S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky review (PC)

The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) was a great game even though it had many technical issues. It was set in and around Chernobyl after another disaster at the power plant caused strange anomalies to appear and warp all the local wildlife along with some of the humans (this area was called the Zone). Overall the game was extremely good but seemed unfinished and the last couple of levels very rushed. The true fans of the game hoped that GSC Game World had learned from their mistakes and would give us a game worthy of our fanaticism in the form of Clear Sky. Let’s see if they have.

Clear Sky (CS) is set one year before Shadow of Chernobyl and takes you on a journey through twelve territories, half of which are new. The different factions from the first game are all here again and are pretty much at war with one another this time around. You can choose to join one of them and reap the benefits of cheaper goods and the curse of more enemies or you can just go it alone.

Bugged

If you can get the game to run at all (technical issues abound) you will find yourself welcomed by a beautifully lit, ramshackle set of buildings in the southern reaches of a marsh. Apart from the ambient lighting the first thing you will notice are the more detailed textures. While still not quite on par with some recent high profile titles, they do the job brilliantly. Everything in the game still has that wonderful, ominous, derelict look about it. The buildings have been patched up with detritus to suit the needs of whichever faction uses them. Again, a lot of thought has gone into getting the right look for the game world and for the most part it works magnificently.

The marshes give you a decent amount of freedom to ease you into the game but may seem a little difficult to explore due to the quirky onscreen radar. If GSC had just left the radar pointing north at all times it would have made traversing the areas that much easier. I continuously brought up the map screen to check my position and found myself going in the wrong direction most of the time due to the radar. As you can imagine that ruins the immersion.

Overall though there is a feeling of being in constant danger no matter where you are in the Zone and you will spend most of the time looking over your shoulder since the inhabitants of the Zone have very large roaming areas and can pop up when you least expect it and definitely don’t want it. From the word go there are plenty of side quests to add some meat to the bones of a rather emancipated main quest which is very generic in nature, with a very annoying story arc about a third of the way through.

Broken Promise

You see, in CS you can upgrade and repair your weapons and armour. This is a great improvement over SoC, allowing you to personalise your arsenal and stick to your favourite equipment. How infuriating would it then be to get robbed of absolutely everything in your possession? I can answer that for you. Extremely. By this time though, the technical side of CS’s problems had already robbed me of all anger and profanity. I merely sighed long and wearily. I felt truly beaten and not (I’m sure) in the way GSC intended. After this you can try a leisurely walk through the Zone to enquire about the return of your worldly possessions whilst brandishing weapons and equipment picked up on your little journey that far outshine the crap you thought was great when you lost it. The problem here is that all your upgrades are missing from your old belongings, rendering them next to worthless. A bug? Who knows.

The promise of more items to spend your hard earned cash on is not what it seems either. The best equipment is just harder to find in the wild, forcing you to rely on the traders all the more, and for such a money orientated bunch, not one of the denizens of the Zone has any moolah left on them after they die. To earn more money than the quests give you, you must grind backwards and forwards to the traders with whatever junk you find on bodies or in stashes to make enough money to upgrade your gear. It certainly lengthens the game, but at what cost?

Artefacts (objects of apparent power and worth found in the many anomalies around the Zone) are now invisible unless you get close enough to them using a scanner to pinpoint their position. They are now very limited in number and usefulness. Some of them didn’t even work for me and others were just too pathetically weak to bother with. Apart from some of the guns, everything seems a little inadequate this time around and things don’t feel quite as random, which was part of the charm of SoC.

Slender

That’s not to say that Clear Sky is bad - not in the slightest - but it seems a little more slender this time around, like the programmers have become fed up with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe and gave up on adding new content, or indeed play testing, if the glaring bugs are anything to go by.

There are technical problems galore in CS in the form of crashes, momentary freezes, graphical glitches, text disappearing, saves corrupting, broken quests etc. The list is longer that the extensive loading times between levels.

The difficulty has been ramped up this time around too but only in the damage that the enemy does to you. They don’t seem to act as intelligently as they did before. They still try to flank you and use cover but they pop out or make a run for other cover when they are perfectly safe, making themselves easy targets. They also use a lot of grenades and running from them relies more on luck than skill since the on-screen prompt that lets you know of a grenade in your midst seems to bear no relation to the actual location of said explosive object.

When doing their rounds the human NPCs are an unstoppable force on rails and will push you out of their way, whether you are talking to another character or fighting alongside them where they will shove you into the line of fire. Not exactly polite is it?

Ticking Boxes

The last couple of levels in CS are very thin on content and seem to shunt you along to the tiny Chernobyl level where you will have the pleasure of the much hated, spawning baddies. Yes, these busy little soldiers pop out of little portals all around you with bullets that must be filled with molten magma, they do so much damage. This level and its popcorn troops seem so out of place and very, very linear when looked at alongside the rest of CS.

I suppose one consolation is at least the later levels behaved themselves as far as glitches are concerned but I can’t help but wonder if that was the Windows updates (I had 10 the other night) or if it was the Zone messing with my head, getting my hopes up for what turned out to be a most underwhelming ending.

A lot seems to be missing from CS and it’s a shame considering how much content SoC had. I have a feeling it’s more to do with the design of the Zone this time around rather than the content. By that I mean that the different areas are just not as interesting as they were before and lack in level design as much as they excel in aesthetics. You don’t feel as free to roam after you leave the marshes and events form to force you in a particular direction more than they are needed. The underground sections - which were by far my favourite in SoC -are so feeble and short that they feel tacked on as an afterthought or filler. Even the lighting fades in comparison to that of above ground. And what happened to the volumetric smoke? There were two tiny bits in the underground that didn’t seem to interact with the environment at all. Are we just ticking fancy gizmo boxes here GSC?

The Final Countdown

You may not realise it but I really like this game, but it has been a battle to get myself to this point and that’s not the way it should be. CS has been found wanting as a whole even though many of its parts really hit the spot. The shadows are astounding. Everything (apart from your character strangely enough) casts a shadow on everything else and it all moves with the waxing and waning of the sun. The sky is the most realistic ever seen in a game and when it rains...wow. I don’t think the running surface water works as well as they thought it would but it still makes a huge difference to the experience. Add that to the thunder and lightning, wind kicking up dust and leaves and the booming screen shakes of the deadly emissions coming from the centre of the Zone and you have an unbelievable atmosphere.

The sound adds to the overall hopelessness of the Zone with animal grunts, growls and howls, wind rushing through foliage, insects, birds (which drop dead from the sky when an emission comes - a neat touch), conversations and the growing pains of buildings in need of repair. The voice acting is functional but full of variety and sometimes funny. My favourite bit of dark humour is the NPC about to throw a grenade who first shouts "Do you like fruit? Then have a pineapple!"

Usually the bad points are listed last but as you can see, this is an odd one. Clear Sky has a lot of potential - as does the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise - and is a worthwhile game to add to your collection because of its fair price but until the insane amount of gremlins is addressed in a patch it will always be a failure in the eyes of the fans.
After all, a couple of months of play testing would have made all the difference in the Zone.

On a final note, as I ended this review I noticed the release of the new patch, which thankfully has fixed a few (but not nearly enough) of the problems. I have therefore adjusted the score accordingly but not the review, because I feel it is truthful and fair.