Disappointingly similar to the original
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky feels like a lazy iteration on the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl that is disappointingly similar to the original.
You play a "stalker" in the exclusion zone surrounding the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, where radiation and other mysterious forces have twisted the landscape and life in the area, as well as created valuable artifacts that attract the military, scientists, bandits, treasure hunters and organized factions with their own agendas.
The game is a first-person shooter with RPG elements, such as an inventory, mostly text dialogue trees, questing and looting.
Artifact hunting and gear maintenance have both been tweaked for the better. The sidequest system is still sometimes broken.
The addition of faction wars is interesting, but jankiness and endlessly respawning enemy faction squads makes it unsatisfying. In my playthrough, I wiped out a bandit base, which is the final objective in a multistage faction war for a group you encounter early in the game. After receiving a message that the objective was completed and leaving the base, several bandit squads respawned inside the base and the objective reset. I cleared the base perhaps a dozen times before giving up on it and moving on.
I had a similar experience with a later-game faction war. After clearing an enemy faction base and holding it until my faction's NPCs took control, the enemy faction's squads would still respawn inside the base, right inside a building friendly NPCs were guarding.
That said, combat is still hard, but generally satisfying. Enemy AI uses cover, throws grenades to flush you out of your own cover, and generally works well as a squad to kill you. One particular complaint I had was the enemy AI's uncannily precise grenade tosses, which would invariably land at my feet even if they did not have line of sight and I was behind cover that would force a very vertical arc to toss. By comparison, throwing grenades yourself feels very imprecise, slow, and underpowered.
This would all be forgivable if Clear Sky delivered a more substantively new experience, whether it's through plot, novel mission design, expanding the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fiction, or more new environments for open-world exploration.
Unfortunately, Clear Sky recycles too many of the original game's environments. This robs players of the original game of the exhilaration and tension of open world exploration. The new environments that do exist are fairly linear, and play out like traditional first-person shooters, but with few set pieces. The action set pieces that do exist are of middling quality.
Finally, the plot is not nearly as engaging as in the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Little is done to flesh out the fiction beyond what existed in the original game. NPCs are still flat. The story boils down to get from Point A to Point Z. There's one particularly clever curveball in the main quest line, but it's definitely the exception, rather than the rule. When I got to Point Z and finished the game, I was unsatisfied.
