No Problem says:

I watched without hesitation, sure in the fact that I probably wont remember what I saw betime I actually have the game :D.

I was totally impressed. English voice acting isn’t bad at all except that one stupid nazi line. Heh, even the battle music isn’t that bad now that I think about it (I’d still sign a petition to remove it though).

I’m more psyched than ever, I predict GOTY.

July 12th, 2008 at 6:45 pm

No Problem says:

Far Cry 2 will probably be technically as good or near to Clear Sky in terms of gameplay, but Clear Sky’s artistic merit, atmosphere, etc. will put it over I think. The fact that it’s PC exclusive and I’m a biased PC snob helps too. Far Cry 2 looks great but it’s still got that flashy, action packed, meathead-with-an-uzi feel of console games. Clear Sky will be branier than it.

Oh and yeah I can’t help but chuckle at all the PC IZ DED riff-raff from earlier this year. Clear Sky, Far Cry 2, Red Alert 3, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Dawn of War 2, Empire: TW, BiA: Hell’s Highway, Mercs 2, Spore, Crysis Warhead, HAWX, Fallout 3…I didn’t even need to consult a release schedule. Having a gaming PC has never been more awesome. A lot of those are multi-plat but of course we get the unequivocally superior version.

July 12th, 2008 at 6:51 pm

No Problem says:

I didn’t mind it. I think I’d agree if you were fighting normal soldiers, but a bit into the game you’re fighting guys with super uber exoskeletons with self sufficient oxygen generators and air conditioners. I wouldn’t want to kill Monolith guys in a few hits, it wouldn’t feel right.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:00 pm

MetalCircus says:

I acctually liked the combat. There was some level of working involved which is something rare in an FPS. You really had to do the leg work to tackle a bunch of enemies.

I remember the first time I killed a group of Army soldiers, felt like I had acomplished something.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:03 pm

No Problem says:

It took me a while but when I realized you can ricochet bullets in STALKER, and kill people that way no less, I peed a little.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:05 pm

No Problem says:

I tried that with The Witcher, Polish voice with english subs. It gets old very fast. And I’m someone who has a vast collection of kung-fu movies in chinese with english subs.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Nikica says:

Yeah, many releases, Urban Dead (Yes it will be for PC), Mirror’s Edge, Pure, Tom Clancy’s EndWar, Legendary, Velvet Assassin, LEGO Batman, Street Fighter IV, KOTOR 3, Gish 2, Prototype, Blood Bowl, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty: World At War, Lord of the Rings: Conquest, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows, Battlestations: Pacific, the ones that No Problem named and many many more, yay !!! Long live the PC !!!
Uh oh…I feel bad I forgot one that’s pretty cool…Mafia II

July 12th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

Turin Turambar says:

Yes, the open shooter crown will be between Far Cry 2 (after that last trailer with the wounded enemy and the c4) and Stalker CS.

Still, GSC has right now the upper hand by pedigree:
-GSC did before in the “open world” type of game, Stalker.
-Ubisoft did before in the “open world” type of game, Assasin’s Creed. Ugh.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:24 pm

Cooper says:

The combat wasn’t bad, so much as not quite tuned enough.

Spamming the medikit or bandage hotkeys broke immersion no end. They really needed bandage / medkit animations, and for friendlies and enemies alike to withdraw or retreat when wounded. Bandits on ‘opportunistic raids’ suicidally pushing on till the last never made much sense.

I love the fact that GSC prooved THQ wrong. People were clamouring for a game like stalker. Sure, it’s hard to start with and unforgiving throughout - but that’s the point - it’s a game more of survival and exploration than of constant action. I’m glad they’re doing the freeform world much better this time, giving us what we want rather than listening to damned publishers who think no one wants anything new or different and just yet another on rails shooty. Gah.

Anyway, this game is the one which is gonna make me get a new computer.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:29 pm

Al3xand3r says:

Why a new PC Cooper? If you could play the original, you should be able to play this just fine also, and I do believe it’s meant to be better optimised too so with the same visual settings it’ll hopefully run better so maybe you can enable an extra effect or two as well. I guess they also up the eye candy potential though, saw some nice lighting effects there.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

Cooper says:

Al3x:
A new PC, as my old one just played the original. I could only get decent framerates without dynamic lighting, which does makes a massive difference to the look and feel of the game. I could play it with it on, but it made it occasionally unplayable.

Also, it seems to be the processor and memory limiting Stalker more than my graphics card. The data just can’t seem to get anywhere fast enough for a smooth framerate on my current PC.

That and look at all the DX10 pretty! The wet effect on the rained-on parts vs not rained on and the dynamic smoke effects just left me awed when I first saw them.

I really do hope it’s optimized. I had that awful framerate slowdown (precaching or something) problem and a couple of hard crashes. I don’t think stalker was anywhere near as bugged as people made out (apart from NPCs spawning ontop of burning barrels…) just really badly optimized. (I used to keep a stock of weapons in Garbage, which meant a 10 second freeze everytime I got close to the hanger. That, and that one of the suggestions for the choppiness was to pick up all the guns laying about after a firefight always made me roll my eyes.)

July 12th, 2008 at 7:54 pm

MetalCircus says:

I had no major issues with Stalker. The main one I remember is the infamous “COME IN, STALKER!” type bugs.

July 12th, 2008 at 7:57 pm

spd from Russia says:

thnx for posting it!
looks great, awesome atmosphere. I guess I`ll have to upgrade my PC pretty soon
but they still use same old jokes! (russian speach heard in the background)

July 12th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

Blindpsychic says:

Yeah that early suit in the attic is a life saver.

July 12th, 2008 at 8:15 pm

A-Scale says:

As a shooter I would just like to comment on how realistic the recoil is on the shotgun. Very few games get that right. I am also tickled pink to see a standard over/under shotgun in a game rather than a tactical swat pump action 870 express with a light attached. That’s a bold move in and of itself.

July 12th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

Deuteronomy says:

I *might* get Vista to play in DX10.
^— This is an incredible statement.

July 12th, 2008 at 8:40 pm

Steve says:

Best way to start stalker is to climb up the ladder behind wolf, edge around to the left and up on to the roof.
Sprint and jump to the roof of the house at the end of the road.
Look around the other side of that roof to the hole and crouch to shoot the crate in the attic.
Now you can pick up your nice new stalker/mercenary suit…
Also the grenade you get from the first dead body beside the wounded bloke will help you deal with the military patrol on the road…

Dead easy.

Honestly given what we’ve seen I simply cannot see how they could screw this up now and i dont want to wait for the modders to fix the scripting cock-up’s..Roll on next month really.

P.s. If you want to play with blowouts you should install the AMK mod for vanilla stalker. Its a whole new level of ‘Oh my holy crap HIDE’ type event if you never seen them before.

July 12th, 2008 at 8:51 pm

redrain85 says:

Well, I think it’s safe to say that Clear Sky can’t really look any more awesome than it already is.

Seems that the 1UP preview picked out the worst moments for bad english dialogue. Thankfully, there aren’t too many clunkers, like I was starting to fear. There were maybe 2-3 lines in this video that made me cringe a little, out of the entire 25 minutes.

And heck, even the ambient music in Clear Sky still sounds good. So what on earth possessed GSC to implement such crappy combat music? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! There wasn’t any special combat music in the original STALKER (that I can remember), and we didn’t need it. The ambient music helped to maintain the sombre, depressing atmosphere. This new combat music completely destroys the mood that they’re so carefully trying to create.

July 12th, 2008 at 9:09 pm

kenok says:

Looking forward to it - looking forward to turn the music off as well.

July 12th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

Solario says:

Nothing but bugs in the last one, but it was still amazingly funny. Like having pseudodogs kill the guards at the first checkpoint.

July 12th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

Stelios says:

MisterBritish
Was there any music at all in the first one? I can’t remember now.

Yes, and very good at that. Seriously, some of it could have been included in that near-legendary “Ambient 4: Isolationism” compilation and fit in perfectly…

July 12th, 2008 at 11:19 pm

Lavitz says:

WoW! the game looks really good but I just have just don’t how a game that looks this good can have this kind of music in bg. Really makes you wonder they would even they could even think its good. Oh also really hate how the sprint makes you run fast. Also I think the weapons do decent amount of damage. The shotgun obviously won’t be able to kill a person really far away. Probably would take couple shots. Looking forward to this game Woot Pc gaming!

July 13th, 2008 at 1:27 am

MetalCircus says:

I was wondering about the system specs myself - I can run Stalker okay on medium settings so i wonder how Clear Sky will run…

July 13th, 2008 at 1:58 am

Heliocentric says:

music volume= 0% problem solved, I dont want the game to tell me when i should feel excited, at best it robs me of the experiencing the feeling for myself, at worst it screws up and thinks i’m in danger when i’m not and i get techno music because a limping dog or a soldier with no ammo is chasing me as i walk away..

also, for stalker clear sky, i’d like people other than yours truely to run out of ammo some times, they can fire for hours in ranged fights but if i cap them they have 15 rounds wtf?

July 13th, 2008 at 3:16 am

Erlam says:

Was I the one totally underwhelmed by the Far Cry 2 footage thus far? I didn’t see anything that made me think it looked like a good game. I did see a lot of boring: Shoot guy, get hit, run away, heal, shoot guy, get hit, run away, heal.

The whole gameplay feature felt… claustrophobic, which is bizarre given the scope. But all the footage looked like you could ‘go anywhere…’ on the single path that lead there.

Onto this, I won’t watch it. CGI’s? Yes. In-game? No. I like to feel totally fresh coming into a game.

July 13th, 2008 at 5:07 am

realcals says:

looks good…so…I haven’t played Stalker; should I get that first? I mean given this is a prequel and all…

July 13th, 2008 at 6:55 am

Don says:

@realcals: I haven’t played Stalker; should I get that first?

I’d try to get hold of a demo first and see if it actually works. It was pretty much ok on my old PC, just the occasional glitch, but when I decided to play through again on my new ninja(ish) PC it’s just one long BSOD fest so I had to give up on it.

I wonder if your stalker gets to sleep in this version or if he’s just a 24/7 killing machine. I rather liked the idea, that was dropped for SOC, that you had to find (or make) yourself a secure bolthole to get some shuteye. This would make the allies aspect of the game more meaningful - hack off too many people and you’ll be sleeping in a drainpipe sealed off with garbage instead of round the campfire with a few people to watch your back.

July 13th, 2008 at 10:06 am

cctoide says:

Anyone else planning to just buy on steam, or are most going for boxed copy?

I’d go for boxed copy, since if this is anything like SoC in terms of bugginess (which I hope it won’t be), you might need certain patch versions to run certain mods, and Steam will always update your Stalker to the latest patch version, which can be annoying.

Even though I have about twelve or so games purchased on Steam, the Shadow of Chernobyl box was pretty neat and nothing beat freaking sensitive people out with the nuclear tan on the cover.

July 13th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

skalpadda says:

I’ll most likely buy Clear Sky through Steam, simply because it’s so handy for installs and there seems to be some kind of CD-eating gnome living in my apartment.

Just double clicking the game in the Steam window and waiting 10 minutes is so much better than going out on a 2-hour search and rescue mission into the darkest reaches of The Dreaded Closet of Doom where I store.. everything.

Thanks Valve!

July 13th, 2008 at 3:45 pm

Tony says:

I liked Stalker, though I’ll probably hold off of buying Clear Sky until I get a machine that is more powerful. (Read: indefinitely unless I get a mystical boost from the Cash Fairy…)

The first time I played Stalker, though, my armour degradation was bugged. So I had a fully blue bar that did nothing on my HUD. And spent ages wondering what that was about.

July 13th, 2008 at 6:11 pm

Justin says:

Oh, and I want there to be a Scientist faction like before. Just so I can say to myself, “Screw you, man, I’m a scientist!” when shooting people. Sort of an honorary Phd sort of thing.

July 13th, 2008 at 6:19 pm

jackflash says:

I never did find that lost gun in the original STALKER. You know, where the guy in the pub asks you to go find it, in that area before you run into the scientist who needs you to escort him? That quest drove me nuts. I spent HOURS looking for that damned rifle. That better have been a bug, or I’ll feel really dumb.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Another thing in STALKER that made me feel really dumb - apparently I ended the game way early. I got to an ending where a bunch of gold falls out of the sky and then it was all over. Which seemed sort of abrupt. Apparently there’s quite a bit left after that, no? I guess that warrants a re-play.

July 13th, 2008 at 6:29 pm

Cooper says:

Jackflash:
If you got that at the monolith, that’s just one of the endings there. It’s the same one I got - and the most common one, as it is the default if you have over a certain amount of RU - which is very, very easy to collect in the end game.

There is a bit more though, to do with the backstory of the game, the C-Conscioussness and whatnot.

Strange, I can hardly remember anything of the story from Stalker now I try to think about it - it was never that good, or made much sense. But memories of the atmosphere of - at least the first half - of the game still keep coming back, and is why I went back to it.

July 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

Tom says:

Vista x64’s awesome… sh*t! did i say that out loud!?

July 13th, 2008 at 8:09 pm

No Problem says:

Vista is perfectly fine as of today. Better and more stable than XP. People read too many inflammatory blogs and believe every word. Get over it already, buy Vista.

July 13th, 2008 at 8:28 pm

Tellurian says:

Stalker was my personal favourite last year.
And pretty much the best “sheesh, they made this game for ME!” game since… I don’t know when. Guess the last time I played such a thing was Bloodlines.
Maybe some day I’ll even take my second playthrough even further.
Dogs at night? Sheesh… How about dogs at night in Red Forest? Was I the only one who had teleporting pseudodogs there?

I’ll definetly get Clear Sky some day. But probably not around release… Makes me sad, this way my purchase won’t even count…

July 13th, 2008 at 8:47 pm

Al3xand3r says:

So, what makes you confident it’s more stable than XP if you don’t really believe any stories written? Just because it happens to be more stable for yourself? I can’t imagine an OS being more stable than XP is currently for me since I haven’t had a crash or error caused by the OS since about SP2. But I won’t go ahead and call it the most stable OS ever made by man because my personal experience doesn’t mean that’s how it is for everyone, so you shouldn’t do the same for your Vista… Those inflammatory posts do count since such a large number of people are having problems and you shouldn’t tell people to just dismiss that and buy it because their system could very well be one of the systems that have issues with Vista. No software runs the same for every possible configuration, not to mention the many devices which only have beta or no drivers at all for Vista yet or all the software which isn’t 100% compatible. Recommending a blind buy without making any such considerations doesn’t make you sound very rational or reliable for advice.

July 13th, 2008 at 9:11 pm

caesarbear says:

The combat firefights in STALKER are awesome. It’s one of the biggest strengths of the game. You can still get some one shot kills if you aim for the head. The challenge is that you get such peashooters to start with, but the simulation-style is perfect, without the need for phony cover mechanics or an unforgiving one bullet hits you death. It got easier to handle the poorly equipped enemies, but even the dogs would always be dangerous to you. Plus getting kills by ricochet was very satisfying.

The problems lay in healing, AI and inventory, but not the actual shooting itself.

July 13th, 2008 at 10:34 pm

Deuteronomy says:

I could sort of understand the “Take this, you nazi”, if it was a Freedom dude fighting Duty. But this was Clear Sky fighting random bandits. Oddness.

July 14th, 2008 at 4:57 am

MaxMcG says:

Bugs ruined Stalker for me - Although I went back to it a few months after it launched and really enjoyed it.

I think I’ll hold off getting this until I know it’s stable. Looks good though.

July 14th, 2008 at 11:01 am

Malagate says:

Not only has this video rekindled my desire to play Stalker again, but James T most deliciously provided some wonderous tips on how to improve the experience, scrumptious thanks to you!
Now all I need to do is get my gaming PC working again, stupid black screen…but then I shouldn’t come here for tech support. This Clear Skies is certainly something that might just encourage me to upgrade after almost 3 years of the same tech, even in this low res clip it looks saucy.

July 14th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

PaulMorel says:

I am going to buy this, but I never got through the first game.

I don’t know if anyone else ran into this bug, but the mission system was nearly completely broken for me.

The problem was that I did a couple missions out of order, which seemed alright since it seemed like an open world game. But after I did that, the mission system just got completely buggy. That was about 10 - 12 hours in. So I think I missed some of the best parts of the game, but since it was nearly impossible for me to figure out what to do next, I didn’t have much choice.

July 14th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

internisus says:

DSX: I spent a lot of time reading about mods before playing STALKER. I couldn’t really find The Perfect One For Me, but I wound up using STALKER: Rebalanced because it’s meant to fix and improve a lot of issues and features while adding stuff like sleeping but overall retaining what the modder felt was the ideal of the original game. It coopts lots of parts from frequently recommended mods. Check it out and read the feature list.

The mod that I really want, that I don’t believe exists yet, is one that makes all resources more scarce throughout the game so that you feel that you really have to struggle to survive. At one point fairly early in my playthrough (in the army base) I stopped to manage my weightload and realized that grenades are really heavy, so I dropped all forty or so that I had been stockpiling. There are places in my savegame where you can find a literal pile of ammo that I just dumped on the ground because I needed to optimize my inventory.

Granted, it makes sense that I had so much stuff because I had killed and looted so many dudes, but I really wanted to have to struggle and scavenge to survive–it’s not about the difficulty of fights, but about the challenge of staying supplied. Of course, there are other things that I would like from a dream mod, but that’s the main thing.

Anyway, I’m ridiculously excited about Clear Sky despite that music. Nothing else feels like SoC. Just going around and getting into firefights felt fantastic because of the environments and the loose, gritty feel of the weapons.

July 14th, 2008 at 6:32 pm

Offramp says:

I recommend the Zone Reclamation Project (ZRP) mod to those going through STALKER these days. It fixes most of the sound and quest bugs and allows you to choose which settings to tweak, like time limits, NPC weapon trading, weapon and armour degradation to name a few. It’s got everything in one mod, so you can pick and choose what options you want without the mods comflicting and causing you to CTD on loads.

July 14th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

Kommissar Nicko says:

My biggest problem with STALKER was the sheer number of bodies that piled up wherever I went. It’s primarily a factor of how I play, but it seemed like it was much easier and more convenient to put to death damn near every hostile I came across. For the most part, that meant sending every single soul in that Agroprom compound to his doom. What was even worse (or better?) is that if you could put a guy down in under twenty shots–not too hard with Strelok’s rifle at least–you’d be okay ammo-wise.

It’s not that I was mowing them down like a scythe through grain; I was more like a lone farmer and his mule, pulling an old iron plow through a rocky field. Each battle was hard-fought and tense, but I was pretty much plugging whole groups of guys just to get to the grocery store, so to speak. It started to get old. There shouldn’t be SO MANY PEOPLE in a nuclear wasteland.

Oh, and I hated the pseudodogs. They didn’t carry any bullets.

July 15th, 2008 at 11:28 am

Mike says:

Hahaha, the Russian is SOOO bad.

July 16th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

John P (Katsumoto) says:

What the deuce is “Drano”? To wikipedia!

edit: I see, now.

July 16th, 2008 at 9:56 pm

Steve says:

Just a quick update…

The GSC forum mods have advised that the ass-awful Clear-Sky combat music in the game is disabled by default.
If someone is actually dumb enough to want to listen to it they have to manually enable it in the audio options…

So. All good.

July 19th, 2008 at 12:19 pm