It’s been three years since POSTAL: Brain Damaged released, and we finally have the first DLC ready to soak up for our enjoyment and pleasure. These Sunny Daze is not far off from Duke Caribbean: Life’s A Beach expansion for Duke Nukem 3D, but the short runtime is coincidentally how often you should reapply sunscreen. There’s new weapons, enemies, and places to go that fixes a lot of the pacing issues I had with the base game’s levels. POSTAL: Brain Damaged – These Sunny Daze manages to be a tropical and topical fun in the sun.
The Dude is on a well-deserved(?) vacation, and the President declares war on all gingers, to include yours truly where his weapons get taken. Election Day is just around the corner, and The Dude will have to improvise in order to reclaim what’s his in order to stop the war on hair color. It’s an odd but fitting motivation, especially for the POSTAL series. It’s not long before you’re raising hell and spilling blood in the name of gingers everywhere over the next two to three hours.
We get one new solitary chapter in this DLC, which can be played without finishing the main game. Playing is as easy as picking it from the level select screen. There are three levels that function like how POSTAL: Brain Damaged did, in that you’ll traverse large maps fighting enemies, picking-up weapons, ammo, and hunting secrets. The first level, Sun of the Beach picks up after the first cutscene and you’ll navigate the beach and pier before launching yourself onto a cruise ship. Next is Ship Happens, a fairly standard level in which you move about every floor of the ship, and even in compartments and places you didn’t realize existed. Finally there’s Erection Day, and no, I haven’t made up any of these names, that’s how they are. This level is the least vacation mode of them all, as you’ll move about the White House grounds, innards, and bowels before finding your way to the oval office for the final showdown. In The Oral Office Wardown, this just drops you in a room to stock up on ammo and then the boss fight to finish off the DLC. There’s a cutscene that caps things off, and ends the threat against gingers. The levels are solid, and well made, and fix up my largest criticism of POSTAL: Brain Damaged, where there was too much non-combat and indirect exploration within each level, I never felt that way while playing this, and so that’s a major improvement. I just wish there was more to it, and more ways to use the weapons acquired along the way.
There are five new weapons to collect in the game. In the first level you’ll pick up a drill combined with an umbrella, since The Dude is left to improvise weapons to fight back with, this is not a bad start. The primary fire does what you think, requiring you to get in close to enemies to drill them a new hole, and it’s secondary fire is an umbrella that can block incoming projectiles and damage. Next is a literal pee shooter, the MasterBlaster 3000. Its primary fire shoots piss from The Dude, and it’s alternate fire charges a shot where The Dude seemingly shoots piss from his finger, where his hand is shaped like a gun. Next is a shotgun powered by beans, and the secondary fire is an area of effect lobbing. The Bubblegum Gun is my favorite, where its primary fire is shooting bubblegum balls that actually ricochet off the walls, and the secondary fire blows a bubble that absorb a limited amount of damage before blowing back onto The Dude if not released. There’s an lightning gun that shoots electricity primarily, and the secondary fire is a bubble of electricity that does constant damage to enemies in its path. Next up is a chaingun, doing what you expect, but its secondary fire shoots out a timed explosive that does a decent amount of damage. Lastly there’s the UrAnusium, a Uranium-infused sniper rifle that lets you charge shots un-aimed, and aim down the scope for a well-placed shot. While not a weapon, you do pick-up the sticky hand pretty early on. This allows you to pull objects, or to pull yourself towards objects. It would have been a cool traversal item to get around like it were Titanfall, but it only works in specific situations. All the weapons are creative and unique, and I never felt like I was missing the main game’s weapons, the ones here are good facsimiles and stand-ins.
There’s an astounding fourteen new enemies here. You’ll encounter a very ashy and muscle-bound guy named Chad, some girls that are livestreaming to Twitch for… some reason, motivated parents that come at you, and so on. Though my personal favorite, while not a formidable foe and is more for laughs, is the invisible man. You know this because he’s holding a sign that says so. POSTAL: Brain Damaged‘s enemies will make appearances too, like the moaning BDSM torsos and rednecks with shotguns. The new cast of enemies are fun to deal with alongside the new weapons.
Unlike with my original review of POSTAL: Brain Damaged, I played this game entirely on Linux. With that said, I was able to play the game maxed with 4X MSAA enabled and achieved 180fps almost the whole time. When things got chaotic and very explosion-heavy, I saw it go down to maybe 150fps, but it stayed constant. This is a very performant game, and nothing is really changed here in the DLC that makes it more or less demanding than it was before. You’ll find the performance to be what you already know it to be.
My PC Specs:
– Linux (6.16.4-4-cachyos)
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
The carnage is on par with the base game, and there’s a modest amount of content to be found here. The levels are as big as before, but there’s far less down time. Even the jokes in this game feels more modern and relevant this time around, compared to how things felt playing the boomer shooter originally. Sadly, at least in this build of the game I played, there are no new achievements relating to anything in the DLC. POSTAL: Brain Damaged – These Sunny Daze is a fine addition, but not an not essential one.
A Steam code was provided in advance by the publisher for review purposes
