Ouch!! :(

No story spoilers here!
I got my pre-ordered Stalker Clear sky yesterday and thought I'd write down my first impressions of it. Now I have only played the game for one day and never got out of the swamps area, the starting location, so I still have much to see.

Graphics
The game has improved on the graphics side so graphics settings now have more options.

In Basic settings the lighting options now have 2 more settings after "Full dynamic lighting", "Enhanced full dynamic lighting" and "Enhanced full dynamic lighting (DX10)".
In advanced settings, among the usual detail sliders found in previous stalker, there are controls for setting sun shadow detail, sunray (god-rays?) detail and self shadowing detail. Also settings for depth of field,  steep parallax mapping, soft particles, soft water and so on.

Since I have and, in most parts, better than the recommended hardware, I chose DX10 lighting 1152x864 resolution. I start the game and it's slow as hell. I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ with 2 GB RAM and a slightly overclocked XFX GeForce 8600 GT so it's not the slowest thing out there. Now I didn't think my computer would run Clear sky well on those settings, the point was to set everything high and start to lower settings until I was "OK" with the framerate. So I started to take down the settings bit by bit but nothing really helped. So I set the lighting back to "Enhanced full dynamic lighting", back to DX9 side and set the resolution to 1024x768. Now the game runs smoothly with almost all setting at maximum.

The game looks good even after turning down some of the settings. Features that I noticed, and liked, were the sunrays flowing trough windows, tree branches, the depth of field effect when reloading. And as a new element the brush and grass that covers parts of the swamp can actually hide hostile creatures that attack you when you least expect it. One of the bigger animals scared me good a few times when they jump out of the bush while you're running unarmed or looking for artefacts.

Game play features
you start your game at a clear sky faction base. The base has 2 traders, one which trades in foods, drinks, anti-rad's etc. and one who trades weapons and ammo. The third person to deal with is a repairman that can repair and upgrade your weapons and armor. On weapons you can modify different parts that affect the weapons accuracy, weight, recoil, caliber, clip size, rate of fire and so on. For armor you have similar options that effect weight, integrity etc.

The base you start in is a separated from the rest of the swamp and you have to use a guide to get in and out, the reason for this will be explained. Once you enter the swamps you'll notice that in addition to your primary mission you will get side missions from time to time. Instead of scripted events these missions are created by the actions of other swamp dwellers in the area. For example if a group of animals or renegades attack an allied camp, they will radio for help and it becomes a side mission for you. There are also a few locations in the swamp that can be captured by either clear sky or renegades. These missions require you to clear the area of hostiles and hold it through a counter attack. During my game I got some sec. missions that I could not get to but failing them doesn't seem to be a big deal. Some of these missions got cancelled due to the situation being resolved by the AI.

The way you collect artefacts has also changed. Now you can't see them in nature without a detector. The detector, one I got at start, beeps faster when you get closer to one. Once you are close enough the artefact will start to appear and can be collected. During my game I collected 3-4 artefacts this way and they always seemed to be in the middle of anomalies and high radiation, so getting to them is not easy but they sell for a nice price.

In the first Stalker all the unmarked hidden boxes and backpacks were empty if you hadn’t found a PDA telling about them. In Clear sky so far every unmarked stash I've found had some loot in them. You still get info on hidden stuff from dead or alive characters and it is marked on the map.

The UI is also different. When in inventory you get information on items through a popup when hovering over them. Also the amount of artefacts you can equip seems to depend on what you are wearing. Only bad thing I have to say about the UI is that during combat it's easy not to notice you are bleeding. The big bleeding sign from the first Stalker has been replaced by a small icon next to your healthmeter.

So far I haven't had blowouts that I can hide from or found cars that I could use like in some Stalker mods. While setting up controls I did not notice keymapping for starting a car.

Glitches
I have installed the 1.1 patch but there still are some glitches in the game.
The game crashed on me once while trying to get loot from a dead renegade.
Sometimes inside buildings you can see shadows flickering in and out.
The AI doesn't always work. When you’re trying to assault a position with a buddy he sometimes just runs at a bunch of enemies with shotguns and dies failing the mission for you.
The glitch that ended my game yesterday was that I was supposed to take a guide to Cordon and get out of the swamps. There is a brief conversation with the guide where you ask for him to guide you and he agrees but nothing happens after this. I can have this conversation with the guide over and over again but it seems like the script doesn't work. Although I have a side mission going on where I must bring 3 objects to the repairman at clear sky base. I have found 2 of them and I just can't find the last one. Maybe this is preventing the guide script from working.

Final thoughts
So aside from these few glitches I'm still interested. The first Stalker also had it's faults and it still kept you coming for more.  I may have to restart my game to get past this guide glitch but I don't care.
Only thing bugging me is that all that detail gets lost because of my PC can't keep up. This is one of the reasons I'll probably buy Xbox360 versions of Fallout3 and Farcry2.

I thought I'd try to write something here as a test. All my entries in here read zero so i thought maybe I write something.