Introduction
Right, This isn't really a full review, I've not completed the game.
However, I figure it's worth opening up some discussion about the game, and giving some 5punky opinions (CS players, please add to this thread).
Review is as of patch 1.5.0.4
Gameplay
Right then, for those of you that've played S.T.A.L.K.E.R, It's basically the same.
For those of you that haven't, Both games are FPSRPGs, FPS games with some elements of RPG, namely missions, crap to carry, and multiple factions it's possible to align with, or not, depending on your mood.
The changes from the original to Clear Sky make the game feel alive, there's quite a bit of activity going on, rival groups attacking each other, you're actually in some level of danger a lot of the time, it's not overwhelming, but it can be a bit wearing sometimes, but I see this as a good thing, It's not often a game makes you want to find somewhere safe to sit down and relax.
The game is a bit more difficult than S.T.A.L.K.E.R, but if you do quests with an NPC group (many quests are assisting NPCs in a task), you feel a bit safer.
Solo sections can be a bit difficult, but not impossible by any means, they seem to have a good level of difficulty/terror/suspense.
Weapons in Clear Sky are more upgradable than in the original, accuracy, recoil, rate of fire, barrel length, magazine capacity and calibre are all modifiable by specialist weapons fettlers in major camps, It's also possible to add scopes and silencers to your weapons.
Sights and Sounds
This game is pretty, Kinda. It doesn't really suffer from next generation brown, but it isn't a bright game, I think the colours are right for the feel of the game.
Sounds are much the same as the original, they add a lot of atmosphere to the game, without being too much, Gunfire sounds are as good as any game, background noises and music are pretty good, though the music from some radios in game can get a bit repetitive.
Overall, the game has bucketloads of atmosphere, feels alive, like you're involved in something, like a good RPG, rather than the distinctly FPS feeling of the original.
Have some screenshots, won't help to explain the sound though.
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitteny_berk/2842623427/" title="ss_berk_09-09-08_16-10-19_(escape) by Kitteny Berk, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3232/284 ... 5d80_m.jpg" width="240" height="150" alt="ss_berk_09-09-08_16-10-19_(escape)"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitteny_berk/2843458402/" title="ss_berk_09-09-08_16-07-00_(escape) by Kitteny Berk, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3185/284 ... b09d_m.jpg" width="240" height="150" alt="ss_berk_09-09-08_16-07-00_(escape)"></a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitteny_berk/2843457930/" title="ss_berk_09-09-08_16-03-08_(escape) by Kitteny Berk, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3204/284 ... 3b81_m.jpg" width="240" height="150" alt="ss_berk_09-09-08_16-03-08_(escape)"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitteny_berk/2842935620/" title="ss_berk_09-09-08_08-01-13_(marsh) by Kitteny Berk, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3188/284 ... 5801_m.jpg" width="240" height="150" alt="ss_berk_09-09-08_08-01-13_(marsh)"></a>
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitteny_berk/2842099799/" title="ss_berk_09-09-08_07-38-10_(marsh) by Kitteny Berk, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3046/284 ... 06e4_m.jpg" width="240" height="150" alt="ss_berk_09-09-08_07-38-10_(marsh)"></a> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kitteny_berk/2843207104/" title="ss_berk_09-09-08_14-58-05_(escape) by Kitteny Berk, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3155/284 ... 4e59_m.jpg" width="240" height="150" alt="ss_berk_09-09-08_14-58-05_(escape)"></a>
Stuff that sucks
Oh dear, this is gonna be a big bit.
While the gameplay is inherently good IMO, the amount of fuckups, bugs and oddities come close to killing it, even for me as a fan of the series.
There's a few quests that repeat themselves every time you enter some areas and subsequently fail immediately, not critical from a gameplay standpoint, but annoying for immersion.
There's another bug where you have an excessive amount of ejaculations when entering some zones.
Repeated CTDs in certain scenarios.
Savegame breaking patches
Strange performance drops in some areas and times of day, Mostly I think these are related to the amount of foliage, the complexity of lighting, or just odd coding.
Lacks multi-threading support, which is a bit weird for such a modern, demanding game, given most gamers will be on dual core machines by now.
Performance is generally pretty good, but I have a pretty fast machine and still experience times of 5fps unplayability that aren't related to anything tangible.
It's probably worth mentioning at this point, I've had a pretty good experience with this game bug/stability wise, and this section isn't exactly short.
Conclusion
Clear Sky is a potentially great game, but it's just not finished.
Despite the great gameplay, decent AI, good atmosphere, pretty graphics, and everything else right with the game, It's spoiled by the number of bugs that should've been picked up during testing.
Bloody great if you like the style but quite broken, if you're not willing to keep fairly detailed saves and replay some sections a few times, play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. with the Oblivion Lost mod for a month or 2 until this gets fixed.
Fortunately, It seems a lot of the bugs should be pretty easy to fix, there's very little that seems to be an issue in the engine itself, but I fear some of the bugs may need savegame breaking patches.
For my money, it gets an 8/10 for gameplay, and a 3/10 because they fucked it up, rounded down to 5/10 overall because the fuckups can kill the gameplay, even when it's working.
Score :
