Comments on: Clear Sky Preview

By: kitsakorn

kitsakorn — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 22:52:21 +0000

very good

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:07:37 +0000

Jim was disappointed.

By: born2expire

born2expire — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 03:00:41 +0000

“This game will unlock in approximately 1 week, 5 days and 5 hours”

I can’t wait!

By: Jim Rossignol

Jim Rossignol — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:37:34 +0000

Release for this is apparently in August: thus

By: dhex

dhex — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 15:49:34 +0000

float32 is highly recommended – i found it helped on my old machine with performance quite a bit.

By: James T

James T — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 08:10:58 +0000

cHeal: Er… yes it is?

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:19:56 +0000

My attempts to play the game were put to a stop by my copy of the game persistently (across multiple installs and with and without modding) crashing when it tried to load any saved game whatsoever.

That’s really not a game that can be played without saving.

By: Scandalon

Scandalon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 22:29:34 +0000

I picked up STALKER @ CircuitCity for $10…(+Tax). Very intriguing, “atmospheric” as many have said, but a bit too freeform, methinks. It horribly bugs me that you can get into a firefight (with guys that want to kill me…why exactly?) and supposed allies (well, neutral) guys 30 yards away won’t investigate. Or if they *are* involved, will quickly go right back to sitting around a fire and playing guitar with nary a word…meanwhile, 15 bodies lie around waiting for me to loot, but nobody else seems interested…

Right now I’m supposed to go north into some radioactive zone but I don’t think my character is equipped for it…Still, I’ll go back to it when I get some time again.

As for performance/fixes:
http://www.tweakguides.com/STALKER_1.html

Also, be sure to get the “Float32″ mod that redoes some of the graphics witchery to be both faster and “better”:
http://www.thefloatingpoint.org/main/download.php?list.4

By: cHeal

cHeal — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:14:52 +0000

James, That really isn’t a spoiler.

By: ghosted

ghosted — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:34:31 +0000

As I played through Stalker I found myself thinking absolutely every last bit of it was flawed in some way. The weapons, the inventory, the missions, the artefacts, the factions, the layout – every single bit. However, that somehow didn’t stop it being easily the most enjoyable and absorbing game I played all through 2007. The atmosphere was utterly stonking and whilst it has so many flaws the final product is truly worth more than the sum of its parts.

By: Tak

Tak — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 17:03:42 +0000

I heartily enjoyed what little of STALKER I played. For me the game came to a point where there was much more flailing about in the missions, side missions, extra missions, faction missions, folk-guitar-listening-to missions, etc, coupled with a few technical hiccups that ultimately just made me stop enjoying the game. That was a few patches ago, and I do plan on patching up to give it another try soon.

For everything that the game achieved in setting an atmosphere (STALKER is right around Shock2 in my book) it *just* missed in the gameplay during my time with it. It was almost too open. Like some odd mix between Oblivion and Fallout, but without a clear idea of which one it wanted to do first (give you a world to explore or tell a story).

By: James T

James T — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:47:14 +0000

Treef: Yeah, when I was playing STALKER, I thought “…Is Bioshock actually going to be able to ‘beat’ this?” Unfortunately, it didn’t. I don’t mind linear FPSes (I pretty much have to not-mind them, they’re the ‘default’), but I think a lot of them, Half-Life most certainly included, would benefit from a bit more thought put in at the level-design stage, to allow for multiple attack/exploration vectors in their otherwise-linear progression.

I’m not sure what the spoiler was, which probably means it wasn’t actually a spoiler.

To quote the PDA from the opening movie… KILL THE STRELOK, Jim. KILL THE STRELOK.