Postal: Brain Damaged – These Sunny Daze PC review — More of what’s already great

Postal: Brain Damaged is, without a doubt, my favourite boomer shooter of recent years. Hell, it’s one of my favourites in general! So there wasn’t a question of whether I’d be playing the “These Sunny Daze” DLC as soon as it dropped. The DLC offers a solid chunk of new content from levels, new settings, new enemies, and mostly all-new (if very familiar) weapons that all add up to make it a solid surprise send-off to the base game over three years after its initial launch. If you’re looking for more of the game, you can’t go wrong, although there were a few aspects I found underwhelming all the same.

These Sunny Daze kicks off with Postal Dude apparently fast asleep on a beach while on vacation. In his dream, a special announcement from the President of the US comes on the radio where he states that America is now going after the gingers. Since Postal Dude is a ginger, he decides to fight back against his own subconscious yet again (this particular focus is no doubt a manifestation of his paranoia as well as commentary on certain American political events.) If you’re expecting a heaping dose of satire poking fun at current events, however, you won’t find much of it here (the game’s dev is Polish, after all.)

The DLC is bookended by two animated cutscenes in the same style as the ones from the main game. What’s on offer here is another three levels and a boss fight, which basically comprises a fourth episode of Postal: Brain Damaged, although a somewhat truncated one considering the ones in the main game all had four levels. Granted, the levels here are somewhat longer than some of the ones in the base game, so it pretty much evens out in the end. You can expect the DLC to take from an-hour-and-a-half to two-and-a-half hours to get through, depending on how much you explore or die.

In case you were wondering, the difficulty here is definitely higher than in the early main game, so you’ll probably want to be familiar with the gameplay before jumping in. Levels have huge amounts of enemies with lots of big, threatening arena fights to sink your teeth into. The first of the three levels here was easily my favourite, as it takes place on a beach and at a nearby beach resort of sorts. This is very much in line with what I expected considering the DLC’s title. It seems like an obvious nod to one of the Duke Nukem 3D expansion packs and very much ranks as one of the best settings we’ve seen in Postal: Brain Damaged.

However, it doesn’t last. The entire second level takes place on a boat, so you’ll find a lot of dark, metallic interiors that feel a bit lacking compared to the bright, colourful beach setting of the first level. The third level fares somewhat better, but even a large amount of that takes place in a sewer system, so a lot of the time spent in These Sunny Daze is unfortunately in a setting that doesn’t look too different than any of the industrial interiors that Postal: Brain Damaged has shown us before. That being said, all three levels are definitely good, I was just hoping for more of the zanier locations that stuck in my mind from before.

There’s a healthy selection of new enemies here, including a parody of the gigachad meme, envisioned as a greyscale bodybuilder that spins toward you. There’s also a man with a hot dog cart, plus an e-girl caricature complete with selfie stick to hound you. There are a lot more too, so all of this helps in making These Sunny Daze feel distinct, although plenty of enemies from the base game also return. On the other hand, almost all of the weapons (until the final boss, at least) are unique to this DLC. I say “unique,” but it’s clear that they’re mostly modified versions of weapons from the base game.

For instance, the main game’s pistol is replaced by a beer bottle gun that fires a bit of beer in an arc. Instead of homing in on your enemies as its alt fire, it fires a stream of beer. The cola shotgun is replaced by a hot dog shotgun that can be charged up, the nail gun has been replaced by a bubble gum gun, resulting in shots bouncing around the level after hitting a surface, and the sniper rifle that functioned similarly to a bow-and-arrow is now a nuclear sniper that can fire charged shots. Oh, and the shovel saw is now a drill with a shield built into it as its alt fire.

I’m not sure how I feel about this as it doesn’t really change anything beyond making combat feel slightly different, but due to all of the above, it’d be difficult to not be able to differentiate this DLC from the main game. The final boss fight is multiple phases and fairly amusing too, plus it attempts something I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a game before. In terms of balance, what’s here is pretty solid and fair, although I did notice a couple of sections where the game basically stopped doling out health, such as a long, kind of aggravating platforming section in level 3.

Since I’m such a big fan of this game, I have to admit that I’m very biased here. I love Postal: Brain Damaged. This DLC is more of it and it doesn’t flub anything, therefore I think it was very much worth playing. But it’s short, doesn’t have the incredibly memorable level theming I was hoping to see (although there is some of it in here,) and has some sections that I think should receive a bit of tuning here and there. But the bottom line is, if you feel the same way about the base game as I do, you’re going to be picking this up. Now start pelting enemies with gumballs already!

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