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

The gaming community was waiting eagerly for a sequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl since the official announcement of its development. The original game had gathered an army of active fans who had taken efforts to get rid of its numerous defects and imperfections and released a series of unofficial modifications to bring the game closer to ideal. They hoped their recommendations would be implemented in Clear Sky. Well, these hopes never came true.

Clear Sky is actually a prequel to the events described in Shadow of Chernobyl. The plot is not much different, though. The only difference is that the mysterious Strelok is being hunted not by himself after having lost his memory, but by a mercenary called Scar. The protagonist must also make out what is going on in the Zone. That’s not very original, but the game features new monsters, locations and the opportunity to join with one of the numerous stalker gangs. The gameplay has become better because the anomalies are now harder to detect while precious artifacts do not lie in the open, attracting the gamer with their shimmer.

The game has also become prettier due to the improved engine. The new version of X-Ray Engine now supports DirectX 10 and a number of interesting special effect such as volumetric lighting, fog, fire, “soft” water, dynamic soft shadows, etc. Volumetric lighting is especially impressive, making the game more realistic visually. Alas, it is accompanied with a terrible performance hit, but the effect itself is worth looking at. Thus, the visual part of Clear Sky deserves highest praise even though the most beautiful and realistic effects prove to be hard for the computer’s graphics subsystem.

But that’s where the good points of the new game end. While you can put up with the lack of novelty in gameplay, technical defects are not so easily condoned. There are a lot of them in Clear Sky and they are not limited to the stupidity of the AI. The first version of the game was most unstable due to bugs in its code. The game could crash on loading a save and you had to replay it from the start. A series of patches have improved the issue and walking Clear Sky through is not an impossible mission anymore, so we have decided to include it into this review to check out the game from the performance standpoint.