today's wars are being fought. Pilots on a modern bomber are actually playing a very sophisticated video game. They see icons on screens. They push the button and the icon disappears. I doubt they feel sorry for that icon. When they have time to think that that icon represented fifty people it is too late. The same goes from tanks to ICBMs.

The instinct that keeps us from killing each other on the street and that tells us that hurting another one of your species is wrong doesn't work here. And guess what, even infantry is being equiped with HUDs. Soon no soldier will ever see a speck of blood. They will only shoot vectorized figures on the screen. And because they have grown up with killing people on the computer screen they won't find this wrong.

In the past you had to have a very good reason to fight with someone. Now people voluntarily join the army just to play a more sophisticated video game.

Re:Bad taste

[TyrranzzX]

Video games aren't the problem. The problem is;

1: Parents for not teaching their kid why killing is bad and the difference between a video game and real life.

2: The military's fault for not publicly executing soldiers who purposly fire on unarmed civilians for no reason infront of other armed soldiers who are manditorially required to be there. There is no space for antisocial behavior in the armed forces or in any army. Yes, a screen makes killing a bit easier, because you don't even have to see the whites of their eyes. As time goes on we'll see more of the old sniper mentality where the only thing that keeps a sniper together is the fact he knows, not thinks or fears, but knows that it's either the enemy or himself. Most soldiers get reprimanded or court marshalled at the worst. Personally, if any soldier comes back from iraq and starts bragging about how he shot and killed some civilians infront of me who were giving him some trouble, he's getting a bullet in the head and that's that. Call it harsh if you want to, but it's better to put an end to their insanity now than give them a chance to shoot more civilians in the off chance one of them had a bomb.

3: The news and media, for censoring all of the real violence out of our lives so we can't see what it really is. It'd snap us out of that great good consuming frenzy if we saw what a real sweatshop in africa producing gap jeans looks like.

But mostly,

4: Idiots like yourself who fabricate this idea that their kids or other people's kids, or even other people are bloodthirsty monsters. 99% of people aren't psycho's. I know my neighbors have a grip on why killing people are bad, and while there are psycho's out and about, 99% of people aren't them. The media would like us to think so and they pump the fear right into our veigns with every news broadcast they can. There are things that will cause kids to become violent, such as a lack of education or love or constant abuse by society to name a few.

Postal 2 is like a really disgusting piece of art. You can call it tacky, dumb, perverted, or even try to burn it down. But when it comes to the end of it, that piece of art has done it's job; provoked you to some emotion or another. I'v played through Postal 2, it was, content wise, one of the best games I'v played in awhile. I had a blast, and I killed plenty of virtual people while ranting on and on about their stupidity. In order to stay healthy mentally, you've got to explore the extremes. Everyone who thinks does this, and even after awhile I got disgusted with the game. When you get to the point of standing on a roof with a can of gas, making a gigantic puddle on the street and lighting it on fire, then throwing down 30 cats that turn into little firey hellhounds in an attempt to light everyone in town on fire you've got to start thinking if this game is effecting your mental health.

I'm not going to call someone crazy for not liking or for liking this game, some people find it repulsive others find it enteraining, it's akin to how I think freelancer sucked and tribes2 roxors. But, at least get your information straight.

This game is simply a Bad Game[tm]

[PixelSlut]

They think they're being controversial or something, but they're actually just being really stupid and immature. This game reeks of 13-year-old humor. This game has no artistic, comical, or technical value whatsoever. I like to support Linux games on general principle, but I just can't do that for this game.