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

Clear Sky: the only game where looting a corpse feels like winning the lottery. Too bad the prize is 3 rubles and a half broken pistol. 10/10

Too many bugs for me. The game breaking after sleeping was like a 70% chance, my helmet gets auto-removed all the time and I have to sit waiting for the inventory animation to put it back on, it won't let me transition to Red Forest. I feel so squishy, a faction turned against me for no reason. The story is boring. The whole game feels like a struggle and there is no pay-off. Big disappointment after the first one.

[h1] [b] Shadow of Chernobyl's Expermental Successor [/b] [/h1] Coming off from playing SoC made me wanting more from it, cut content, cut missions, enemies, weapons, anything to let me play more S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and learn more about the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. This brought me to Clear Sky, the hated middle child of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise. Spoilers ahead. [h2] Promising Continuation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. [/h2] Upon first opening the game, I downloaded the SRP mod, for some quality of life changes (like being able to use the iron sights of pistols, instead of a viewed in hip fire), more fair merchants (still expensive as shit), and some general optimization updates. The graphics in this S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game is the best out of the original trilogy (this is before I have played CoP), there is a new Faction War system, and an upgrade system. [h2] The Experimental Faction War and Upgrade System [/h2] The faction war system will take up most of your playtime in this game, especially if you want to play as all factions. Yes, you can play all 5 factions in this game. Clear Sky, Bandits, Stalkers, Freedom, and Duty. Each with a set of missions that help bring up your rep with each faction and change your rep with enemy or ally factions. You also get rewards after capturing another enemy's base, but from my experience, if you go the route of getting all the rewards from the 5 factions, you might shoot yourself in the foot. I started with the bandits, got their rewards and moved to Freedom afterwards. Now, depending on whether you join Duty or Freedom, you will lose the option to accept rewards from either faction. Unless you kill the enemy faction that is residing in the opposing faction's base. But even then, the spawns for the bartenders and traders get screwed up and you have to hope you can move on from it. The upgrade system, it is a cool addition to the game. However, this also has some flaws. One being that the upgrades get super expensive if you don't do the money glitch or you are trying to go through the story. Two, some of the mechanics cannot upgrade weapons or armour after a certain tier; some specialize in certain weapons or armour. I'm hoping the system is more fleshed out in CoP. [h2] Strelok's Story Continues [/h2] You play as Scar, a mercenary that can withstand emissions (only when the story allows it). You join up with the Clear Sky faction, who are trying to fight off the renegades (the first faction war you do in the game). Most of the story is following Strelok's footsteps to the power plant, like in the first game. The story is short, but sweet... until the last mission. The last mission is so shit. You are tasked with shooting Strelok with a gun that does no damage, and you only have so many opportunities to shoot him before the power plant gets destroyed by an emission. I had to cheat this final segment by shooting Strelok, quick saving, then loading that same save to bug his AI. This mission needed some more time to cook in the oven for sure. [h2] Sandbox Mode? [/h2] After the final mission, you can make your way back civilization and continue doing side missions or fighting in faction wars. I do like this change compared to SoC, but doing fetch quests, hold point missions, or go kill "X" missions get boring really fast. I wish they added something to make the endgame more enjoyable. You do get a F2000, but that is it in terms of endgame rewards. [h3] S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s Lost Prequel [/h3] Many people will tell you to skip this entry in this franchise, but I urge you to give it a chance. It adds a lot of lore and game mechanics that set the foundation for future games. Safe Travels, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

FIND STAMINA ARTIFACTS AS FAST AS YOU CAN. GREAT VOLUME, ONE OF WELL-MADE GAMES.

amazing game would NEVER PLAY AGAIN i just don't like the fact i need bandages to heal bleeding

This game sucks .The day-night cycle is bugged. The combat system is absolute cancer.

i played this with the lost fallout overhaul mod and mostly comparing it to my SOC radiophobia 3 playthrough which is the best mod experience ive ever had going from vanilla to radiophobia 3 so for clear sky i decided to skip straight into its big overhaul mod Stalker shadow of chernobyl is like perfected russian fallout even though it nots and its very different clear sky felt like a less so perfect russian half life i have played this first time modded with the lost fallout overhaul and i dont know if its the mods fault or just this game itself but had some weird very buggy experiences, especially in the end game like enemies in the scripted segments just not spawning in until after i reload a save, so when i die to something and decide to reload boom im now surrounded by enemies and about my comment earlier this game felt less open and like it had more scripted segments compared to SOC it felt like a more linear game it felt like it had less soul then SOC no music boxes it basically forcing english subs down your throat instead of the ukrainian dialogue ive grown to love but i hugely enjoyed the atmosphere, this is also a way scarier game then SOC with its reworked enemies and anomalies being the best part of clear sky for me but human combats felt down graded, not because the shooting feels worse no theyre both pretty equal, but lost fallout at times felt a tad bit too bullshit when facing humans, SOC-radiophobia 3 is not easy itself but it had a perfected line between challenge, i would be domed alot fucked with alot but LFO-clear sky im nearly getting one shot all the time upgrade systems werent all too appealing either and all armors were near useless because they would have zero gas mask functionality i dont really understand but i feel as if i was going on the whole game with a flawed understanding of armor my playthrough for this game has had crazy highs and very lows, i am unsure how much of it to attribute to clear sky at a base or how much it is due to lost fallout overhaul all in all an low low 9/10

Copied from enhanced edition review: Having played since the OG release back in the past, using a guide to get the all the achievements in one go, I still had a blast replaying Clear Sky again. All the good (and quirky) memories. Visit the zone, enjoy the sights, hunt some mutants and kick some bandit ass. Clear Sky is a slightly dated, idk rpg shooter (I'm not on the up and up on modern genres) with some parts in the UI lacking. But don't let this detract from the overall experience. Start a game on the hardest difficulty and find out just how freeform this game is. None of the above is even considering mods, with huge makeovers to small QoL mods, if you haven't played either of the first three S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, get one of them. Time permitting I'm about to start a Shadow of Chornobyl run. My personal recommendation is run the games in story order aka Clear Sky > Shadow of Chornobyl > Call of Pripyat.

An excellent FPS. I was going to replay it, but now that there is a remastered edition I guess I'm playing that.

Good atmosphere, abysmal gunplay, and lost my progress cause i deathsave on an emission.