STALKER: Clear Sky

Phototoxin

Definatly not going to get it now if its as bad as the original. That was also totally forgettable. Creepy but forgettable in about 2 years.

KilOit

Havn't touched this game yet because of the bugs i couldn't believe it when there were bugs in it after the first game which drove me nuts ok all in all it was a great game, But i played half way through the first one then updated and couldn't use my old saved games which drove me balistic and even when updated it was still full of bugs, Bug + games keep me away like the plague

Tyrant^

Think most places gave this a worse review than the first. Still with lots of bugs. Good potential to be a great game but the bugs make it shoyte.

TomCo

A lot of people seem to be talking about bugs even though they havent played the game.

I've played as far as the Red Forest with both patches installed (remember, reviews would have been of the unpatched game) and I've only experienced two bugs; neither of which were anything but a minor inconvenience.

At only 25 quid on play.com you're only cheating yourself out of a great game.

Sephiroth_dude

Do ye think I should finish the first one before I start on this one?

Pyr0

Yeah but make sure its patched and download any mods that will make it playable before you do.

Pretty sure I posted on this before, got another annoying objective bug not showing, just after visiting the forester and the objective he gave me won't activate on the map. This happened before with the objective of finding the the main story stash underground. It never activated properly so when I entered the area there was no Duty special character to give me the objective which will eventually enable me to talk to the Duty commander !! So i had to load a saved game WAY back at the start and play up to that point again.

This time around I just can't be arsed to wander around and see if it works without the marker, or go a good bit back in the game for it to work. I shouldn't even have to do that in the first place !

Spear

1.5.0.5 is out and thankfully it doesn't trash save games from 1.5.0.4

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/stalker.php

thelordofcheese

Phototoxin wrote: »

Definatly not going to get it now if its as bad as the original. That was also totally forgettable. Creepy but forgettable in about 2 years.

I have no idea what game you played, but it wasn't S.T.A.L.K.E.R

0ubliette

Phototoxin wrote: »

Definatly not going to get it now if its as bad as the original. That was also totally forgettable. Creepy but forgettable in about 2 years.

WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG

uglyjohn

imi deffo gonna get this at some point. i was planning on waiting to upgrade first so by the time i get around to it i hope most of the bigger bugs will be gone.

i loved the originial, it scared the bejazus out of me loads of times...i simply couldnt get enough of it.

but there were some things that really disappointed me.

1. finding invisible walls and barbed wire.

i can see why they needed to split the zone up, but why use barbed wire? there are loads of other things they could have done to keep the illusion intact and still block your path.

one time i was climbing on the roof of a building and i jumped on some pipes to get in a second floor window of a building behind a wall. i hit an invisible wall. really pissed me off. same thing happened when i tried to flank someone in a gunfight in piyiat(spelling??), invisible wall and indestructible door/window.

2. finding things without looking for them and triggering mission elements.

while looking around i stumbled on some locations critical to the main plot and in instantly had mission updates pop up....it would have ben far better if nothing had happened, i had a look around and wandered off again....and then when someone says to me " go look for this place..blah blah blah" i could say "oh, i know where that is..blah blah blah"

3. repeating set pieces/broken missions.

a couple of times i had to comlete the same set piece again and again or found myself being told to talk to x to get a reward after x is dead. why not have a trigger where if x dies you can go to anyone in the same faction who will give you another contact to talk to?

4. there should be more "through" traffic in the various areas.

a lot of the areas had the feel of a road where you just go from one end to the other, i think if they had more areas and more links between the areas it would give the place more of a grid feel rather than a line, if you get what i mean.

5. there should be more non mission ruins/labs to explore

i really loved creeping through some ruined building at night looking for valuables but most of the time it was part of a mission plot. if the areas were bigger with more random glimpses into life before the zone it would have added a lot to it.

did anyone play oblivion? if you just ride off the road and have a look around you find so many sights worth seeing.

sorry about putting this into the clear sky thread, i dont know if any of what i've said is in clear sky...i just wanted to say how much i loved SOC and see if anyone agrees with how i thought it could be made better.

0ubliette

uglyjohn wrote: »

imi deffo gonna get this at some point. i was planning on waiting to upgrade first so by the time i get around to it i hope most of the bigger bugs will be gone.

i loved the originial, it scared the bejazus out of me loads of times...i simply couldnt get enough of it.

but there were some things that really disappointed me.

1. finding invisible walls and barbed wire.

i can see why they needed to split the zone up, but why use barbed wire? there are loads of other things they could have done to keep the illusion intact and still block your path.

one time i was climbing on the roof of a building and i jumped on some pipes to get in a second floor window of a building behind a wall. i hit an invisible wall. really pissed me off. same thing happened when i tried to flank someone in a gunfight in piyiat(spelling??), invisible wall and indestructible door/window.

2. finding things without looking for them and triggering mission elements.

while looking around i stumbled on some locations critical to the main plot and in instantly had mission updates pop up....it would have ben far better if nothing had happened, i had a look around and wandered off again....and then when someone says to me " go look for this place..blah blah blah" i could say "oh, i know where that is..blah blah blah"

3. repeating set pieces/broken missions.

a couple of times i had to comlete the same set piece again and again or found myself being told to talk to x to get a reward after x is dead. why not have a trigger where if x dies you can go to anyone in the same faction who will give you another contact to talk to?

4. there should be more "through" traffic in the various areas.

a lot of the areas had the feel of a road where you just go from one end to the other, i think if they had more areas and more links between the areas it would give the place more of a grid feel rather than a line, if you get what i mean.

5. there should be more non mission ruins/labs to explore

i really loved creeping through some ruined building at night looking for valuables but most of the time it was part of a mission plot. if the areas were bigger with more random glimpses into life before the zone it would have added a lot to it.

did anyone play oblivion? if you just ride off the road and have a look around you find so many sights worth seeing.

sorry about putting this into the clear sky thread, i dont know if any of what i've said is in clear sky...i just wanted to say how much i loved SOC and see if anyone agrees with how i thought it could be made better.

What you need, is to play the oblivion lost mod for SOC. It improves the game in almsot every single way.

Phototoxin

It was so buggy along with many flaws. You think they'd learn from their mistakes. The original was atmospheric and made good use of the setting but its still no Deus Ex. In addition is resource heavy for a game with very medocre graphics.

Like I said in 2 years people will pick it up for 10 patch it, go thought it say that was scary and then meh.

0ubliette

Phototoxin wrote: »

It was so buggy along with many flaws. You think they'd learn from their mistakes. The original was atmospheric and made good use of the setting but its still no Deus Ex. In addition is resource heavy for a game with very medocre graphics.

Like I said in 2 years people will pick it up for 10 patch it, go thought it say that was scary and then meh.

Stalkers graphics are anything but mediocre, stills dont really do it justice tho. All its bugs have been ironed out (ive only had crashes related to mod installs) and ive played it 10 times more than i have deus ex..

MOH

thelordofcheese wrote: »

Phototoxin wrote: »

Definatly not going to get it now if its as bad as the original. That was also totally forgettable. Creepy but forgettable in about 2 years.

I have no idea what game you played, but it wasn't S.T.A.L.K.E.R

+1. 2 years is far too short a time to forget all the bugs I found in the original

uglyjohn

i played it fully patched and found very few bugs. mostly they were flaws in side quests. nothing that would "break" the game.

i know people talk about how bad it is to release the game with big bugs in it and i completely agree....but the game i played was stalker 1.5 with a couple of mods turned on (dark nights, weather, floating point etc)

that is the game i loved. never played vanilla stalker 1.0. maybe i wouldnt like it.

i thought the graphics and style of the place were great. i know its supposed to be a very demanding but i was playing with a pentium d2.8,2gb ram and a hd 3850.
i think i had pretty much everything maxed out and i never had any issues.

TomCo

MOH wrote: »

+1. 2 years is far too short a time to forget all the bugs I found in the original

You should probably sue the developers, you sound traumatised.

MOH

TomCo wrote: »

You should probably sue the developers, you sound traumatised.

I was. But that's just the game, nothing to do with the bugs - had to turn off the sound in that underground lab, whole setting was freaking me out too much. Which meant I had no warning when things popped out in front of me.


It could have been a great game, and maybe was after all the patches, but I had it pre-ordered, played it when it came out, and just ended up frustrated by the whole thing. Never patched it since I couldn't without losing my game so far.

And by all accounts exactly the same thing is happening with Clear Sky. There's no reason for anyone to buy it now. Wait 6 months, you get it cheaper, and you get a stable, bette game.

Sephiroth_dude

I loved the oringinal stalker,What I loved most about it was the randomness of AI,I hope it as good in this one.

0ubliette

MOH wrote: »

I was. But that's just the game, nothing to do with the bugs - had to turn off the sound in that underground lab, whole setting was freaking me out too much. Which meant I had no warning when things popped out in front of me.


It could have been a great game, and maybe was after all the patches, but I had it pre-ordered, played it when it came out, and just ended up frustrated by the whole thing. Never patched it since I couldn't without losing my game so far.

And by all accounts exactly the same thing is happening with Clear Sky. There's no reason for anyone to buy it now. Wait 6 months, you get it cheaper, and you get a stable, bette game.

But if you never palyed the fully patched version, and never sampled any of the excellent mods like oblivion lost, you really cant comment on the overall quality of the game. I was pissed off with it at first too, it barely ran on my old machine. now its fully patched, fully modded and runs like a dream on my new PC, i can safely say its one of the best FPS's of all time

uglyjohn

what sort of changes does oblivion lost make?

i think i might go back and play stalker again...all this talk is making me miss it.

0ubliette

uglyjohn wrote: »

what sort of changes does oblivion lost make?

i think i might go back and play stalker again...all this talk is making me miss it.

Its changelog is too massive for me to remember, but it adds in so much cool stuff its hard to list it all. The power plant now does random blowouts, you can encounter enemies like controllers out in the open (i was in freedom base when it was attacked by a controller and a horde of about 10 zombies, it was ****ing EPIC), you can drive vehicles if you want, new weapon accuracy and weapon damage tweaks, AI is even more random, theres a TON of stuff in it. It probably even better than vanilla stalker to be honest

quarryman

I haven't played STALKER in a while. Instead of going back and figuring out where i left off would it be worth installing Oblivion lost and starting again? Does it change enough things to make a re-run different from the first time round?

ding_dong

Personally stalker was grand for me, to a point. Got absolutly sick of the fact that I could never buy a gun from the barkeeper. Buy on and find a better one in 30 secs.

Add to the fact that I now have like 10000000rubles with nothing to spend it on (left it at the part where you kill that sniper). And now Ive got the sniper rifle and assault rifle, its FAR to easy


Meh, was just to unbalanced to be fun after a while.

quarryman

I loved the way at the start the way it was unbalanced against you though. I remember spending ages getting through the first few shootouts before I managed to get a decent weapon.

PogMoThoin

Got stuck at a big bug yesterday that set me back about 10 hours gameplay. I was in Yantar heading to talk to Lefty, but he wouldn't talk to me, so therefore I couldn't do the mission. I left Yantar and returned seeing if it would sort itself but it overwrote my autosave, the last manual save I made was in Dark Valley :mad:

As frustrating as it was it's still not stopped me playing, I've clawed back a few hours now and should be back where I was by tomorrow. My advise is to make a manual backup every half hour and don't trust your autosave or quicksave after major missions. The game has crashed randomly also, not very often tho, every 3-4 days.

ding_dong

quarryman wrote: »

I loved the way at the start the way it was unbalanced against you though. I remember spending ages getting through the first few shootouts before I managed to get a decent weapon.

Hey you will hear no complaints from me in that respect. I LOVE hard games

Spunge

Second time i played SOC, i made sure to make a new save file any time i entered a new zone, so i had a load of saves to go back to if stuff went wrong

quarryman

Started a new game of Shadow of Chernobyl last night with the Obivion Lost mod and its brilliant. It seems to polish the game. The HUD is better. Weapons are lot better balanced, (the pistol doesn't seem like a pee-shooter anymore, requiring 30 hits to take someone down) and it just seems more enjoyable all round.

0ubliette

quarryman wrote: »

I haven't played STALKER in a while. Instead of going back and figuring out where i left off would it be worth installing Oblivion lost and starting again? Does it change enough things to make a re-run different from the first time round?

if youve already played stalker, and know what its like, then youre okay to play OL. OL just isnt really recommended for a very first play through. And yeah it significantly changes the A life stuff so its not really the same a second time around

quarryman

What does changing the A-Life effect? That's just the AI right?