After Jim and Alec’s reviews have found their way into the world, Eurogamer eject my take on Clear Sky onto the Internet. In it I say things like:
“It’s a graphically improved prequel that integrates a mass of things that were promised for Stalker with assorted game tweaks that – on paper – sound as if they’d improve the immersion of the game considerably. In practice, it mainly shows that there are no good or bad ideas: only good and bad executions.”
And other stuff which is a bit more flowery. As per usual, eh? More here.
EDIT: Jim’s review here.
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£18 is very cheap sounding, wow!
Here in Ausland we’ve being charged $90+… at least we have nice beaches.
The ‘gameification’ in JR’s review made me shudder slightly, and KG’s constant battering of the immersion breaking dissapointed. Stalker felt less game like than anything I’ve played in a long while. I have no problem with being torunced by superior AI. That’s fine – I spent most of my time in SoC running. Fast. You see your comrades get gunned down and you leg it. But getting shafted without realising why is something I hate. Also comedic NPCs… Ergh… Hope the Russian speech files are put up for download quickly like before…
Well to be fair, even in SoC the NPC’s told stupid jokes. You just couldn’t understand them w/o localization. GSC didn’t up and decide “hey, let’s make the NPC’s funny in CS.” It’s been that way.
O THANK THE LORD: EVERYTHING IS BACK TO NORMAL!!!
To be fair, the Eurogamer review sounds a lot more hopeful than the PC Gamer one. I imagine that after a while, patches will be released that will most likely alleviate some of the problems with the new features, and then it’d be better?
Also, I read the complaint in PC Gamer that the “blowout” event leads to standing around in a barn for minutes. What’s KG’s view on the blowout? To be fair, I remember people being rather excited by the idea of it before SoC was released, and some angry cries after it was cut. Could we just be fickle bastards?
Um I REALLY NEED HELP WITH MY PROBLEM OF THE SITE THINKING I AM ALEC AND JOHN!! WTF!!!
Getting similar problems in half the posts, I even ended up in the wordpress admin panel at one point, but resisted the temptation to post an entry in John’s name (although doubt I could have done, as it didn’t like my accidental attempt to comment as Alec). This is one of the few posts where I can actually comment.
It’s okay, calm down, it’s all fixed now.
We just thought you’d want to know what it was like to be us for a while. Clearly very scary.
That’s odd, then. Because I didn’t feel drunk.
One bit of the PCG review made me smile, it referred to ‘bugs that can and will be fixed’. Well not if SoC is a guide, the game that occasionally crashed to desktop on my old machine is a BSOD disaster area on the new one. And before anyone asks nothing else behaves in the same way, it’s down to poor game coding. This is one game I’ll wait to see if a demo emerges and if it’s playable before shelling out.
games don’t cause BSOD only drivers and hardware have that privledge i’m afraid
“is the same as saying “this professional games reviewer doesn’t know how to play games.””
have you seen the GameTrailers reviewers play? My god those have to be the biggest noobs ever.
Back to seriousness, I for one will be getting this day one on Steam. Stalker is one of my all time favorite games (next to mafia and the street fighter series) and this game is almost critic proof to me. As far as the difficulty is concerned I say bring it on, I’ll be playing it on Veteran my first time through (I played the original at least 4 time through on Master).
Two decidedly negative reviews.. yet a 7 out of 10 rating? Perhaps only way to review this game is by comparing it to the potential it (evidently) fails to grasp, but it seems like a mixed message when it gets a generally positive score.
7-9 scale strikes again?
I’ve just had one of those attempt-to-stifle-laugh-results-in-coffee-sprayed-across-the-screen moments when I saw that you’ve changed the site’s title to include “BE ADVISED!“.
:D
Be advised indeed!
What are the specs of the systems you were playing on btw? I’ve just upgraded so hopefully I should be able to run it OK. I’ll be pissed off if I can’t run DX10 stuff properly.
RE: Biased reviews. I only trust reviews from people that haven’t played the game – that’s the only way to be sure they’re un-biased!
(Yea, I stole that from movie “reviews” on the Bob and Tom show.)
Noc – there was multi in the last one so the time for your analogy has already passed… possibly someone who’s actually got it can have a go?
Mogs – I’m running a GeForce GTX 280 (borrowed for a hardware review; I don’t have that kind of spare cash myself, sadly) and I can’t coax much more than 20fps out the DX10 mode at 1680×1050, or from the similarly new DX9 pseudo-DX10 mode. Dropping down to the original Stalker’s top visual settings, it runs smooth as silk – a good 50fps faster on average, significantly more at times. It’s possible a future NVIDIA driver will fix the DX10 etc performance, but I’m not going to bank on it.
I’ve yet to influence Jim and Kieron’s opinions enough to safely state how they’d say the DX10 mode ran, however.
The Oblivion Lost mod for the original Stalker (among others) added features mentioned as negatives in the review: grenades, blowouts, and more frequent A-life action is what I can think of offhand.
On one hand, I had the same reaction: the grenades were startlingly deadly; the blowouts led to waiting around for them to finish, and there were a lot more animals and activity to fight through instead of the known spawn locations in the ‘vanilla’ version of the game.
But! It still worked. I learned to avoid being in grenade range; there were a few cues. I dealt with blowouts; they made me a nervous kind of bored, if that makes sense. The additional A-Life activity really came through when I played a second time, because it kept it from being predictable. So I don’t know if they will be that bad in term of game enjoyment – will these features be as negative if the player becomes willing to believe this is how the world is supposed to work in the game? That’s a lot of how the first Stalker gets away with it.
Heck, a lot of the mods were specifically designed to get rid of the more focused endgame and keep it as open-ended for exploration as possible. The reviews seems pretty mission-oriented; might the game work better from an exploration standpoint?
The original Stalker had its irritating points, a lot of which were fixed after the fact. I’d like to think this iteration of Stalker is starting out farther ahead, technology-wise, and can improve. I’ve been trying to figure out how to put together a new PC just to play this – even if it’s not as exciting as I hoped, I want a faster PC to play the original Stalker, again, with more turned on.
Speeaking of which, I got a worse and worse slowdown (a pause every few seconds) as the original game progressed; anyone familiar with that? Part of my desire for a new computer was just to hopefully get over that problem.
A couple of things:
Did you try pressing escape while the bandits were trying to mug you? In the first game this immediately quit any dialogue, so I guess if it works in Clear Sky it’d let you fight the bandits rather than giving up your stuff. Poor design, but it’d be nice to know if there is an alternative to giving them your things.
Also, the awful humor was present in the original STALKER, it was just all left in russian so we could pretend it was gritty stalker talk, rather than horrible pun based jokes and bandits who talk like wiggers.
Apparently there is going to be another patch for the game released on the same day as the worldwide (well, everywhere but north american) release, which will hopefully address some of the balance issues as well as bugs.
Most of the reviews that have been negative so far have all pretty much just complained about the same things, none of which sound like they’ll greatly damage my enjoyment of the game, especially with a lot of STALKER fans enjoying the game, and the generally positive reaction to the game in the russian fan forums. Oblivion Lost added grenades, and there was no fancy HUD indicator for them like there is in Clear Sky.
@ Alec: Just bad luck for you I guess. On the Russian version on maxed DX9 it performed great at 1680×1050, the only major performance hit was at the Clear Sky base. Out in the zone it was perfectly fine. And I have an “ancient” 8800GTX.
DX10 mode does run like shit, though.
If Clear Sky turns out to be brilliant this site will take a serious hit to its cred.
Yeah the harsh review of blowouts is notable. In AMK mod the blowouts are an awesome addition, just irregular enough to make them something else to plan for; don’t set out on a long journey if there’s one in the next few hours, you might get caught outdoors. And just often enough it slips your mind and you’re scrambling for the nearest hole with everything else in the vicinity, not all of which is happy to see you. Then you wander outside and find some guy you were just talking to dead metres from the entrance to a shelter because he was still nursing wounds from some encounter earlier.
Intense. I don’t know how they could get it wrong.
I’m still curious if the reviewers think rebalancing in a patch might make the whole experience gel better, or if that’d still leave too many annoyances.
According to some people with the game, the part where you get your stuff stolen by the bandits isn’t unskippable, if you don’t drop your weapon and go over to talk to them like you ask they attack you and you can kill them.
And for what it’s worth, the latest patch changes it so you can get your belongings back http://clanbase.ggl.com/news.php?nid=296610&Source=rss
The patch also changes the economic system, and makes it so that you’re always rewarded for helping capture an enemy base. A whole lot of balance changes in general, hopefully the next one will improve the game further.
This patch definitely sounds like good news, though clearly we’ll need to see what it’s like in practice.
But a question (and I may make this into a separate post at some point): should game reviewers make their judgements with presumption of a problem-fixing patch in mind? Or should we base it only on the code we’re presented with? If option a) what happens if the problems aren’t, in fact, fixed?
Hmm, cheers for that Alec. I’ve gone with ATI myself (HD4870) who tend to update their drivers more frequently than Nvidia, so hopefully if it’s initially bad it’ll get sorted quickly. I’m also running a quad core machine with 4 gig of fast RAM so in theory I more than meet the recommended requirements.
Let’s put it this way, if it doesn’t work out of the box it better be patched bloody quickly or there will be plenty more BE ADVISED! posts scattered around the internet.
@ Alec: Games reviewers should base reviews on what they’ve got in front of them. If a retrospective or second-look type article is then required so be it, but certainly I want to know what the reviewer felt with the game out of the box.
Re: Bandits. Worth noting that the dodging Bandits-steal-stuff bits only applies to the moments during play. It doesn’t include the one cut-scene based forced-failure when bandits rob you.
KG
@Alec Meer
But a question (and I may make this into a separate post at some point): should game reviewers make their judgements with presumption of a problem-fixing patch in mind? Or should we base it only on the code we’re presented with? If option a) what happens if the problems aren’t, in fact, fixed?
It’d be silly to base a review on a presumed patch (after all, there are quite a few games released half finished and left that way), but methinks it should be standard to revisit games if they’ve had significant updates and re-rate if appropriate.
August would seem to be the perfect time for that sort of thing, given the utter lack of decent games…..
also mmo’s should be reviewed a few months in
@ Cullnean: I’d agree with that, most definitely. I think there should be an initial, shorter review to give players an idea of how it all hangs together and then really study it after more players have joined. If they’ve joined. This does, admittedly, give devs a chance to improve the game with patches which goes against what I’d said peviously, but the game isn’t really in it’s “true” state until there’s a healthy amount of players.
The patch also changes the cutscene robbery to make the bandits only take a bit of your money, not all your stuff.
You should review the game you’ve got, but if it’s obvious that a mod/patch will sort it, then make sure the tone is optimistic and put in a qualifier like “OK, the game is pretty bad at the moment, but I’m quietly confident that these issues will be fixed” which I think most of you did.
@ Mori: Isn’t that less irksome in terms of “Ugh got to get stuff again”, but actually makes zero sense?
Our local (Australian) PC gaming mag re-reviews MMO’s and other games several months on, regarding how they’ve changed/community activity/etc.
@Ian: If it’s unskippable and unavoidable then I guess it’s a better introduction to the fact that bandits will rob you than them stealing all your stuff
Now when they steal your stuff post-patch you have to go and get it back from a stash in their base, I guess to make it an actual inconvenience than just a case of headshotting the guy who took your stuff with your pistol, then getting your stuff back in a second and killing his friends.
With regard to the reviewers, I don’t think you can take patches into account when you review a game. Some companies are good at releasing patches quickly, GSC are pretty damn good at it, having released one for the russian version a day or two after it launched there, and having another big one lined up for the world wide release. Other companies never bother to patch their games.
Some of the main issues in the reviews seem like they could be fixed by patches, like the frequency with which NPCs throw grenades, the bandit robbery, the frequency of the random faction missions and the rewards you get from them (these were actually some of the things in the russian patch, if I understand the notes right), and maybe some things in the options menu to let you turn off some of the PDA markings (these weren’t added in the patch).
Some of them seem to be more permanent issues, like the cheesy dialogue, which admittedly isn’t something GSC added after the first game, the incidental dialogue there was just as cheesy, but they actually bothered to translate it this time. The faction wars being kind of bar-charty seems pretty unfixable too unless they add an option to just hide all that stuff. I don’t really mind about that though.
A poster on Something Awful who’s playing the Russian version responded to the reviews saying that the equipment theft is absolutely avoidable. You can just kill the bandits (Who are clearly labeled as bandits), or ignore their requests to talk to you and they’ll turn hostile.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAArgh. For the final time: yes, that is true. Apart from one single, specific, scripted cutscene moment about a third or halfway through the plot missions that you cannot avoid. You can be robbed multiple other times throughout the game, but they’re absolutely avoidable. I suspect the SA poster hasn’t hit that specific moment yet.
A third OR Halfway? What, didn’t you finish the game? ;)
Well there have been at least three 80 plus reviews so far. I have a strong feeling Clear Sky is going to live up to expectations by the second or third patch.
should game reviewers make their judgements with presumption of a problem-fixing patch in mind?
unless the company has announced a major patch as imminent, no. and even then; if someone hands you 3/4ths of a meal, and you’re a restaurant reviewer, you don’t presume the other 1/4 was delicious. you don’t even know if it exists.
btw- its perfectly possible to hide your stuff at the flea market before that unavoidable robbing happens, thus braking the experience but getting back that sweet jacket that costed 20k rubles to fit out ^^
Games should be reviewed on release. It doesn’t matter if it has a handy autopatcher or continuously updating online content. Same goes for MMOs – you are reviewing the experience an early adopter would have, no use reviewing it otherwise.
You wouldn’t review anything else months after it came out, and issue a retrospective “I told you so”. Reviews MUST happen on a products release, in effect it’s part of the hype train (whether it wants to be or not), and is useless months after, especially in print media.
Magazines can write future articles about improvements and suggested revised scores/grades without actually changing their initial opinion. Websites have the luxury of doing this daily.
At the end of the day when you take your money to the shop you are buying something today, not in 2 months time when the gremlins have been moved on.
Seems like reviewers of this day are so poor players that they seem to dump a game they cannot play. I play Stalker with Veteran level, and it seems to be kinda easy. Planning to change on Master. Maybe you need to be a Stalker to like the game. Not a wussy. =)
True: Bugs too much
False: Too difficult.
Better said: A challenge too big for the reviewers.
I have read now couple reviews that indicate that the reviewers have grown up to a brainless FPS world where no patience is tolerated. You survive in STALKER by stalking, waiting the right moment. Not running and shooting brainlessly everybody. I find it interesting that this very boring and unrealistic and far too common game style actually amuses someone. And when you have a challenge, you hate it. What kind of people are like that? Wussies. =)
@armitage
just becaues they dont like a game you obviously love does not make them rubbish at games (except gillen)
Having actually played the English version of the game now, I have to agree with the reviews for the most part.
Clear Sky is a good game, it’s just not S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It’s missing it’s soul.
Guys, do you think that these rash, apparently not-very-well play-tested ‘bad game-design decisions’ have transpired because of GSC’s infamous release-date problems? I really think they took that criticism of the vanilla game as gospel and have just fired they’re game out as fast as possible without thorough playtesting.
I was gutted when I read Jim R’s review in PCG. Clear Skies release was (by far!) my most eagerly anticipated game/event of the year. I haven’t got it yet because of the strength of criticism from reviews. I can read through the lines and I know where my tastes can radically differ, but I do see some disturbing trends in the reviews concerning gameplay design building up here.
But here’s the thing: I CAN’T PLAY THE ORIGINAL STALKER :SoC AS IT WAS IN IT’S ORIGINAL RELEASE. It infuriates and bores the hell out of me! With Patch 1.4, Realism mod and my own tinkerings ( giving the Trader the SVD sniper rifle from the start, but he sells for double price- You’ve still got to raise the cash, that sort of thing) – I love the original to bits.
Endpoint?
Mods will change and improve the game considerably. GSC should get rid of the game design muppet that seems to have b*ggered up quite a bit – or tell him to lay of the vodka!
And lets swap sounds files with our Ukrainian & Russian gaming comrades so we can all once again enjoy the mystery and respite from rotten NPC dialogue and ‘jokes’!
Just want to say I hope the GSC games Designer lead doesn’t really lose his ( her? have these GSC guys any concept that another sex exists? No, really?>??? where is Missus Stalker????) job, because they’re an incredibly talented group of devs.
Just wish they’d polish they’re ‘baby’ more.
Best example of a similar situation concerning reviewing a game and scoring it in the here and now- maybe Something like Vampire:The Masqerade. Loved the concept, execution…Oh, I can actually finish the game 3 months after release..thanks to the mod community. You have to review what’s in front off you, rather than in future potential (i.e. Mods will fix it…or with Stalker – quality new scalable interface patch – limit AI grenade throwing, NPC spawning rate, blowouts on/off, Fag Quake gamer mode or REAL HARD PROPER STALKER not a pish reviewer! options …maybe?)
You’ve got to rate it higher than Sh*te like Ghost Recon: Advanced Fartfighter anyway…?
Gimme bugs and shallow game design to American crap anyday.