STALKER: Clear Sky Review

Welcome to the review for STALKER: Clear Sky. It's been delayed a couple of times, and we'll get to the reasons as the review ramps up, but the important thing is that it is here. STALKER:CS is a prequel to the STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl developed by small time developer GSC, and published by Deep Silver. You play as a merc who gets hit by an 'Emission'. This emission knocks you out and you wake up in a camp called Clear Sky in the swamps of 'the zone'. The zone is an area surrounding Chernobyl after an incident at the nuclear plant. If you played the original STALKER this will all sound familiar. You do not play as the original character in this game though.

As the game starts you are told that someone has gotten too close to the center of the zone, where humans are not supposed to be able to access. Because of this the anomalies that occur in the zone have increased in severity and frequency. You are thrown into the swamps surrounding the camp to participate in the faction wars going on in the zone and unravel the full story of the game.

Welcome to camp Clear Sky

I had a tough time starting the game because I didn't pay enough attention to the radio chatter. If I had I would have known that I have to throw bolts in front of me so that I don't wander into an invisible anomaly and get ripped apart. After a few deaths I restarted and realized what I was doing wrong. This brought me to a tower surrounded by boars. I am a relic of the run and gun days. I pulled out my handgun ( they are just boars after all) and proceeded to open fire. After three quick shots the gun jammed, and I died. This was not a good start. I restarted got to the top of the tower, and readied myself for some elevated tower defense, but then abruptly died. I had been injured, and simply bled out. This is a feature I am not accustomed to. About the only type of death I didn't sustain in the first 30 minutes was radiation death, but I died of that plenty later. The point I am driving at is that STALKER:CS and, after getting around to actually playing the original, each have a very unique game play experience that will take some time to adjust to. Once you get into the game itself, it is very engaging.

A lot of the initial game takes place in the swamp areas of the zone, and you are introduced to the power struggle game mechanic in STALKER:CS. It generally works out well, but there is a few times where you find out your outpost is under attack and have all of 3 seconds before you fail. Other times you will notice that you need to get back and before you get close you succeed without having done a thing. I can't say for sure how this happens because in a fight the NPCs I fight with aren't overly helpful. I recently suspected that the enemy came to the camp noticed everyone still guarding or going about staring at corners or looking into the distance with arms crossed and thought they already owned the place. Every NPC I came across looked almost the same so such a confusion isn't really out of the realm of possibility.

The PDA is a very useful tool in Clear Sky, as it breaks down a lot of information for you. It shows you the world map. This map can sometimes be a bit misleading as it only shows units of enemies. This could mean you are expecting to fight one small group, or a huge military encampment that cuts you down with mounted machine guns. The PDA also shows you your alliance and status with the factions, which is handy, but sometimes changes for no discernible reason. There is also a screen that helps you keep missions straight, which was fantastic because I couldn't keep them straight for the life of me.

The factions, and missions combined with the RPG elements with specific characters themselves make for an interesting balance of action and character interaction. The action varies quite a lot depending on the time of day. In the night time sequences creepiness is at a very high level, even more so in a storm. In the daylight hours the small battles have a real sense of tense urgency as the opponents use some impressive tactics based on numbers and position.

It seems like the game is headed for a gold right now, but there is some heavy bombs about to hit this title.

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