New Zealand censors have gone so far as to ban an American video game from being sold in that country. The offending game is called Postal 2: Share the Pain. “Postal,” of course is short for “going postal” which is a slang term refering to the murder sprees some U.S. Postal Service employees have gone on mostly in the 80s and 90s in the U.S. The Malaysia Star reports on the reasons behind the ban:

Chief censor Bill Hastings said the American game Postal 2: Share the Pain asked players to control a character who exposed his penis, urinated on, attacked and killed opposing groups including “angry parents protesting violent games, Arab terrorists, Catholics, Indian shop owners, gay men and other stereotyped minority and protest groups.”

But is the game any fun, and what’s this about an Indian shop owner? A review of the game found on PCGameworld sheds light on each question.

Ah, the Postal 2 demo has been released, all is well. I’ve been playing this demo a hell of a lot since its release and the one word review, is fun. The game seems to be designed to offend, which is actually a low point. Instead of satirizing life as it should be, it’s just some guys thinking: “If we let the player light women and cats on fire, someone will get pissed at us.”

… Racially, the game likes to make fun of the darker persuasion. Just take one step into Happy Ganesh, the convenience store and Postal dude asks if a Cow died in there. When you try to buy that milk you were pining for, the clerk tells you to go to the back of the line, you infidel.

You can uncover a more sinister plot involving a bunch of female characters that look suspiciously like the Taliban. A friend of mine who is Indian was brutally offended. He thought, we can make fun of Nazis because that happened so long ago, but an attack that happened a few years ago gets made fun of already since the people who attacked were already one of the most ridiculed groups of people in the country. I donÂ’t share these views, but he has a point.

Whatever happened to the good old days when it was just about fending off space invaders?