STALKER: Clear Sky - Found at Walm--Edit: Gamestop today.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 8:57 am

To the second page, March!

Impressions required... pretty please!

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sun Sep 14, 2008 9:37 am

I've only spent an hour or so with it, so I don't have much. Of course, it plays and feels like the original game. It might also look better, I don't know. My machine isn't strong enough to run it with everything on. Thus far I've engaged in conversation with people around the camp, and got sent out to help someone fend off some pseudodogs. However, getting there was a bit jarring. I was blindfolded and magically teleported to the location. Too early to see how badly this will break up my continuity of the gameworld--I normally dislike this device, and prefer a full, real world to explore. I dunno. Maybe there's a way to shut it off and go real-time...I haven't checked yet. But since the blindfold is required, I'm guessing real-time would not be pleasant. [note to self: Next time, try and see what happens if you turn down the mission--can you go anarchist?]

In any case, I found myself out in the swampy area, and I'm supposed to go help this guy who is perched in a tower. "Oh, good," I thought. "Maybe he'll have a sniper rifle for me!" Yeah, right. I can hear the animals closing in, so I begin to head for the tower in the distance.

Right away, I have problems. Anomalies are everywhere, and I'm getting killed everywhere I go. Anomalies are not as visible as they were in the first game. Very hard to see (maybe because I had to turn down some fancy settings?) I'm told to throw bolts before walking. I don't remember needing to throw bolts quite so much in the first game.

After many attempts, I finally get to the tower just as the dogs close in. I climb it, I notice that he has no sniper rifle for me (or anything else), I'm told to help shoot the dogs, I look around for a few seconds, take out my pistol, and suddenly the mission is over without me firing a shot or even targeting anything, and I'm teleported back to base camp. Maybe that was bolt-throwing training mission. I don't know. I'm very rusty.

Back at camp, I get sent out on my first real mission. That's where I'm at now. At the edge of base camp, wondering if I should even talk to the guide, who will surely teleport me somewhere, or if I should try and see if there's an option to get there on my own. I really don't like teleporting.

Effidian · Post by **Effidian** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 12:56 pm

Okay, I've just spent a little time with it. But I've got 2 things that are annoying the hell out of me.

1) I'm behind cover and an ally comes and pushes me out of cover. Not shoves me, but moves where I am which causes it to push me out of cover. Really annoying.

2) I'm getting a ton of tasks and then most of them get cancelled. I'm not taking my time either, I'm sprinting from one thing to the next. Is it supposed to work like this or am I doing something wrong?

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 10:05 pm

Effidian wrote:Okay, I've just spent a little time with it. But I've got 2 things that are annoying the hell out of me.

1) I'm behind cover and an ally comes and pushes me out of cover. Not shoves me, but moves where I am which causes it to push me out of cover. Really annoying.

2) I'm getting a ton of tasks and then most of them get cancelled. I'm not taking my time either, I'm sprinting from one thing to the next. Is it supposed to work like this or am I doing something wrong?

I've noticed both.
I've managed to avoid both of those annoyances by just wandering off and doing my own thing.
A big help, aren't I?

Two Sheds · Post by **Two Sheds** » Tue Sep 16, 2008 11:20 pm

I've only had about half an hour in-game, but so far I'm glad I decided to pick this up despite being put off by a couple of negative reviews. It's stable for me so far. I'm playing in DX10 mode @ 1680x1050, with most things set to medium/high and AA off. Looks fantastic and runs smooth enough for me, at least in the swamp.

I'm not too bothered by not being able to make it to objectives in time. Don't really care if I "fail" helping these guys attack some bandit warehouse or whatever.

And I don't know about the faction war system or mission bugs or anything so far, but I can say one thing. I just had a firefight against a couple of bandits with shotguns. It was thunderstorming and the only light was from flashes of lightning and the flashes of our weapons. In hindsight I could have used my headlamp, but it honestly happened so fast that the thought never occurred to me. I was pinned down behind some scrap metal, trading shotgun blasts with a bandit hiding behind a section of fence, and there was the driving rain and the lighting and the thunder and the ping of the buckshot hitting my cover and I thought This is great. Very immersive. Very intense. The graphics are beautiful, yeah, but the sound is fantastic.

Also, I kicked their asses. I love the over/under shotgun. Always wanted one of those in the original Stalker, though I never did bother to install any of the mods that added it in. It just feels so badass.

Normann · Post by **Normann** » Wed Sep 17, 2008 8:05 pm

I have played it and I am about half way through. That is just a guess btw. I have XP so I am in DX 9 although I have a 8800. Visual for me is the same as the original. Pretty good but the exact same as it was. I guess all the improvements are for DX 10.

The good news is that with the 1.504 patch I have not seen many bugs. I have seen two I remember, both related to quests. (Unfortunately one of them I have just encountered a few minutes ago and it is in the main quest. I will see if I find more about it on some forums and it seems there is a fix for it.) For now no crashes either. In addition, I did see AI getting stuck once in an object in a running animation but ended up getting free, and I have seen enemies turning the wrong direction away from me. Kind of like they were looking at the noise coming from my bullets as they were hitting into object behind them. I guess that is a bug as well. But it does not disturb immersion.

When I have started the first thing I have noticed was that they have removed the iron sight for the pistols. Good thing there is a working mod that enables it again. I am not sure why they did this. May be another bug.

Initially the game was fun, and still is. Worth the money. But I feel like I have reloaded the original. So far I have seen only familiar places with the exception of the swamp where you start. It is cool because I liked the original and I don't mind playing it over from a different perspective but I see how the reviews call this a bit flat. It is not like playing "Blue Shift" after playing "Half-life". Nothing really exciting has happened to me. Most of my motivation to play is about upgrading the weapons and getting into firefights which is a fun. The story is not really interesting and I end up not reading the full conversations anymore just following the waypoint indicator. I have also not alligned up with any factions yet. I have done quests for almost all of them but did not join up. I don't see why I should.

I don't know. No regret getting it but it is definitely not a WoW! It is right about 7.0-7.5 as they said. It is fun until Fallout 3 or Far Cry 2 is out. And that is from a hard core STALKER gamer.

Tampa_Gamer · Post by **Tampa_Gamer** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 12:15 am

so did they finally fix the pda so that it will not reset your "read" messages every time you open it? I still find this very annoying in the original.

srdaniel · Post by **srdaniel** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 3:26 pm

- Is the in game translation as flaky as the website text?
- Is it mostly fighting monsters or is there quite a bit of fighting other factions?
- Do the pockets of civilization get larger as you progress through the game? (ie bigger, better towns / stores)

Two Sheds · Post by **Two Sheds** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 3:32 pm

srdaniel wrote:- Is the in game translation as flaky as the website text?
- Is it mostly fighting monsters or is there quite a bit of fighting other factions?
- Do the pockets of civilization get larger as you progress through the game? (ie bigger, better towns / stores)

1) Yes. Well, sometimes. It doesn't really matter, though--you'll hardly pay attention to what most people are saying.
2) I've only played a little bit, but all of my fighting has been against humans (and the occasional wild animal that I stumble across)
3) I do not know, but I doubt it.

srdaniel · Post by **srdaniel** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:10 pm

1) Yes. Well, sometimes. It doesn't really matter, though--you'll hardly pay attention to what most people are saying.

So there isn't much to the game in terms of storyline, it's pretty much a classic FPS game play?

Two Sheds · Post by **Two Sheds** » Thu Sep 18, 2008 4:25 pm

Oh, no, there's a storyline. There are reasons you're doing what you're doing, and you have a good idea about your and others' motivations. But when you talk to other Stalkers, for example, their dialogue might be stilted or filled with weird translation quirks. But for the most part, aside from key characters, you're not going to care what they're saying anyway and it comes off as more "quirky" than immersion-breaking. Sometimes main characters ramble on and on and on, but you get the important bits without taking in everything.

For example, talking to a guy walking around the Swamp camp gets the response "Hey Stalker, what's your problem! We're just sitting here around the fire, having a chat, . . ." Your response options include "What are you doing here?" It's weird and it reads like a translation, but it doesn't kill the experience and all I wanted to do was see if he had any vodka to trade anyway.

srdaniel · Post by **srdaniel** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 12:23 am

Impressions so far after 2 hours:

- I need a new machine.
- Throwing bolts might get old.
- Don't like friendlies pushing me out of the way during fire fights.
- Really like the atmosphere.
- I need a new machine.

Effidian · Post by **Effidian** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:02 am

I haven't been playing much, but just got to Cordon. I probably could have passed on this one, it isn't doing anything for me. Had I not played the first game, this might have hooked me more. Dunno...

Tampa_Gamer · Post by **Tampa_Gamer** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:12 am

so for those that have it, did they fix the PDA quirk so that you now can easily identify new entries?

srdaniel · Post by **srdaniel** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 9:30 am

I never played the first one, I'll see if I can tell if they fixed the PDA bug or not tonight after work.

Effidian · Post by **Effidian** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 11:14 am

Tampa_Gamer wrote:so for those that have it, did they fix the PDA quirk so that you now can easily identify new entries?

I looked, and there doesn't appear to be a way to "mark" entries in any way. I don't remember this in the first one either, so maybe I'm just missing something.

Tampa_Gamer · Post by **Tampa_Gamer** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:00 pm

No, it really wasn't user-activated. In the original, unread diary/encyclopedia entries were green and once you read it they turned white. When you found something that added additional information to your PDA a little PDA icon turned green on your HUD. Once you opened your PDA, the category (task, diary or encyclopedia) would also turn green to indicate a new unread entry was added. Problem is when you opened that tab, all your entries (layed out in a branching tree arrangement by subject area) were typically all turned back to green so you couldn't easily figure out where it was without branching the entire thing out again.

Again, minor annoyance (and still present in 1.0005 of the original), so I was just curious if they fixed the behavior.

srdaniel · Post by **srdaniel** » Fri Sep 19, 2008 3:34 pm

I look tonight when I get home. I don't remember what the tabs are in the PDA off the top of my head. Map, Faction, ?, ?

srdaniel · Post by **srdaniel** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 10:14 pm

The PDA must be different now. There are four tabs: Map, Factions War, Statistics, Message Log

On the Message Log tab it shows one page of information per day and you can scroll between days. There are also two filters where you can turn on/off either News or Dialog items. However nothing changes color. Information just gets added to the log.

Tampa_Gamer · Post by **Tampa_Gamer** » Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:47 pm

Thanks for the report srdaniel

Ho-Hum · Post by **Ho-Hum** » Sun Sep 21, 2008 5:38 pm

Does anyone know if the smart mod manager will work with this game?

JonathanStrange · Post by **JonathanStrange** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 8:18 pm

I need some good reasons to buy Stalker 2 and I'm just not hearing them. Not that I'll never buy but nothing feels compelling - I played Stalker long enough and enthusiastically enough that I'm kind of burned out. In the meantime, if you have any cool stuff, continue sharing it. I'll be reading...

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:46 pm

JonathanStrange wrote:In the meantime, if you have any cool stuff, continue sharing it. I'll be reading...

Firefights in thunderstorms. Surreal. That was my most incredibly cool moment...so far. I'm not really any further into it though. I need a much larger block of time to really get settled into it.

Two Sheds · Post by **Two Sheds** » Mon Sep 22, 2008 10:36 pm

Giles Habibula wrote:
JonathanStrange wrote:In the meantime, if you have any cool stuff, continue sharing it. I'll be reading...
Firefights in thunderstorms. Surreal. That was my most incredibly cool moment...so far. I'm not really any further into it though. I need a much larger block of time to really get settled into it.

Same here, actually. On both counts.

JonathanStrange, it really is just more of the same. If you're burned out on Stalker, I'd hold off. I hadn't played the original in long enough that I was happy to get back into that world.

JonathanStrange · Post by **JonathanStrange** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 9:16 pm

I suppose I will. CircuitCity has a sale on Stalker and I am tempted nevertheless. I did wait for the first Stalker and bought it for, I don't recall exactly, probably $15 or less at Target AND I sure played the hell out of it.

So I was feeling "Hey, $30 ain't bad for the sequel" though I likely wouldn't get to it until late November and then it'd be that price anyway...

Too many choices!!

srdaniel · Post by **srdaniel** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 11:21 pm

I never played the first one but I'm liking Scs so far, especially after getting a new vid card (ati hd4850 for $150). I'm still in Cordon (2nd area) but I like to complete all the secondary quests. After trying to take over a military base with my modified shotgun I finally reloaded and started using some assault rifle. I ended up wasting money upgrading it and then immediately finding a slightly better one. Rather than reloading I just sold the first one and spent the money to upgrade the new.

My dislikes so far are :

- Quickload is a lie, it's not quick.
- A lot of running back and forth from fire fights to gather loot and sell. Since you can't carry much I end up making a couple of trips, sometimes it's a long run.
- I can't seem to find any of the secondary quests (thumb drives or something) which allow the mechanics to upgrade your equipment even more.
- Sometimes the quests seem to time out for no reason and you fail. Or your already trying to solve one when another one pops up and you have no chance at solving both before one or the other times out and you fail. I understand it's trying to show that time is passing even if your screwing around but damn it I want to solve them all.

Normann · Post by **Normann** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 8:05 am

I am a big fan of this game but right now with 1.504 I had to stop playing because of the quest related bugs. This will get off my drive until more patching. I can't continue with the main quest, and I can't fight proper faction wars. Not fun. I bet the patch will make me restart as well so I am done playing this until then.

Turtle · Post by **Turtle** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:16 am

I read on news sites that there's already a fan patch out that fixes a bunch of the scripting errors.

I'm glad I didn't buy this early, by the time I get it either the developers will have it patched up, or the community will.

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 12:37 pm

Here's a funny review of Clear Sky.

A brief snippet:

The game begins, as many do, with a menu screen. Presented with a number of options, such as “New Game” and “Options”, I tried to put myself in the head of a Stalker. Roleplay a bit. What would a mysterious Russian merc do? I decided he’d want to play in a 1600 x 900 resolution with graphic settings on “high”. The better he can see, the better chance he’d have… to survive.

Hispanicgamer · Post by **Hispanicgamer** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 6:26 pm

Any more impressions so far? I'm trying to decide on S:CS Or Crysis Warhead..........

Turtle · Post by **Turtle** » Wed Oct 08, 2008 9:59 pm

I'm just waiting for a few more official patches for Stalker before buying. Meanwhile, I did have a lot of fun with CW, but it's a shorter and more linear experience.

Hispanicgamer · Post by **Hispanicgamer** » Fri Oct 10, 2008 10:04 am

I even contemplated buying GWAR2 on Steam because I'm desperate for a good and long game. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was fun but I felt like I was on an Easter Egg hunt.

Beer Goggles · Post by **Beer Goggles** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 11:13 am

Hispanicgamer wrote:I even contemplated buying GWAR2 on Steam because I'm desperate for a good and long game. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was fun but I felt like I was on an Easter Egg hunt.

GWAR2?

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 12:26 am

Beer Goggles wrote:
Hispanicgamer wrote:I even contemplated buying GWAR2 on Steam because I'm desperate for a good and long game. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was fun but I felt like I was on an Easter Egg hunt.
GWAR2?

I'm curious too.
I've always sucked at game acronyms.

Hispanicgamer · Post by **Hispanicgamer** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 10:14 am

Giles Habibula wrote:
Beer Goggles wrote:
Hispanicgamer wrote:I even contemplated buying GWAR2 on Steam because I'm desperate for a good and long game. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was fun but I felt like I was on an Easter Egg hunt.
GWAR2?
I'm curious too.
I've always sucked at game acronyms.

Come on you guys!
Ghost Warfighter Advanced Recon 2

Jeez
My bad. I was thinking too much about industrial metal.
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2

Turin Turambar · Post by **Turin Turambar** » Sun Oct 12, 2008 1:30 pm

YMMV, but GRAW2 was for me a mediocre game, totally inferior to Stalker.

Hispanicgamer · Post by **Hispanicgamer** » Fri Oct 17, 2008 10:17 am

Turin Turambar wrote:YMMV, but GRAW2 was for me a mediocre game, totally inferior to Stalker.

So you are enjoying Clear Skies then?

Sponge · Post by **Sponge** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 11:54 am

Hispanicgamer wrote:Any more impressions so far? I'm trying to decide on S:CS Or Crysis Warhead..........

Did you play the original? It's basically more of the same with improvements. This is a good thing, IMHO, as I consider the first one of my favorite storied-shooters. It left loads of memorable experiences etched in my brain for all eternity.

Some of the cool new stuff in Clear Sky is the faction wars, the new mini-quests like take-and-hold certain objectives, and the ability to repair and modify your gear. I've been tricking out my Viper and the thing just kicks ass.

Bottom line, if you did play the original and enjoyed it, there should be nothing stopping you from getting this ASAP.

ChrisGrenard · Post by **ChrisGrenard** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 12:10 pm

Turin Turambar wrote:YMMV, but GRAW2 was for me a mediocre game, totally inferior to Stalker.

Considering that GRAW2 crashes on me about twice per level, really the Stalker comparison is apt.

Effidian · Post by **Effidian** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 12:15 pm

Sponge wrote:Bottom line, if you did play the original and enjoyed it, there should be nothing stopping you from getting this ASAP.

I played the original and enjoyed it, but cannot get into Clear Sky. I made it to the second area, and for some reason I'm finding it hard to keep playing.

Might just be me though...