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

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

We're in The Zone. Again. Last time we looked at Clear Sky the game was buggy as hell, earning one of the lowest scores we've given this year. Now though, in the interest of fair play, we're going to have a look at the patched game and see if it can redeem itself.

 

Honest piece of job that you reviewed it.

I think I'll try this game after all...

 

Glad to see it's the not the broken mess it was at launch. Pretty shoddy of the devs to release it in that state but at least they fixed it (unlike I imagine GTA4 will be). I thoroughly enjoyed the original, it was a real hark back to the days of illogical and totally unforgiving games that I kind of appreciated. If I find myself with enough time after I've hit the Zombie Genocide achievement in L4D, and I've upgraded, so probably by the time Windows 7 comes out, I might well pick this up.

 

I think, for me to play it again, the dialogue will need work. The crashes didn't bother me as much as the voice acting being so goddamn repetative.

Maybe a fan patch..

 

Good, been waiting for this, thank you. Just bought it from Play for £10, bargain

 

As did I... Should be a nice test for my new 4850

 

Yeah I too have been waiting for this. I loved the first one so I'll probably play through that again before I get Clear Sky though.

 

thats more like it!

just one comment really
performance isnt really unpredictable, just variable
you get higher framerates at night, for example, because obviously theres fewer lighting effects going on

 

There is always - http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/271-S-T-A-L-K-E-R-Clear-Sky

 

It seems a bit unfair for me though that you managed to give gta4 a 7 at launch, and stalker: clear sky a 3.
I never had much problems in the game (crashes, blue-screens, etc..) so I would definitely give this one an 8.
It was more enjoyable for me than more recent games.
My point being that anyone who wanted to buy the game at launch but didn't for the crashes and stuff, should definitely give it a go now!

 

We didn't encounter problems of anywhere near the same magnitude as Clear Sky with GTA IV. Clear Sky was almost completely broken. GTA IV crashed once or twice, but on rare occasions. We were lucky if we got an hour of gameplay out of Clear Sky before we got a BSOD at launch.

 

It appears something got crossed. I am reading what should be the comments for the Woolworth story but seeing these comments for the STALKER re-review.

 

It's the difference between being intolerable and being unplayable, essentially. GTA IV was a pain to run and the Social Club, Live, DRM stuff was a major PITA...but if you worked through it then the game was there and it was good.

Clear Sky on the other hand wasn't intolerable, it was unplayable. It crashed every couple of minutes, it corrupted save games. It's all very well to say that you didn't experience it, but the reality is that we tested the game properly over a long period of time using three different machines and we did experience it. So did a number of others. It's fine to say that you didn't have these problems, but you have to recognise you're in the minority.

That said, anyone who is in to this kind of game should definitely look at Clear Sky now that it's more stable.

 

hey kosch, that excapist article was hilarious....nice to see they have 'fixed' the game.

peace

fatman

 

dont know if i could bring myself to try another one, im still smarting after the first one lost me a good 12 hours of gameplay

 

vOv
at launch clear sky was more playable than GTA4 at launch on my system

mostly because at launch GTA4 could not be played on vista64
because gays for windows live needed an update to run GTA4 and there was no 64bit version of the update

 

Again though, 64 bit is a minority and this was just your experience. You got an update fairly quickly - we delayed the original Stalker review by a week to get the next patch and it still didn't help.

 

I managed to play this after the crashing problems, so there weren't so many bugs. Unfortunately performance was poor comapared to other games - so I might try playing through again once I upgrade.

The world is certainly the most appealing aspect of the game, and you want so much for the story and characters to be good too, but it's pretty inaccessible for all apart from the most dedicated.

I definitely enjoyed Shadow of Chernobyl more than Clear Sky, but I still enjoy roaming around and watching the days go by - which is I guess what they essentially wanted to achieve. Really they just need a greater density of varied stuff going on to fill the story, and more sensible control and feedback system.

I hope GSC can stay afloat financially so we can see more of what they are capable of.

 

The biggest WTF moment in this game for me:

I join the Stalker faction. We get control of the Neutral Base, the Outpost, and now I have to make my move on the garbage. The Bandit main base is a large train yard filled with bandits. Probably over 30 total. I go though, and after using about 300 quicksaves, all of my ammo, degrading my weapons and armor, consuming all of my food, using all of my medkits and bandages, I finally clear the bandit base. Huzzah! I wiped out the bandits! Awesome! The guy comes over the radio "holy crap dude you really kicked their asses. You're the most awesomemest person ever! Swing by our base to collect your reward!"

So I leave the train yard.

Not 3 seconds after I exit the vicinity I get a radio call "uh we don't know where they came from, but the bandits are swarming the garbage again!" I walk back over there and 20-someodd guys show up on my radar.

You have GOT to be shitting me!

So I go back to the Neutral Base to get my reward for "wiping out" the bandits....

1000ru.

That really grinding my gears.

By far the best part about this game is the modding community. There are a ton of fun mods out there that improve the game significantly.

 

Is a 1Gb 9800 GT "beefy"?