This part of his post leads me to believe this is purely a troll post:

"Oh the horror, all my porn, all my documents, all my personal pictures.  You b*******d, you killed Kenny!!!"

zomglolcats

 No it isn't, it happened and I am really pissed b/c because I have a lot of school work on that have yet to be turn in which I will have to retype from memory.  Imagine the half finished term papers and what not.  But at the same time, I want to laugh about it so that it doesn't ruin my entire day more than it entirely has.  Being in my last year of college and graduate school preparation still going on, I have to still classes and work despite having my crucial entertainment, music, and communication center exploding..... Being a student also means I don't have the income to buy another one anytime soon unless I run to mom and dad, which I don't want to do. 

 I am using the school library right now just to type this and doing a lot of catch up at the same time.  I have to start getting used to long lines at the school library computer rooms especially during peak times to get everything done.  I wanted sympathy and some laughs from pc gamers who know what it is like, but I guess I don't have any givers.  I will just drown my sorrows by overworking myself.  *sniffs*

Fallout 3 killed my computer!!! literally killed my computer.  My harddrives no longer work at all, WTF.  My computer was least a 3 year old build and had a storied history(at least to me).  I put some 30 hours into the game at least, beat it and I was just exploring the Roosevelt academy with Charon.  I had to load the game again because stupid Charon got in way of my Vengence gattling gun during VATS and got vaporized.  However when I pressed the quickload button again, the game and my whole thing came crashing down. Oh the horror, all my porn, all my documents, all my personal pictures.  You bastard, you killed Kenny!!! If i knew that I would pay 50 dollars just to get kicked in the nuts, I could have payed the bum down the street to do it at a fraction of the cost.

I'm about 3 hours in the game.

Do the side quests still expire after a while?

Only 2 things bother me: there's no in-game clock (there was one in the PDA in SoC...) and the AK feels weird.

I can't go back to the original now, it feels very primitive compared to CS:|

Baranga

The only side quest I had expire was the one where you have a message saying that so and so is under attack and need your help. I have ignored those and then it says Quest:blah blah cancelled so I think whoever needed help died lol

If you have the funds, upgrade you AK to the max in beginning raid bodies until you have the funds, it is worth it. its about 30 grand to do a ak 94, might be more for ak 74 because baseline stats sucks much more. Then you can be confidently headshotting enemies in no time with your scoped pimped out gun. Go for emphasis on accuracy then damange. Don't do the grenade launcher attachment upgrade because you can't further upgrade the accuracy following the grenade launcher attachment upgrade path and don't put emphasis on rate of fire and recoil. You need 100 accuracy because you need the at least the first bullet to hit 100% at your aim point to get headshots consistently.

I didn't try to upgrade the viper, but with the rifles if you try to upgrade to with emphasis on damage and accuracy and less emphais on rate of fire and recoil; you get 100 percent accuracy and good damage. Which means you can kills lots of people fast with headshots via scoped rifles(with Monolith battle armor NPC, thats they only way to go). TIP: There is a scope for AK weapons in the swamps on top the first tower you climp up in a box at the very beginning of the game. Also a bout the health kits, later on the game, the higher enemies all have medkits like the military, monolith so you can raid them, but the difficulty of the last missions makes you use medkits quick.

- Another nuance I forgot to mention is Clear Sky has new death animation where it takes a while for enemies to actually get floored; not he usual flying backwards like in old Stalker which was a very useful indicator you got a sucessful headshot. What the new death animination does is makes you waste ammo when you are headshotting enemies cuz you keep shooting them thinking they are still alive, but in fact it is just the stupid slow death animation. Happens a lot when you are far away sniping.

yeah. I did that in original Stalker. I felt like superman in the orignal Stalker with the artifacts I was carrying. Coudln't in Clear Sky, because like I mentioned, I couldn't find any artifacts to cancel the radiations effects. Medkits are hard to come in the Clear Sky because it was a direct game design decision by the makers because they wanted Clear Sky to be more difficult which it is by making medkits harder to come by. You just need to try to buy one to see how absurdly expensive it is. Also all artifacts are extemely gimped compared to the original even. Like for example an artifact(they best one I found) that has value of 12,000 cash has these stats -50 bleeding, but -3 radiation. Thats not worth wearing at all. yeah....

Also Mochyc, their are mods to take care of the npc grenade spamming which is extremely annoying. There are also mods that allow all NPC to buy stuff from you which eleminates the repetitive runs to the trading post to sell stuff. Also about the game crashing. I was playing 1.004. Game crashed on me a total of 8 times for the 13 hours I was playing it until I beat the game. So if you can stand that then buy the game.

I just beat the game. Here are some Stalker Clear Sky nuances i found both annoying and helpful. This is in comparison to the original STALKER, which i think is a superior game. Here are important nuances for former Stalker players to Clear Sky

-their is a repair system

- Money is excruciatingly tight. Leading you to do repetitive trips to kills zones raiding dead bodies, carrying as much as you can then running back to the nearest trading post just to make ends meet. Even then they rip you off badly. Extremely repetitive.

-Med-kits are hard to come by especially in the beginning. Have your save and reload buttons memorized. This kills the immersive experience because you need to save and reload to save health packs for long main mission story. The original Stalker had no problem with this because med kits were everywhere.

-Russian rounds vs NATO rounds have the same damage. There is no difference in damage if upgrade your Russian or Nato rifle to any standard.

- the upgrade system is flawed. For example, the assault files. While the starting baseline stats for rifles vary widely with Nato Gun superior to Russian guns; their upgraded statistics are the same....no really. This is because the upgrade path for ALL ASSUALT FILES have the SAME MAX statistics except maybe max catridge capacity (10, 20, 30, 45). SAME POTENTIAL DAMAGE, ACCURACY so on.

I found my AK 94 max upgraded max for accuracy was the same statistics as a maxed upgraded NATO gun assuming same upgrade path. In fact its better to"upgrade" your nato guns to 5.45 Russian round because its the most common round found. I used the same max upgraded scoped AK 94 gun from start to beginning not by choice because their was literally no better alternative. I upgraded several of the new guns on the same exact upgrade path and the final statistics were the same, so I just stuck to my old rifle. In fact my old rifle was better because 45 max capacity versus 20 max for some of the new guns.

I loved of the feeling in the orginal stalker when you run into the a new gun it was better than the one you were using. This is gone in Clear Sky

- Artifacts are useless. I found 6 of them beating the game, but didn't use any. First of all there are rare. 2nd of all they are put are the good ones in places where you can't get (instant kill anomaly) and the when you do get them, their radiations slowly kills you. In game that is a marathon rather than a sprint, constantly using antiradiation pills is not an option. I found no artifacts countering the radiations like in did in the original STALKER, so they all my artifacts were useless.

-Side mission aren't worth crap. The potential and cost of repairing weapons and armor in the process of completing side mission means the rewards aren't worth it. Side mission are also places extremely close proximity making it easier to complete but at the same making it them seem more like a gameplay gimmick than they already are.

- It seems mutants are upgraded from the original. They seems to shrug off your rounds and grenades. Those jumping four legged masked human mutants especially are hard to kill. I am more afraid of mutants in confined spaces sometimes than humans with their unnatural grenade skills.

- An upgraded pistols(Martha specifically) holding 18 rounds clips, max upgrade to accuracy or damage is extremely effective. I some cases I prefer the pistol to assault rifle because they reload faster and seem to actually take down mutants faster(dunno why). I also think that running backward firing an pistol instead of rifle is more accurate. I might be wrong, but it seems so

- The difficulty is uneven like the first Stalker game. When you get towards the end you are hit with a wall. Be prepared to have a lot of cash on hand for expensive battlefield repairs of armor and weapons.

- The game is really dark. The night is claustrophobic dark and even during daylight you find yourself turning on night vision to see enemies better.

-certain bandits can mug you of all you have touch you. Shoot bandits on site even if they try to talk to you.

-midway in the game, their is a unavoidable bandit mugging. You can get your gear back, but money is another story.