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

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Tim S, 12 Sep 2008.

  1. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    It is obvious Bit tech never had patch 2 which fixes most crashes, also, i am on the Steam Chat, and dozens of people there absolutely love the game and very few had any crashes, the oenes that did literally had justa few in many hours of game time. Seriously giving this game a 3 is one of the most assinine things I have seen bit-tech ever do, especially a day after a patch is released that fixed most of the crash issues, and quest issues, and also performance improvement.
     
  2. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    I have An AMD 4870 also.
     
  3. Flibster

    Flibster What's a Dremel?

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    Running fine without a crash in over 10 hours play time, on a machine that's in use daily having stuff installed and uninstalled on it and hasn't been rebuilt in almost 2 years. And it's running XP64.

    It's great. The atmosphere is superb in the game. Still don't like the sheer darkness of it at times though.
     
  4. Jack_Pepsi

    Jack_Pepsi Clan BeeR Founder

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    I'm one of the lucky few that haven't had a single crash as well. ATi hardware as well. Hmmm.... o_O Also, the new 1.0004 (1.5.04) patch is out. Fixes stamina to the HUD and gives me my double click for storing things from my inventory. w00t!
     
  5. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    Absolutely terrible review a day after the patch is out and before the official NA release, sorry, love bit-tech, way of your rockers on this one, talk to any game who has played it, nothing but praise, just shows reviews really do not mean much these days. Notice quite a few have no issues. I suggest revisiting this review as a 3 is simply inacceptable a game that offers as much thrilling moments/gameplay as CS, and it is very unique compared to the generic fare of today. The patch fixes these issues and is already out for gods sakes.
     
  6. [PUNK] crompers

    [PUNK] crompers Dremedial

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    the first game was enough to put me off, i found it frsutrating because i loved the idea behind it and a lot of the gameplay, but i couldn't play because of bugs!
     
  7. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    We installed patch 2
     
  8. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    The first game had had no bugs for ages, very stable now there are many patches out for it. GSc suppors their games, even though they do release them buggy, they fix it very quickly.
     
  9. Berk

    Berk Where's the Hammer?

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    I don't think it's unfair to review a game before xyz patch is out, but it's probably worth delaying the review if a patch drops that makes a few of the complaints invalid the day before the review is published.

    I'm mostly just wondering if bit-tech tested on a few different machines, ie. ati graphics, vista, etc. etc. Rather than 10 different variants of nvidia and xp32.

    I'm not convinced the crashyness is a game issue as such, but some weird driver quirks. ISTR SoC was very picky about drivers too.

    The fact I've had like, 3 game crashes and 1 BSOD (mostly due to overclocks too far and alt-tabbing too much) with what I'd currently consider an unstable machine. well, that makes me wonder.
     
  10. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    U installed patch 2? Old saves don't work, how did you play enough in one day from the start with the new patch to formulate the review? there are lots of chagnes including balancing in the patch.
     
  11. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    We've tried every patch and played the game for well over 20 hours at various stages of patching... the game is still broken. FWIW, we've been staying in the office past 2am several times this week--Wednesday night I got home at 6am Thursday--so it's not hard to "have enough time" to play enough of the game to work out that it is, at large, incredibly buggy.
     
  12. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    We delayed the review for a week in the hope that things would get better - the game has been out for 7 days... and we had the game a few days before launch.
     
  13. Berk

    Berk Where's the Hammer?

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    You say you tested patch 2 (V1.5.04 as far as I'm concerned), and delayed the review, yet the mention of the lack of a stamina bar is still there, without a note saying "oh, they added this in a patch"

    Okay.

    How about systems you tested it on, did you feed it to any ATI graphics based machines?
     
  14. Guest-16

    Guest-16 Guest

    While I respect your opinion do you not see that you're the only person here with such issues - virtually everyone in the Stalker thread in the gaming forum has had problems.

    Half the reason why you've not had as much problems is your 4870 - this is an "ATI title" from what I've been told, whereas Nvidia TWIMTBP program tests on both platforms. It's essentially broken for a vast majority of Nvidia people (and ATI also if you read the official forums) and this was sent to retail three weeks earlier than it should have done and if you apply the patch you have to start again too because it breaks save games.

    As much as I wanted to give this a 7 or and 8, it's a broken product that's incredibly frustrating.

    If you go to the official forums it's literally littered with people complaining of CTDs and BSODs. We never go to this much effort with any other game, why should STALKER be any different? If someone released a graphics card and it was broken for 3 weeks, you wouldn't accept that.

    You are clearly very passionate about the game, and find it hard to accept that so many others have had problems because it's not a first hand experience. I'd LOVE to have had your perfect experience, and that's partly why I pushed to test it for hours on multiple systems - I was here until 2am playing it then Joe carried on the next day.
     
  15. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    The patch was only out yesterday EVENING, I ask again, how did you test for a week? It was JUSt released. Sorry, do not agrere witht his at all. The new patch you would have had to Satrt a new game yesteday. BS.
     
  16. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    My bad, we installed two patches... so I assumed "patch 2" was the second patch. Obviously, that's not the case. If the patch was released yesterday evening, then it's not one we've used. However, how long is a piece of string and how long do you want us to wait to review a game? The game has been on sale for a week and we've been playing it for all of that time.

    As Joe has said, it's a game we're going to come back to, but right now all evidence points to brokenness. Had it not been as buggy as we found, we wanted to give this something more like a 7 or 8 based on gameplay alone.
     
  17. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    With all due respect, how many forums you been on, every time a game launches game forums, which represent a very small minority of actual players, the forums erupt into a complain fest, peopel with no issues do not go to forums to say, hey, game runs fine for me. At the same time, yes, it is buggy, but, GSC releases fixes fast, and SOC was just as bad at launch, but it wasn't long before the game was very stable and very few bugs at all, CS will be the same, the third patch notes have already been leaked on the Stalker forums. It is buggy, but not NEAR as bad as Bittech let on. It is averaging 80% in reviews, a 3 is ridiculous, and no other reviewes had as many issues as bit-tech.
     
  18. Lepermessiah

    Lepermessiah What's a Dremel?

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    The game is not supposed t be OFFICIALLY released until the 15th, so the majority of people will already have the second patch (1.5.4) when they first play it. Yes, GSC are guilty of being a small dev with big ambitious projects and their games at launch have issues but a 3 is way off base, especially when a patch fixes MOST of these issues before the official NA release. Why some places sold it early, Don't know.
     
  19. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    I personally still had issues with the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. well down the line - it's one of those games I've tried to include in our hardware articles, but it was never stable enough to do so from my perspective. It might be different now though, as I looked at the game when each of the first three patches came out.
     
  20. Tim S

    Tim S OG

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    Err, it was actually available to buy in GameStation and Game on Bracknell High Street last Friday. And Bracknell High Street isn't exactly centre of the universe. The reason? That was the official release date in the UK - it was sat on the "New Releases" shelf in both stores.
     
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