After playing a while i must say that this game feels a lot more hectic than the original - i get constantly stressed by mya llies calling me for help on the radion, and i have to constantly run about from point to point to help them out and repell attacks on bases. The original had a much calmer atmosphere, almost serene in some way.

Its a little more face paced I'd agree, but I enjoy it just as much as I did the first..and as soon as I get my new damn PC hopefully tomorrow or tuesday, I'll love it even more with the visuals on max, cuz the game is beautiful.

Those 'help us' messages are quite annoying with their frequency, they seem to be proximity triggered too and your direction of approach can sometimes dictate whether you can get there in time or not and end up failing before you're even near the target. I've ignored quite a few.

As for the flash drives, ask mechanics at camps (the dudes who do upgrades and repairs) if they have any jobs for you, they request data on upgrades so take the ones you find to them if they match what they want. They can then perform new upgrades to your stuff. Sometimes you get the drives as mission rewards (not the 'help us' ones, they're usually just some cash reward) and others are in stashes you pay people to tell you about with the 'what can you offer me?' option.

Yeah, it really is more of a "Shooter-shooter" instead of a "survival-shooter" which is what I'd kinda classify the first one as.  There just seems to be a lot of scenes with "endless" enemies.  Yantar in specific.  "Zombies" re-spawn there like no tomorrow, and your allies really aren't any help to you as your lucky if they manage to kill any of them let alone just get shot to death.  And then there's an endless stream of Bandits spawning in another scripted scene at the Red Forest.  I like SoC a lot more than CS I have to say.

The beginning of Clear Sky is totally awesome, the faction war starts off really cool.  But since all the maps are split-up instead of sewn together it really doesn't work in the end, and there's no reason to rack your brains trying to help everyone.  And the game gets more "hectic" by the end.  A lot more.  Personally I enjoyed the exploration and underground atmospheric scenes in SoC.  Unfortunately CS really lacks in that aspect.

The Zone to me was this area were only the risk takers would go.  The Army would set up outposts in "safe" zones, and small groups of Stalkers & Bandits would try to find a way into the center of the zone.  And barely anyone would go in to far for fear of stepping in a vortex anomoly.  (I'm sure we all know what that's like) But now that the zone is teaming with endless large groups of enemies everywhere, it really just broke the immersion to me. 

holy fuck i forgot this just came out.

*rushes to steam.

Just patch it all up Rowr, there's 2 so far( Idk if steam patches that stuff automatically since its not a valve game, I've always downloaded them myself)

There's a Patch 1.01 and a 1.504 patch, you gotta make sure you get the right 1.504 patch though, there is one meant for the Retail box version of the game, and one for downloading it I believe. Still some annoying bugs to run into which really saddens me..but the game itself is amazing, hopefully in another patch or two they have it all fixed up completely...main problem I run into now is the loss of save files, or crashing when I load one.

edit- I hope you have a good computer to run it on too man..I mean its still amazing regardless, but god damn the effects and shit this game has in it when its turned up..its absolutely stunning, blows everything else away that I've seen so far..especially the weather effects and lighting.

"And don't save ANYTIME during an emission!"  - is my advice before you get started.  A lot of houses and underground shelters don't work for some weird buggy reason.  And some stalkers will block doors even when your already in the house, and if it's a house that won't shelter you from emissions you'll have no escape - and die... it's happened quite a few times on my second run for me.  I heard the patch was supposed to fix it, but it didn't for me for the retail version.

ya I just hope everything gets straightened out in the next few patches..it eventually did with stalker SoC for the most part, because this game at its core is really fucking awesome..the bugs hold it back though its disappointing to see.

Oh for sure!  I mean, I can see Clear Sky's brilliance underneath it all.  But I just wish GSC Game World would stop releasing the Stalker games with the thought process of "We'll release it, and then as we get feedback for all the balancing issues and bugs we'll patch it up".  (Ie. Post-Beta release!)  It's just really hard to get friends into the Stalker series when the games are so damn unfinished.  It makes me sad since the Zone is so friggin' awesome!

At first glance, I thought Clear Sky would be a 1.1 version of SoC but after reading this, it appears the game has changed, are there any graphical/ gameplay changes that you guys have noticed?

The graphical changes are almost all DX10 related as for as I can tell.  So it will look a little nicer than SoC.  But not really by too much if you don't have Vista and DX10.  The lighting feature is way way better.  But it's definaitly more of a shooter and can get pretty frustrating at the levels at the end of the game.  And Artefacts are very rare and invisible.  You have to use detectors to find them,  it's actually a pretty cool idea that works well since you have to really risk your life trying to venture into anomolies trying to find them.  But I personally like SoC better than CS.

I can't really tell what you're asking Zero...its a prequel to SoC in terms of where it  falls under, the engine is a more advanced version of the engine that powered stalker SoC, and its absolutely stunning if you can turn everything up. These patches though I don't think they've messed with the graphics any, just fixing stuff that should of been fixed at launched really.

"The graphical changes are almost all DX10 related as for as I can tell.  So it will look a little nicer than SoC.  But not really by too much if you don't have Vista and DX10.  The lighting feature is way way better.  But it's definaitly more of a shooter and can get pretty frustrating at the levels at the end of the game.  And Artefacts are very rare and invisible.  You have to use detectors to find them,  it's actually a pretty cool idea that works well since you have to really risk your life trying to venture into anomolies trying to find them.  But I personally like SoC better than CS."

"I can't really tell what you're asking Zero...its a prequel to SoC in terms of where it  falls under, the engine is a more advanced version of the engine that powered stalker SoC, and its absolutely stunning if you can turn everything up. These patches though I don't think they've messed with the graphics any, just fixing stuff that should of been fixed at launched really."

weird.

The game is not released yet according to steam. Also they tricked me into paying in USD, without any warning at all.

"edit- I hope you have a good computer to run it on too man..I mean its still amazing regardless, but god damn the effects and shit this game has in it when its turned up..its absolutely stunning, blows everything else away that I've seen so far..especially the weather effects and lighting."

I was enjoying the game until I walked into that little room with fang in, and they flashbanged me and stole all my stuff just after I upgraded my weapons. I can't seem to get anywhere after that, I am either killed by bandits because I just have a crappy pistol or I die because I just randomly get poisoned by radiation and have nothing to stop it taking my health down.