The Definitive version of Stalker!
STALKER Was a great game when it came out, it had everything, atmosphere, storyline, and graphics, now STALKER Clear Sky comes out, now the question arises, was it worth the wait? Well guess what, it was, this is again the most atmospheric game created so far, but unfortunately it is marred with alot of technical problems that will hamper the experience, but if you are able to look past the bugs of this fabulous game, then I say stop reading now and get it.
STALKER starts you off as a mercenary named Scar and you are tasked with finding Strelok's Faction, you apparently survived an Energy Emission, however if this continues, then this emission that is emitting from the center of the zone will kill him, so from there you journey across the wastelands of Chernobyl and you complete missions that the NPC's send you to do. I'd like to make a note to new players out there, weapons in this game have something of a RPG feel to them, they all have special attributes to them, they have Damage meters, Condition (Really just Durability), Handling, rate of fire, and accuracy, so don't go all John Wayne and think that a pistol will peg a target at long range like in Call of Duty 4, Because they have a limited effective range.
During the Encounters in the zone, you will notice something has changed, there is a new system known as Faction Wars, these emit randomly, so you will be called out to help fellow STALKER's in the battle against enemy factions, this if a fun experiece, though I should note that the battles do tend to get hard early on in the game, mainly cause you aren't given a good set of weapons, the pistol is fairly limited in strength and accuracy and the shotgun is a sawn-off and has a very slow reload rate for a dual-barreled, so the battles early on are fairly hard, but what's you start to progress through the game, you will encounter other guns, early on you get an AK-74, the MP-5 (Known as the Viper 5 in the game), and some newer better pistols to better combat the Factions you should fight upon. While Clear Sky is the faction you are allied with in the game, you can also ally yourself with other factions in the game, Renegades, Freedom, Monolith, Bandits, and Stalkers, if you check your PDA in the game, you can see how many friends in each faction, or how many enemies you have in each faction, it is pretty simple, to make friends, you just run out to do errands, or bail them out of trouble, to make enemies, just shoot the faction. Bailing out the factions is sort of hard to do, mainly because it gets hard to get the the destination they want you to defend, there optional, and the moneys good early on, but you will find yourself hard pressed to get to the destination they want you to defend.
I would like to note that the best addition in my opinion in this game is the idea of you upgrading your gun, utilizing the engineers scattered across the zone, you can upgrade your gun for better accuracy, flatter projectory, high damage modules, faster firing rates, and optical scope mounts, this is a really good idea, this makes the early guns actually better then some of the later non-upgraded weapons for example the G-36k, at these stations also, you can repair your gun at any time for under 1000 RB's tops, so you can keep your early AK-74 in service for a long time if you never upgrade.
The Artificial intelligence in this game have gotten a big overhaul, they are really smart now, they do alot of human like activities, they walk around on patrol, when you approach a guard at an outpost, they will tell you to holster your gun, not doing this however they will hit you, not shoot, literally hit you to drop you gun, they sleep, eat, better yet, when in combat, they will use tactics to try and kill you, they throw grenades to flush you out, and they do the typical flank to kill you, now they only problem I had with this is that the grenades that they throw seem to hit you dead on, they literally land right beside you and kill you and pretty well wipe most of your health out.
The shooting model has been completely transformed, now the starting pistol you get at the beginning of the game is actually a decent piece of work, though at the beginning of the game, you will be using it more often then the shotgun... pretty well every gun in the game is useful, so you'll think twice about throwing away that AK-74 for the better G-36, so persay, the AK-74 can do just as well as the G-36, upgraded they can both do the job. Like STALKER before it, you have to aim through your sights to get the best shot off, this works very well, they also due it fairly realistically, engaging a target at long ranges is not a typically good idea because gravity can pull your bullets down the further it goes, so for example, you have a compact AK74, you try to peg a target at 1000m away from your position, your bullet will travel about half that distance.
The Graphics in this game have got a significant upgrade, both in its fidelity and realism, this game can now support directx 10, it can now support realistic lighting (eg. God Rays), better lighting over all in the sunny days, you can really notice it, when you compare STALKER and Clear Sky together, you will understand the lighting is so much better in Clear Sky then in STALKER, in Clear Sky, they have also added depth of field vision blocking, this means when you are aiming someone through your iron sight, or your reloading, anything that you are not focused on will be blurred out, this is not a tactical advantage, but it does look pretty. All this fidelity in the graphics all comes at a hefty price, this game needs the latest and greatest to run at max settings, but don't worry, if you have an 8800gt, you can run at Full Lighting Settings, you just won't get the light show if you had a stronger video card, this game can also be a Memory hog, so I would watch out. I'd like to note that there are some technical issues that should be resolved, performance issues, and the evil BSOD, will kill you in this game, I am sure GSC Game worlds will fix this but til' now, watch out for those random issues, if you buy the game, save as often as you can.
The Sound in this game got a refresh, the guns all now sound completely different from the original STALKER, the voices in the game don't exactly get the praise I was hoping for, but they work well in there context. Every weapon in the sound's quite mean and powerful in there own way, the Pistol in the game sound powerful and feels right when you fire it, the AK-74 feels like a mean and aggresive weapon when you use it. The environments feel alive when you walk around, you can here the owls in the distance at night, you can here battles rage on when you walk around the Zone, you can here packs of dogs running around haphazardly, and people playijng guitar in around a bon-fire, it definately if one of those games that makes the environment and atmosphere come alive around you.
Multiplayer is included, but the thing about multiplayer is that I don't feel that the game had multiplayer in mind when they developed it, if felt like a spare of the moment type of thing, when you get this game, try to stay on the Single Player, it has alot of praise oozing from it, multiplayer just doesn't feel right for me.
If you liked the original, you will like this version, it has the STALKER inside it, and then some, with more additions to the original, and engine upgrades, this will sure be a keeper once the patches have been developed to iron out the problems that mar this game.
