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

I play russian version with 1.5.04 patch ant it's pretty stable and good in performance department on my PC (E8400 3GHZ, 3.25GB RAM, 8800GTS 512). Haven't crashed once, contrary to what I've been hearing about it.
Although I gotta say the game itself is just a little bit disappointing. I like the story and dialogues, but of course I played only russian versions of both games, so I don't know how well exactly it is translated in english, I know I hated english voice acting in SOC when I heard it at my friend's who cannot read russian, it detracted from atmosphere somewhat.
What is funny that I couldn't point my finger at what exactly disappoints me, but the general feel of game is a bit different. That doesn't mean I don't like it, I just like it a bit less than first one. Still, I believe future patches/mods should make it into a great game.
And by all means, anyone who hasn't played Shadow Of Chernobyl, install it, patch it (also mods like Float32, and S.H.A.R.P.E.R Textures are recommended if your PC can run it on Full Dynamic Lighting) and be amazed. Also I would recommend to try lowering SFX to at least the middle in audio settings, cause music is fucking beautiful and adds a lot to atmosphere. Since it is gennerally a Dark Ambient score it is a bit quiet. Wouldn't recommend Oblivion Lost mod for the first time, I think it's best to experience game the way it was released (and patched later of course :) )
 
Agreed, i'm playing with Oblivion Lost now after finishing the vanilla version a couple of times and it's a whole new game.

I don't think the english version broke the immersion for me though, if they had taken out the russian entirely out would be worst, I like the foreigner feel to it when passing through and not understanding anything the other stalkers say (must be cursing me or something :D ).

I think CS will come out here in Brazil only in december :(, but i will buy it just for the modding community which was great at the first game, and i think the devs released a fair amount of fixes for the first one too (didn't crash so many times with me).
 
Is the original Stalker fixed "completely" by now?
I could barely play it due to a bug which maid it stutter horribly for no apparent reason.
 
verwandlung said:
Is the original Stalker fixed "completely" by now?
I could barely play it due to a bug which maid it stutter horribly for no apparent reason.
Click to expand...

I think it's due to poor optimization of engine, it starts stuttering when you play for a while and leave a lot of corpses with items lying around (which is inevitable of course). It starts to stutter on my new PC (above post) too once in quite a while in open areas after playing longer but it's far from ruining experience. I guess it depends on your rig. I can add that STALKER is a huge RAM eater.
Also there is a bug which causes strange glitches when it's raining, it happens rarely, particularly when you change graphics options in game. What you have to do then is quicksave, quit game to Windows and restart it, and everything is back to normal.
I've once encoutered a bug where quest character seems to be stuck.. quiksave/quickload solved the problem immediately, and that is not the first game where I've encoutered this.
These are all the bugs I've seen in SOC 1.005 (1.006 changes only multiplayer, something I never play in any games) during my multiple plays. Far from being as it was when first released.
 
you can nearly eliminate the "stutter". just see fit that the areas have little to no objects lying around (put guns back on bodies so that theyll disappear). and dont put too much in stashes, either; that normally applies to the bar stash.

this can be a pain in the ass, especially with the oblivion lost mod; massive respawns and faction wars can turn you into some kind of janitor, especially in the wild territory.

i only encountered ONE bug in the vanilla game (it crashes to desktop on very rare occasions) and a very annoying one in freeplay mode (cleared npp, killed the "real" endboss, made my way back to bar) with oblivion lost mod (pripyat, ctd and destruction of quicksaves). ah yes, sometimes the rewvolving "kill bandits in wild territory" gets stuck; i figured it might be some stuck npc. doesnt matter too much anyway.

edit: totally neglected a pm. thx to teh furtario, ill just leave this here:

<blockquote>Optimized engine (as long as you don't turn on any form of dynamic lighting, you can have maxed textures, resolution and appreciable shadows)

Atmosphere (dripping from the monitor like sweat from a horny girl)

Customisability (extensive upgrade system for weapons and armour)

Revised anomaly system (detectors are a must)

Increased difficulty (damn rewarding)

Did I mention faction systems that add to the atmosphere?

Atmosphere. You really are there.

Seriously. And allows for epic moments: today I iced a major NPC for stealing my Enfield SA80. One of the guides.

Seriously. Atmosphere is amazing.</blockquote>
 
While I don't like the game that much, I thought I'd just share these :














The game IS atmospheric. It really feels like you're there as horst said but I just prefer SHOC so far. And before anybody asks : these are maxed out DX9 screenshots. DX10 plays well and looks a bit better ( almost unoticeable but for the wet surfaces effect ) but I have the "rain bug" and the fixes I've read here and there didn't fix it for me, probably because I'm running a SLI rig.
 
Clear Sky is amazing. I played it for ten hours straight yesterday, from Marsh to Dark Valley and... it's amazing. I love it.

Now, if only Shadow of Chernobyl would work...
 
Well now that I have had time to play Clear Sky for a bit I have to say I like it. First thing CS and SOC way to different, CS is mostly about faction wars, the Gold Rush time in S.T.A.L.K.E.R history. SOC is more about exploring the new zone and leans more toward RP experience. Now that said CS isn't perfect, yes it has its share of bugs. But the US version that I got had nice patch that updated it to 1.5.3 and day later 1.5.4 was released. Most common bug so far is the save game corruption. So use multiple saves is a must. Then there are few oversights broken scripts, but these come up more around end game.
Personally I think they made a great game that can be made awesome similar to what OL 2.2 did to SOC. SO people who havent bought yet, you can wait for 2 in 1 game box or buy the US version its more or less stable.

Edit. Oh yeah US game has some strange voice over. In gunfight one of my allies yelled *Die you Nazi*. I was dumbfounded a bit, thinking did he say what I think he said. Then I started laughing and wishing that somebody would make a mod fast that would put ukranian voices back. :lol:
 
I wonder how Clear Sky would run on my Q6600 with 4GB RAM and Gfx 9600GT...

Most of all, does it live up like its predecessor?
 
zioburosky13 said:
I wonder how Clear Sky would run on my Q6600 with 4GB RAM and Gfx 9600GT...

Most of all, does it live up like its predecessor?
Click to expand...
Its should run fine, maybe would need bit tweaking with dynamic lightning options, but it should run fine. It runs on mine and my PC is weaker then yours.

I would say No and yes no its nothing like SOC, but yes you get that same feeling time to time. Its mostly about action and faction wars. The upgrade system is good, but got to wonder what happened to gunsmiths in SOC. The unique weapons you find there represent relics from CS wars. 8-)

Multidirectional I think the feeling you miss is free roaming, since its bit more restricted in CS. Meaning there are lot of hostiles you have to clear from point A to B and doing that every time you want to travel long distances can be tedious. Second A life shines less here then it did in SOC with the weaker mutant presence. But I think these problems can be solved by mods.

Free "Veles" Detector and Gravi artifact in underground cave at Swamp. Its the are where 3 train carts have run of the rail and one is in the river. The tunnel entrance is beneath the 1st wagon. Nice easter egg didn't except this.
Click to expand...
For those that want good equip at start of new game, think of it as free merc suit at newbie camp.
 
WHAT.

You're making me want to replay CS again :'(

I like CS a bit more, due to the atmosphere of the faction bases. So far, I just love the Dark Valley Freedom base and Clear Sky's marsh.

Also:

ssmikaelgrizzly09190815hd7.jpg


Anyone got there? What's inside?

It's the western end of the Marsh railway, by the way.
 
So the general idea is that there is less free roaming in CS. And i thought SoC had way to little of that... I always felt "walled in".

When you first read the PR about SoC it sounded like it would be something like operation flashpoint in the free roaming aspect. I think that was the idea when they started the project, but after man years of delays they just had to get it out, and thus had to cut lots of stuff that was intended to be in the game from the start.
 
Mmmh...Actually I thought that there was more free roaming in CS than in SHOC even though the game is a bit more linear. Probably because the zone feels more empty because there are almost no mutants and some of the areas are HUGE when compared to SHOC.

Btw I'm starting to like it.
 
keyser Soeze said:
So the general idea is that there is less free roaming in CS. And i thought SoC had way to little of that... I always felt "walled in".

When you first read the PR about SoC it sounded like it would be something like operation flashpoint in the free roaming aspect. I think that was the idea when they started the project, but after man years of delays they just had to get it out, and thus had to cut lots of stuff that was intended to be in the game from the start.
Click to expand...
Guess I didn't explain it very well, some of the CS areas are huger then the ones from SOC. But most of the areas are radioactive and have lot of hostile NPCs, think garbage, but more open and bigger. Player usually sticks near the faction hes currently is allied, so most of playing time might be spent there.

But I have to say that machine gun at the military base is a killer. In my last game I just cant seem to get past it, its freaking motion detecting chain gun.
 
GreyViper said:
But I have to say that machine gun at the military base is a killer. In my last game I just cant seem to get past it, its freaking motion detecting chain gun.
Click to expand...

Yup, machine gun is very annoying. I never was able to run/walk/sneak/whatever the fuck else.. past that location without using most of my medkits. That was a bad idea of level design I must say.
 
Does everyone here own a 'pretty good' rig? I may get this game, but I hope it's playable on my computer.

1GB RAM
X1950pro 512mb gddr3
p2.8Ghz

I haven't played any new games, bar Mass Effect (where I got an average of 15-20FPS on max settings).

I wonder how well I could play this game hmm? Minimum requirements I easily pass them but then again minimum requirements are usually very untrue to the real specs needed.
 
You will probably be fine with high dx9...

Im getting a new comp in a few days woho, have x2 4200 + 2 gig x1900xt atm. I could play SoC with max and the better texture mod with good fps... CS will probably not be more demanding compared to SoC in DX9 right? I want to play it with DX10 tho, and there it seems very demanding.

Btw i could max Mass effect and still have good fps. Even tho my comp is over 2 years old. I found that strange. It was well optimised i must say!
 
thefalloutfan said:
Does everyone here own a 'pretty good' rig? I may get this game, but I hope it's playable on my computer.

1GB RAM
X1950pro 512mb gddr3
p2.8Ghz

I haven't played any new games, bar Mass Effect (where I got an average of 15-20FPS on max settings).

I wonder how well I could play this game hmm? Minimum requirements I easily pass them but then again minimum requirements are usually very untrue to the real specs needed.
Click to expand...

I would really recommend upgrading to at least 2 gigs of RAM, STALKER would like that. It's not expensive, unless you are planning on getting a whole new PC soon. I think your PC should be ok with this game as long as you don't go higher than "Objects Dynamic Lighting" in renderer settings. But it looks like you haven't played Shadow Of Chernobyl yet, otherwise you probably wouldn't be asking this. seeing as how both games use the same engine. :) If that's the case, definitely go for SoC first.
 
Played SoC till the near-end, until the game crashed so many a times I uninstalled it. I could play on the highest settings though something tells me that because of this I had a lot of crashes, even though the game did not stutter.

And planning on buying a PC in a couple of months, so won't be upgrading my PC.

Thanks.
 
thefalloutfan said:
Played SoC till the near-end, until the game crashed so many a times I uninstalled it. I could play on the highest settings though something tells me that because of this I had a lot of crashes, even though the game did not stutter.
Click to expand...

That's kinda weird, cause SoC still stutters a bit on my current system, which is A LOT faster.. But hey, at least I didn't have a single crash. :) If I were you though, I'd still finish SoC. Maybe with Oblivion Lost mod, to enhance replay value.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top