From the dawn of its creation, difficulty has been an integral part of the POSTAL series. In POSTAL 2, the game has many options for difficulty, from the easiest being Liebermode, and to the toughest, Hestonworld. Share The Pain introduced Insane-o and They Hate Me as difficulties beyond Hestonworld. A Week in Paradise added Nightmare Mode and Really Fucking Hard (called POSTAL and Impossible in POSTAL 2 Complete) difficulties, and the 20th Anniversary update brought the Ludicrous difficulty, making the game even more of a challenge. As the difficulty increases, enemies have better weapons and more power, although their health is unaffected for the most part. On Hestonworld difficulty, every bystander is armed with weapons such as Shotguns and Machine Guns.
Insane-o is simply an upgraded version of Hestonworld, giving bystanders a larger weapon pool with things such as Rocket Launchers and Grenades. They Hate Me changes the game entirely, as you can no longer complete a pacifist run (without nigh impossible luck or use cheats) because every armed bystander (and police) will attack you for being too close to their proximity and line of sight, especially with a weapon drawn. This is the same for difficulties beyond They Hate Me, except that every NPC is armed like in Hestonworld and Insane-o. The player will also be unable to normally purchase any items past Insane-o, with the sole exception being Wednesday while wearing the Gimp Suit. Although the hardest difficulties have been changed, they are balanced quite interestingly.
In POSTAL 2 Complete, there is a secret code that unlocks the ability to make your own custom difficulty. The game must first be beaten on at least POSTAL 2 mode (Monday to Friday) to be able to input the code. Go to New Game and input the following via the D-pad or the arrow keys:
UP UP DOWN DOWN LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT
This is the old Konami code in Nintendo games.
Beyond They Hate Me and POSTAL 2 Complete/original AWP differences[]
- In POSTAL 2 Complete, on the Impossible difficulty, enemies are given more health, and are not as easily disposed of with fire.
- In both games, playing beyond They Hate Me puts the game in a special harder mode which only lets you save once per loading zone, and all healing items smaller than a medkit are used up instantly, similar to the item itself.
- In POSTAL 2 Complete, the petition errand on Tuesday is skipped due to the Police Uniform being removed.
- In AWP, it is possible to play the harder difficulties with Enhanced Mode. You must play them without Enhanced Mode in POSTAL 2 Complete.
- It was also possible to pick up food items while having 100 HP and uselessly using them up instantly. This was fixed in POSTAL 2 Complete.
- In AWP, on Insane-o and Really Fucking Hard, bystanders can wield even the strongest weapons such as Mini-Nuke Launchers or Sawed-Off Shotguns on occasion, being able to kill the Dude in one or a few hits sometimes, where as in POSTAL 2 Complete, the most powerful weapon enemies will have is a Rocket Launcher.
- In POSTAL 2 Complete, the 2 difficulties 'Nightmare Mode' and 'Really Fucking Hard' from AWP were changed to 'POSTAL' and 'Impossible' respectively.
- In AWP you can pick up and hold on to Health Pipes and M@DJ@cK@L's Bong and some Weed like normal, but POSTAL 2 Complete switches up the deal by changing the health pipes themselves into basically reskinned medkits, and there are no M@DJ@cK@L items in POSTAL 2 Complete.
- In both games, the Chompy Game Cartridge will still add its rewards directly into the player's inventory; this is also true if the player purchases an item.
- In POSTAL 2 Complete, if the game is beaten under the Hestonworld difficulty or higher, it will unlock a new menu option.
- In POSTAL 2 Complete, the game will automatically make a checkpoint save before a dangerous fight, or obstacle, which does not interfere with the saving limitation.
- In POSTAL 2 Complete, on the higher difficulties, the player is given a fish finder with an infinite lifetime.
- POSTAL 2 Complete aids the player by placing more healing items and catnip around for the player to use, most notably during the weekend. (POSTAL or above).
- In the 20th anniversary update, a new difficulty named "Ludicrous" was added. Ludicrous provides the following changes:
- The max ammo the Dude can carry is cut in half (ex: 250 assault rifle rounds, down from 500)
- The Bass Sniffer and Chompy Game Cartridge have both been removed.
- The player's inventory is severely limited and they can only carry two or three weapons per key.
- The duration of Catnip is reduced from 30 seconds to 20 seconds.
- Health pipes only heal 30 HP instead of 125. Only one can be carried at a time and withdrawal deals 75 HP worth of damage or 3/4 of the player's health if they're at or below 75 HP.
- The player can be killed instantly by headshots and dismemberment.
- NPCs take less damage from being set on fire and no longer drop healing items.
- The Player cannot pick up any weapons unless they were naturally on the map or obtained from an ATF-R-US machine.
- While you can't get any weapons from NPC's you can still get their ammo of the weapon they were using, but sometimes they will not drop ammo.
- NPCs can carry the strongest weapons including the Mini-Nuke launcher, Sawed-off Shotgun and WMD.
- The player is only allowed 1 Easy Save per level part (ex: Lets say you saved at the Mall, you won't be able to save again in that part of the level, but you can still save at the other level parts as long as you didn't previously saved at any given moment)
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