Gaming S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/2008/09/12/stalker-clear-sky/1

The skies are clearing and we can just about make out another gritty Russian adventure on the horizon. Will Clear Sky be as beautifully broken as the first game though, or is this a wholly better form of PC shooter? We venture into the zone and find out...

 

Great review - such a shame the bugs make it so utterly unplayable. If we do get a hill of patches, can we get a STALKER: Clear Sky 6 months later rehash?

 

Sure.

 

why do they do this?

relase a clearly unfinished game, you dont see it in any other walk of life so why in games

 

A bit harsh on the 3 but I can see where you are coming from. The original had a lot of bugs on release also and the majority were cleared up within the first few patches.

Either way I loved the first game (despite its flaws) and can't wait to get my hands on this one. I think we can expect a patch within the first month of release. Be warned though, in Shadows of Chernobyl the second patch that came out required a new profile to play so you may want to hang out to see if it is the same case with Clear Sky.

All in all another great review by you guys, fantastic job.

 

I'm loving it so far myself... But do admit it's quite buggy... I'm running on Vista x64 and after loading a save it seems to randomly decide if I can play or not sometimes... And then just hangs leaving the game process running in the background (have to kill it from the processes tab of Task Manager).

Hopefully a couple of patches will sort things out a bit, the original was very stable for me on it's later patches. But is a bit of a public beta.

 

Actually there were patches out before the game even launched. Take that as you will, but our experience both with and without these patches shows that performance isn't significantly improved.

Again, I don't think this can be compared to the original Stalker. That had issues and a few bugs, sure, but nowhere near this level. Five crashes in an hour on a totally clean and fresh system - not a good sign.

 

And there I was, in the game store yesterday looking at Spore, Space Siege and STALKER: Clear Sky, thinking to myself:

"Oh, I enjoyed STALKER even though I only got back to finishing it 2 years after it was released.. should I get Clear Sky?"

Thankfully my wallet declined as it lacked enough padding for this game (which was oddly priced higher than Spore (eh?!))

 

will you guys review it after a good patch come out?

or do i have to follow Clear Sky patch and random forum posts to tell me when to get this game?

 

Don't forget that GSC isn't a big bad ass game studio with stupid money being thrown at it. Saying that, it still doesn't excuse the complete lack of play testing a massive sense of deja vu. However, Clear Sky and it's abundance of issues is actually worse than SHoC. Which is wholeheartedly depressing.

As for the review, nice one Joe! You pick up on basically all the points I have issues with. The new inventory system really grinds my gears. I can't stand the fact I find myself using medi-packs (by double clicking) when I'm trying to transfer them to a trunk/chest or corpse for storage.

As for the crashes, error reports and the a-like, I can't say I've had any. I'm impressed it hasn't kicked me back to the desktop either. Plus I'm still running on an AGP based setup.

When I tested this game at work with the 9800GX2, I must admit I was massively disappointed with the game (and the card) and we had a whole lot of issues when running it in DX10 mode, however I may leave this down to DX10 and Vista as Crysis gave very similar issues.

As a massive SHoC fan, I'm almost lost for words at how angry and disappointed I am with Clear Sky. Hopefully they can turn it around it and bring me back. I'll continue, but it the story gets anyway worse, then I'll go back to playing SHoC.

 

It is very possible that we'll revisit the game in the new year.

 

How do u explain me playing 15 hours not one crash? Game runs fine on max settings for me, I think you guys scored this WAY too low, game s outstanding. Gameplay is as good as it gets and setting is great. It is NOT more buggy tyen SOC, SOC didn't even run on vista at launch, and had crash issues, just seems like you had issues and scored it based on that. Terrible review IMO.

 

Looks like this could turn into X3...a game so bugged, they released a version 2.0 after a year because it needed so much patching.

Game developers who release unfinished games are idiots. Not only do they damage the sales of their products, they bring bad feeling about PC gaming in general.

This game is a disappointment....I was hoping it would break the summer gaming monotony, but alas, apparently not.

 

I'm thoroughly enjoying the game, much like how I throughly enjoyed the first. After reading the reviews I was expecting to find it a bit... poor. However, I actually agree with a lot of the changes they made to the game - you really have to earn everything. Its a harsh place that rewards the skilled and cunning player. Only had a handful of crashes and I'm many, many hours into the game - fortunately no save corruption, although I'm spreading my saves out across different names just in case. I'm also manually saving - no quick load and quick save.

I can understand the low review scores, any buggy game immediately results in the player picking up on every single annoying and poor design choice and ignoring the good ones. Its a shame so many people are experiencing so many bugs Its easily one of my favourite games by far; up there with KOTOR, Vampire Masquerade and dare I say it... Crysis.

For anyone having trouble with the game, vis a vi killing enemies - just aim for the head. Unless you have lots of ammo to waste, you're best off taking cover, taking your time, and picking them off with headshots. There are a few exceptions with mutants though - one kind in paticular I favour knifing to death. Get an M4, scope, silencer, max out the accuracy and muzzle velocity - 0wn!

 

Thank you, you guys saved me some cash!

 

You are either lucky or lying.

 

Then you're one of the lucky ones - BiT have tested this game on multiple systems, and had major problems on each one. It's also made clear that the bugs are the bit that make this game unbearable, and why it deserves a 3, rather than something like a 7, because BiT review a game as a whole, not just as the gameplay itself.

I think you're just one of the lucky ones tbh!

 

This is weird.

I've had very few crashes with clear sky so far, and one friend of mine has had very few, Others have been crashing everywhere. Only significant difference I can find is that the 2 of us who aren't crashy are on ATI cards, the crashy people are on 8800s mostly.

No idea if that's anything to do with anything, but might be worth looking at.

oh, and a new patch was released yesterday, might be worth grabbing that too.

 

Actually, you are the one who will be losing, this game is outstanding in everyway, the second patch was released yesterday that fixed most issues, game is amazing, depth, exploration, tactical combat, amazing AI, great graphics, atmosphere, very well created living game world. A few reviews (Like this one ) have brought the score down, the game is still averaging around 80%. Your loss, one of the best of 08.

 

Shame, I was really looking forward to this.

But I never had any bugs or problems with the first one.