Stalker: Clear Sky impressions
Posted: 2008-09-11 01:45am
First, I want to say it amuses me a great deal to see the version number start at v1.50.00. They continue with the claim that this is 'X-ray v1.5' and not 'still less than v1 was supposed to be'. 
That aside, CS is a serious improvement over Stalker in almost every way. There's more space, the PDA is improved, the inventory is improved, there's more to do, it looks better, and a lot of good ideas have been stolen from mods (like actual dark nights).
However, it's still not a 'finsihed' game. You can't move stacks properly (a pile of bullets for instance, isn't 150 bullets; it's several separate 'boxes' of bullets, each in a semi-random value from 2 to about fifteen) so dumping and picking up ammo is a pain in the ass. The combat AI is improved (holy shit raining grenades), but they are still prone to stand around in the open and get shot. The guns are now LESS accurate than before; the Abakan and the M4 are far worse than a PMM in this respect. There are many bugs with the warfare and quests - for intance, I entered the garbage and cleared a checkpoint. Once my backup arrived, it tripped ALL the warfare goals and I instantly 'defeated' the enemy, even though I had no idea where their base even WAS.
This leads to another problem - the faction warfare is cool stuff indeed, but it's a 'control point' thing... and they don't tell you where/what these points are. You'll get a message ZOMG DEFEND TEH MACHINE YARD, but nowhere on your map does it say 'machine yard'. If it didn't drop a point saying 'go here', there'd be no way at all to know, and thus when people talk about locations, you have only tha vaguest idea what they mean. This is strange, as the PDA now has much more information displayed (and finally indicates the difference between explored/not explored stashes).
I haven't proceeded far in the game yet, but as you're a 'merc' and you're moving through the zone, it appears that you work for different factions in turn, and each has a 'conflcit' which has certain 'goals' you need to fulfil for your side to 'win'. I'm hoping later there is a full-map free-for-all war, because that's what I was looking forward to.
The new zones look very nice, whereas the older ones being revisted have had only slight changes. The addition of much stronger mutants and head-high grass make the game much more interesting, and you'll stick with 'Fort-15 and shotgun' much longer than in Stalker, so there is a satisfying style of combat and tension. However, you quickly get decent guns and it becomes less troublesome, which is a shame.
That aside, CS is a serious improvement over Stalker in almost every way. There's more space, the PDA is improved, the inventory is improved, there's more to do, it looks better, and a lot of good ideas have been stolen from mods (like actual dark nights).
However, it's still not a 'finsihed' game. You can't move stacks properly (a pile of bullets for instance, isn't 150 bullets; it's several separate 'boxes' of bullets, each in a semi-random value from 2 to about fifteen) so dumping and picking up ammo is a pain in the ass. The combat AI is improved (holy shit raining grenades), but they are still prone to stand around in the open and get shot. The guns are now LESS accurate than before; the Abakan and the M4 are far worse than a PMM in this respect. There are many bugs with the warfare and quests - for intance, I entered the garbage and cleared a checkpoint. Once my backup arrived, it tripped ALL the warfare goals and I instantly 'defeated' the enemy, even though I had no idea where their base even WAS.
This leads to another problem - the faction warfare is cool stuff indeed, but it's a 'control point' thing... and they don't tell you where/what these points are. You'll get a message ZOMG DEFEND TEH MACHINE YARD, but nowhere on your map does it say 'machine yard'. If it didn't drop a point saying 'go here', there'd be no way at all to know, and thus when people talk about locations, you have only tha vaguest idea what they mean. This is strange, as the PDA now has much more information displayed (and finally indicates the difference between explored/not explored stashes).
I haven't proceeded far in the game yet, but as you're a 'merc' and you're moving through the zone, it appears that you work for different factions in turn, and each has a 'conflcit' which has certain 'goals' you need to fulfil for your side to 'win'. I'm hoping later there is a full-map free-for-all war, because that's what I was looking forward to.
The new zones look very nice, whereas the older ones being revisted have had only slight changes. The addition of much stronger mutants and head-high grass make the game much more interesting, and you'll stick with 'Fort-15 and shotgun' much longer than in Stalker, so there is a satisfying style of combat and tension. However, you quickly get decent guns and it becomes less troublesome, which is a shame.
