This game has been mentioned in a few other threads before, but not discussed at length. I figure I'll give it a short review. I got the original STALKER earlier this year on cheap and greatly enjoyed it. Good atmosphere, fun gameplay, excellent AI, and a unique plotline and setting. So, I picked up the 'prequel' last weekend, at the very reasonable price of $40 (for a new release).
The first game was notorious for bugs when it was released, but it was patched heavily by the time I played it, which removed most of the problems. When I got Clear Sky last weekend, there were already two patches out, so I installed them. Since then, the only bugs I've experienced that are worth mentioning are occasional crashes. Most of these are caused by save game corruption, which is massively annoying. However, it only occurs with quick save and once I discovered this I just started making lots of normal saves and the problem essentially vanished. All in all, it currently seems pretty stable and mostly bug-free.
So, how's the game itself? Good and bad.
The developers have fixed a lot of the flaws with the entire weapon/armor/artifact system. Everything can now be repaired and weapons and armor can be upgraded in various different ways. This is an excellent addition, especially because the upgrades cost a decent amount of money and you need to unlock some of them by finding flash drives with the right information first. The upgrades are also varied, and choosing some of them bars you from choosing others. The general upgrade paths for weapons are to improve accuracy and damage at the cost of rate of fire or to improve rate of fire and weight. So, you essentially choose between making a gun better at distance, or better at run-and-gun. For armor, the upgrade paths tend towards better protection from enemies (bullets, claws) or better protection from the environment (radiation, anomalies). I constantly chose the better accuracy and better environment protection for my upgrades, but I can see value in the other choices depending on the situation.
As part of this reshuffling, the artifact hunting has been greatly improved. In the first game, these things were lying on the ground all over the place and finding them was like picking up candy. Now they are invisible unless you're holding a detector and are very close to them, so you actually have to go out hunting for the things to find them. This makes them far rarer, which has a trickle-down effect on the economy. Like in the original game, most of the items don't sell for a whole lot of money, and artifacts are your main source for income. However, since artifacts are themselves much rarer now, you can find yourself very tight on cash for a good portion of the game. I personally like this, since it greatly increases the challenge of the game, but I can see how others would dislike it. Deciding whether to upgrade your gun or armor is a big decision, because it will probably drain most of your savings. If you're going to be using it for a while, that's fine... but you're never quite sure if you're going to find a better weapon just around the corner. Once you join a faction (which gets you better prices with their traders), get some carrying weight upgrades and artifacts, and start killing off some high-level enemies with good weapons, the money issue largely disappears and you can raise a lot of cash quickly when you need to. However, your slim wallet definitely makes the game more fun for me in the beginning.
The AI is just as good as before, utilizing cover very well and advancing and retreating in an intelligent manner. It's still one of the best FPS AI's I've ever played against. However, the AI now also has the ability to throw grenades. When I say throw grenades, I mean toss them directly down your nostrils from 100 meters away. The accuracy of these throws is simply absurd, and while the game gives you a little yellow grenade indicator as a warning, the grenades usually go off about 1.5 seconds after they land, meaning you can't get away from them anyway. Grenades are also almost always instant-kills as well. Combined with the more 'realistic' damage system in the STALKER series, and you will die. You will die a lot. No, seriously, YOU WILL DIE A LOT. This is a hard game, period, and it seems to delight in being hard. As I've said before, I personally enjoy a challenge like this, but it will probably be very off-putting to a lot of people. If you don't like reloading several times per battle, this game is not for you.
Clear Sky has added in a couple things that were promised for the original game, but left out. The first are 'emissions' which are massive radioactive eruptions that force you to run for cover in remote spots or die. These can be absolutely terrifying, especially if you haven't encountered one before and the only safe spot nearby is full of hostile enemies. However, they last FOREVER. Once you start running across them in safer areas, an emission simply means standing around for about 3-5 minutes waiting for the thing to end. I often get up and do some dishes or something in that time, because there's nothing else to do. This is bad design and will hopefully be improved on a bit, to make it more like the Oblivion Unleashed mod versions of them for the original STALKER.
The second addition is the Faction Wars. Instead of just playing lip-service to the inter-faction conflicts like in STALKER, now the factions are in active hostilities against each other and will attack regularly. Something of a mini-game has been added in to replicate this. Each faction has a single enemy that it fights against. Loners fight Bandits, Duty fights Freedom, etc. Each side attempts to hold a series of consecutive checkpoints on multiple maps, eventually pushing the other side back into their base and destroying them. You can help them by assisting in the capture and defense of various spots, and you can also join the factions (yes, even the Bandits) and help them actually wipe out their opposing faction. This is fun and also provides a good source of income early on when you otherwise have no cash.
However, this system also greatly changes the feel of the game. In the original STALKER, the map was largely unknown and once you stepped outside of the few 'bases' scattered around, you expected to find nastiness around every corner. In Clear Sky, there are other stalkers absolutely everywhere. You are almost never alone and you'll know exactly what enemy is where just by looking on your minimap (seriously, it will even tell you where the mutants and zombies are). This essentially eliminates the 'danger' sense of exploring an unknown area, and is a great detraction from the feel of the original game. Clear Sky thus loses most of the elements of the 'survival shooter' that the original game had. Don't expect a whole lot of those creepy moments in underground bunkers, not knowing what was going to happen to you or if you had enough ammunition left to get out alive. Now it's far more straight up shooting and economics, and I think most will agree this is a big turn in the wrong direction.
The graphics, as with before, are superb. This is a great looking game, hands down. The game uses a lot of the areas from the first game, though they have been altered to reflect an earlier time frame, and there are a few new areas as well. The mix of old and new didn't bother me, as I liked revisiting the old places, especially since most were all being used for completely different purposes than before.
In general, I give the game a thumbs up and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first STALKER, unless the only reason you liked the first game was the survival/horror shooter style, which is absent. Hopefully the next game will go back in that direction again, as further progress down this course might as well result in renaming it Battlefield STALKER.
