An Amazing Game That Strengthens an Already Incredibly Story Line, But is Still Lacking.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, is the second game in the Stalker series and is the prequel to the events of Shadow of Chernobyl.
The game is a FPS/RPG set up, you have fast paced battles and equipment managing and other things.
The game is much like it's predecessor, but adds new features, like a new PDA layout, and other things.
New Features:
Faction Wars:
A feature that was supposed to be in Shadow of Chernobyl, but was cut from the game, this adds much replay value to the game as you can join almost any faction in the game (except the military).
Detector: My second favorite, instead of artifacts just randomly popping out of anomalies, you get close to the anomaly with a detector and it will tell you where the artifact is. This makes artifacts much rarer and worth more, and makes artifact hunting much more fun.
like HUD (the stealth status bars were removed, I like this because it makes sneaking much more challenging).
Since this game is much like the SOC, things like music were left out of this review. Just go to my profile and read the SOC review for the full scoop.
This is, by far, my favorite game out of the stalker series. There is so much replay value compared to the first and faction wars is an incredible addition.
And other small things,
Scar is the coolest guy, but I was dissapointed when you couldn't start with the trench coat he was wearing, and I was even more dissapointed when you can't even get the item in the game. Despite the fact that the sniper rifle he had is in the northern part of the swamp (where he fainted during the opening cutscene).
Long awaited repair was added to the game, so your favorite weapons and armor sets can stick with you for good.
You also can upgrade your gear now and add things that improve your bullet protection, accuracy of weapons and the like.
The main quest system from SOC was replaced by helping factions for rewards or by fighting for one.
Being a mercenary is a great thing, your no longer immedately at war with the bandits and can even join them, you can join up with a faction and wipe out another one or just be the Neutral guy and run errands for everyone.
The game is roughly 50% new areas and 50% old, you will see familiar faces like Sid and other characters, while also meet completely new ones.
I don't have much trouble with it, but the game's difficulty is a but over blown compared to the first game. But simply cranking the difficulty down a notch takes care of it.
As it seems with the Stalker games, each game is a continuation of the story line, but is adding the content that had to be cut from the game, and hopefully S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will have all of it and hopefully GCG learned from their mistakes.
Unfortunately many things weren't fixed.
You still can't hotkey items, forcing you to open your inventory and manually double click on items. The only keybound items are bandages and med kits.
There are more places to make camp and store your arsenal of weapons, but you still can't sleep. Food is way to common, and you will never be low on ammo/med kits.
The game has even more bugs than SOC, it's even harder to run due to anti-piracy crap. For instance, in order to run the game, you have to make a .cmd command to program it to open properly and occasionally it will say "Insert Original Clear Sky Disk" even though it's in the drive, but this is something that is easily fixed by just starting it up again.
And the random stuttering still breaks your intense immersion in the game.
Don't get me wrong, I love this game, but I don't like typing the same things when it comes to reviews, so I decided to let my SOC review speak for all the good.
There are only a few things I don't like about the game...
Atmosphere: The atmosphere isn't as desolate as SOC was, although the graphics look much better.
I do not like the first person animations either (running while carrying a weapon), they look awkward, you don't sprint everywhere with your gun pointing out in front of you, you point it to the side. I prefer the animations in SOC over these.
The PDA, I do not like the new layout, in my opinion, SOC's PDA layout was much more efficient (I am directing this towards quest management).
The game retains the horrorific atmosphere of the series, but the dark areas that you are sent to aren't as scary as SOC's areas.
Overall this is a great addition to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series and is a must have for Post-Apocalyptic video game fans.
Overall:
Unmodded: 8.0
Modded: 9.5