I reviewed Clear Sky a while ago for another forum and I figured I'd port it over to here.
For my first review for this site I guess I'll take a look at the personally highly anticipated prequel to Stalker (I think we'll forgo the periods from here on out) Shadow of Chernobyl which is Stalker: Clear Sky. Taking place in the Chernobyl Alienation Zone shortly before the events of SoC, Clear Sky promises a richer, more rewarding and polished experience that will provide back story to some of the first game's mysteries as well as show us whole new locations and characters we've yet to see (some of which is actually just cut material from the first game). A lot is promised, little is delivered.
The plot is enigmatic, as one can expect at this point. We play a mercenary by the name of Scar (though ALL through the game you will always be referred to as "Merc", so the nickname of "Scar" seems like an after thought) and you have an incredible ability: you can survive blowouts (now called emissions) that normally kill other people. The only catch is, they take several years off your life and if something isn't done to stop these blowouts, you will die. Your fate is now tied to the fate of the entire Zone. The faction that manages to save your nuts from the fire the first time around are the very secretive Clear Sky, a band of militant hippies who believe the Zone must be pacified and respected or it will fight back in terrible ways. The Zone is apparently in a very tumultuous period and things are uncertain, everyone is scared ****less and mutants are becoming a serious problem (in actual fact, no part of the environment is what could be called dynamic and mutants just spawn where they spawn and respawn should you kill them, just like SoC). Anyhoo, the real problem is this asshole named Strelok and his band of buddies who have found a way to penetrate into the center of the Zone and wish to learn the truth behind this horrible phenomenon. This is believed by Clear Sky to be the chief agitator that is putting the proverbial sand in the Zone's vagina.
The Faction war is a glorified tug-o-war with 5 major objectives to capture in sequence.
Gameplay is almost exactly the same as Shadow of Chernobyl except that combat seems even more exaggerated and frustrating than before. Weapons are as inaccurate as BB-guns on a windy day and even with all the subsequent upgrades purchased, firefights involve far more luck than I'd prefer. I suppose this is keeping with the RPG half of the RPGFPS genre, but I'm firing a rifle, not rolling a die. Artifacts, the nuggets of the Stalker Goldrush, are now only found via a scanner that requires flipping out and actually searching actively to find (and they usually appear near anomalies where picking them up is dangerous). I found this feature a nice addition actually, but I ended up on my first play-through with almost never even touching the things because of the effort required to find them. In some levels such as the Swamps and the Red Forest, there are random encounters where you'll hear a rustling bush nearby and a monster will jump out. It sounds gay, but at night with an overcast sky, it's actually pretty awesome. One exclusion I miss, is there are no assassination missions anymore. I enjoyed wandering into a camp full of stalkers, deducing who's my target and plotting their demise. Oh well. The game now features a squad system that is rather basic. Every group of stalkers, 2 - 5 in size, has a leader. You talk to him if you want a quest or such and squadleaders' quests are usually "capture that lump of **** and hold it" or "kill that pack of mutants", then you have to go to the faction's HQ for the reward. Factions are now joinable, unlike SoC, but doing so early in the game is not wise. The faction wars are only viable once you're too close to the end of the game to care anymore. The loners (regular Stalkers) are not loners at all but a faction at war with the Bandits who are also a little too organized for their namesake. They fight along a North-South axis between the Garbage and Cordon. Along the East-West axis are Duty (in the Agroprom Institute) and Freedom (in the Dark Valley). Unjoinable factions are the Renegades (exactly like the Bandits to a T, but provide a "safe" enemy at the beginning of the game so that you can still befriend the "bandits" later on), the Military (no surprise there), Monolith (duh) and the Mercenaries (sometimes they're friendly, sometimes they're not, it depends on their contract lol). The chief flaw here is that the game is just too ****ing short. And the Faction wars, while adding longevity if you choose to allow it to, is unsatisfying. You attack their posts till you reach their base, wipe it out and call it a day. Then they respawn in pathetic little bands and you fight an eternal war of lack-lustre skirmishes. Joining gives you a "uniform" suit and gun, which is nice I guess, and you also get reduced prices at your local trader, but you also make 80 or so stalkers instant enemies. One appeal I suppose is you get to support an ideology. With Duty and Freedom you can fight between the Fascists and the Anarchists, and with the Loners and Bandits, you have Humanism versus Egoism or Nihilism. Unless you're big on role-playing for it's own sake, this is vacuous at best. The last stretch of the game is frustratingly hard to the point of serious rage-factors off the charts and for the last 10 minutes I buckled down and used cheats only to be disappointed by the end.
Even on lowest to low settings, the game can still manage to look, and more importantly, feel atmospheric. And atmosphere is what we all loved Stalker for.
Time for the technical malarkey. Graphics are quite stunning, especially the volumetric fog, new rain effects for vertical surfaces and dynamically wetting horizontal surfaces (when it begins to rain, you can see the ground get slick drop by drop) and the awe inspiring crepuscular rays which are all DirectX 10 additions made to the game on top of it's already competent models, textures and lesser shader effects. I, however, did not play with these effects. I actually had to have my settings LOWER than in Shadow of Chernobyl just to get a decent playable framerate. WORSE visuals coupled with WORSE performance makes for a depressing experience, but what can I do, optimization is for faggots, I should just upgrade (so I'm told). What is funny is that the largest and most detailed level in the game, the Swamps, gives me the best performance. Sound is the same old same old. The voice acting is still kind of goofy, but there's more spoken lines to accompany the text than Shadow of Chernobyl had, unimportant NPCs and such excluded of course. Bugs are negligible with the latest patch, so definitely get it after you install. Don't worry about missing out on mods since there aren't any really, not on the scale of Oblivion Lost and AMK. Mods were a big selling point in SoC's later life and without them, there's little to bring me back to Clear Sky after playing through twice now. One stupid oversight is some of the NPC dialogue sounds like it belongs on a sequel rather than a prequel because it was recycled by earlier builds when Clear Sky actually was a sequel. This is most apparent when Doctor Sakharov mentions giving Strelok of helmet to protect against psy-emissions when in SoC he only just perfected the prototype. You'll have to use your own judgment to decide what is and isn't canon, and that's sad.
These screenshots remind me of the menu photos at McDonald's. My burger looks nothing like this.
Overall, if you absolutely have to get your post-Soviet post-apocalyptic first person shooter role playing game fix, than check out of Clear Sky, but if you’ve never played the original then get that instead and check out it’s modding scene – you’ll be far more satisfied than with this half-cocked damp-powdered fizzle **** of a prequel.
Gameplay – 7/10 – Being a fan of the original, I have a fondness for Stalker’s gameplay, but it’s more frustrating this time around and will require a more tolerant player.
Longevity – 4/10 – If you’re an exploration junkie or find yourself in love with the faction wars then by all means, create 5 save games and knock yourself out, but I haven’t touched it in about a month.
Visuals – 8/10 – Models could use a bit of polish, but this game, with a decent rig, will knock your socks off.
Audio – 7/10 – "GET OUT OF HERE, STALKER" "I SAID COME IN, DON’T JUST STAND THERE" "KHELLO? KHELLO?" "WHAT ARE YOU, DEAF? WHAT ARE YOU HERE?" "GOOD HUNTING, STALKER" "BLACK RAVEN, BLACK RAVEN CIRCLING ABOVE THE GRAVE" – Sadly, none of these memorable quotes are present in Clear Sky
Rage – 6/10 – If the usual suspects don’t get to you, the last gauntlet of power-armor clad super soldiers and helicopters and straight hallways devoid of cover that comprise the last two levels will definitely weaken your heart. Enjoy your strokes in 30 years, kids.
Overall – 6/10 – I’d say rent it, but where the hell can you rent PC games these days?
For my first review for this site I guess I'll take a look at the personally highly anticipated prequel to Stalker (I think we'll forgo the periods from here on out) Shadow of Chernobyl which is Stalker: Clear Sky. Taking place in the Chernobyl Alienation Zone shortly before the events of SoC, Clear Sky promises a richer, more rewarding and polished experience that will provide back story to some of the first game's mysteries as well as show us whole new locations and characters we've yet to see (some of which is actually just cut material from the first game). A lot is promised, little is delivered.
The plot is enigmatic, as one can expect at this point. We play a mercenary by the name of Scar (though ALL through the game you will always be referred to as "Merc", so the nickname of "Scar" seems like an after thought) and you have an incredible ability: you can survive blowouts (now called emissions) that normally kill other people. The only catch is, they take several years off your life and if something isn't done to stop these blowouts, you will die. Your fate is now tied to the fate of the entire Zone. The faction that manages to save your nuts from the fire the first time around are the very secretive Clear Sky, a band of militant hippies who believe the Zone must be pacified and respected or it will fight back in terrible ways. The Zone is apparently in a very tumultuous period and things are uncertain, everyone is scared ****less and mutants are becoming a serious problem (in actual fact, no part of the environment is what could be called dynamic and mutants just spawn where they spawn and respawn should you kill them, just like SoC). Anyhoo, the real problem is this asshole named Strelok and his band of buddies who have found a way to penetrate into the center of the Zone and wish to learn the truth behind this horrible phenomenon. This is believed by Clear Sky to be the chief agitator that is putting the proverbial sand in the Zone's vagina.
The Faction war is a glorified tug-o-war with 5 major objectives to capture in sequence.
Gameplay is almost exactly the same as Shadow of Chernobyl except that combat seems even more exaggerated and frustrating than before. Weapons are as inaccurate as BB-guns on a windy day and even with all the subsequent upgrades purchased, firefights involve far more luck than I'd prefer. I suppose this is keeping with the RPG half of the RPGFPS genre, but I'm firing a rifle, not rolling a die. Artifacts, the nuggets of the Stalker Goldrush, are now only found via a scanner that requires flipping out and actually searching actively to find (and they usually appear near anomalies where picking them up is dangerous). I found this feature a nice addition actually, but I ended up on my first play-through with almost never even touching the things because of the effort required to find them. In some levels such as the Swamps and the Red Forest, there are random encounters where you'll hear a rustling bush nearby and a monster will jump out. It sounds gay, but at night with an overcast sky, it's actually pretty awesome. One exclusion I miss, is there are no assassination missions anymore. I enjoyed wandering into a camp full of stalkers, deducing who's my target and plotting their demise. Oh well. The game now features a squad system that is rather basic. Every group of stalkers, 2 - 5 in size, has a leader. You talk to him if you want a quest or such and squadleaders' quests are usually "capture that lump of **** and hold it" or "kill that pack of mutants", then you have to go to the faction's HQ for the reward. Factions are now joinable, unlike SoC, but doing so early in the game is not wise. The faction wars are only viable once you're too close to the end of the game to care anymore. The loners (regular Stalkers) are not loners at all but a faction at war with the Bandits who are also a little too organized for their namesake. They fight along a North-South axis between the Garbage and Cordon. Along the East-West axis are Duty (in the Agroprom Institute) and Freedom (in the Dark Valley). Unjoinable factions are the Renegades (exactly like the Bandits to a T, but provide a "safe" enemy at the beginning of the game so that you can still befriend the "bandits" later on), the Military (no surprise there), Monolith (duh) and the Mercenaries (sometimes they're friendly, sometimes they're not, it depends on their contract lol). The chief flaw here is that the game is just too ****ing short. And the Faction wars, while adding longevity if you choose to allow it to, is unsatisfying. You attack their posts till you reach their base, wipe it out and call it a day. Then they respawn in pathetic little bands and you fight an eternal war of lack-lustre skirmishes. Joining gives you a "uniform" suit and gun, which is nice I guess, and you also get reduced prices at your local trader, but you also make 80 or so stalkers instant enemies. One appeal I suppose is you get to support an ideology. With Duty and Freedom you can fight between the Fascists and the Anarchists, and with the Loners and Bandits, you have Humanism versus Egoism or Nihilism. Unless you're big on role-playing for it's own sake, this is vacuous at best. The last stretch of the game is frustratingly hard to the point of serious rage-factors off the charts and for the last 10 minutes I buckled down and used cheats only to be disappointed by the end.
Spoiler!
Even on lowest to low settings, the game can still manage to look, and more importantly, feel atmospheric. And atmosphere is what we all loved Stalker for.
Time for the technical malarkey. Graphics are quite stunning, especially the volumetric fog, new rain effects for vertical surfaces and dynamically wetting horizontal surfaces (when it begins to rain, you can see the ground get slick drop by drop) and the awe inspiring crepuscular rays which are all DirectX 10 additions made to the game on top of it's already competent models, textures and lesser shader effects. I, however, did not play with these effects. I actually had to have my settings LOWER than in Shadow of Chernobyl just to get a decent playable framerate. WORSE visuals coupled with WORSE performance makes for a depressing experience, but what can I do, optimization is for faggots, I should just upgrade (so I'm told). What is funny is that the largest and most detailed level in the game, the Swamps, gives me the best performance. Sound is the same old same old. The voice acting is still kind of goofy, but there's more spoken lines to accompany the text than Shadow of Chernobyl had, unimportant NPCs and such excluded of course. Bugs are negligible with the latest patch, so definitely get it after you install. Don't worry about missing out on mods since there aren't any really, not on the scale of Oblivion Lost and AMK. Mods were a big selling point in SoC's later life and without them, there's little to bring me back to Clear Sky after playing through twice now. One stupid oversight is some of the NPC dialogue sounds like it belongs on a sequel rather than a prequel because it was recycled by earlier builds when Clear Sky actually was a sequel. This is most apparent when Doctor Sakharov mentions giving Strelok of helmet to protect against psy-emissions when in SoC he only just perfected the prototype. You'll have to use your own judgment to decide what is and isn't canon, and that's sad.
These screenshots remind me of the menu photos at McDonald's. My burger looks nothing like this.
Overall, if you absolutely have to get your post-Soviet post-apocalyptic first person shooter role playing game fix, than check out of Clear Sky, but if you’ve never played the original then get that instead and check out it’s modding scene – you’ll be far more satisfied than with this half-cocked damp-powdered fizzle **** of a prequel.
Gameplay – 7/10 – Being a fan of the original, I have a fondness for Stalker’s gameplay, but it’s more frustrating this time around and will require a more tolerant player.
Longevity – 4/10 – If you’re an exploration junkie or find yourself in love with the faction wars then by all means, create 5 save games and knock yourself out, but I haven’t touched it in about a month.
Visuals – 8/10 – Models could use a bit of polish, but this game, with a decent rig, will knock your socks off.
Audio – 7/10 – "GET OUT OF HERE, STALKER" "I SAID COME IN, DON’T JUST STAND THERE" "KHELLO? KHELLO?" "WHAT ARE YOU, DEAF? WHAT ARE YOU HERE?" "GOOD HUNTING, STALKER" "BLACK RAVEN, BLACK RAVEN CIRCLING ABOVE THE GRAVE" – Sadly, none of these memorable quotes are present in Clear Sky
Rage – 6/10 – If the usual suspects don’t get to you, the last gauntlet of power-armor clad super soldiers and helicopters and straight hallways devoid of cover that comprise the last two levels will definitely weaken your heart. Enjoy your strokes in 30 years, kids.
Overall – 6/10 – I’d say rent it, but where the hell can you rent PC games these days?
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