Bjossi on 5/9/2008 at 17:20
Woah, I was expecting Warhead to be far ahead, but they are actually near dead even.
Gaph on 6/9/2008 at 00:21
Quote Posted by Muzman
Yep, he's a Bioshock apologist. But that's not the end of the world is it? What's your point?
Just taking the integrity out of his Clear Sky review because it worries a lot of people who know he (and the other RPS guys) really liked Shadow Chernobyl. Because of what he wrote about Bioshock, regardless of his love of Stalker, means I completely disregard his opinion.
There were some other gems in BioShock: A Defence that I didn't quote like saying Bioshock's weapon upgrading has no paralell in SS2 and the research camera is more interesting than SS2's research.
Basically I'm plugging my ears and going LALALALALALALALALALA I can't hear you because I know they're wrong about Clear Sky, I just know it!
TBE on 8/9/2008 at 01:26
Does anyone here have it yet?
I ordered it online and they said the shipping was delayed until like 15 September. Can't wait to play it. I'm thinking about throwing out my system and getting a new P45 Motherboard and 4870 Radeon board though. I can't stand AGP graphics any longer! :mad:
mothra on 8/9/2008 at 09:06
first impressions:
awesome but flawed, even more than SOC since I expected some SOC shortcomings to get ironed out, not pronounced (lol)
more emphasis on encounters, less on random stalking, more linear in the sense that there's no incentive to stay at a location or backtrack after you "cleared" it out. FactionWar doesn't seem to go anywhere but is fun.
since I don't know russian I did not spend much time on it. weapons do feel better but since everyone can be modded like crazy there's no incentive now to search for special ones. anomaly detection is awesome, their placement and no-respawning is lame.
i played it on russian with some outside help and finished it after numerous crashes (had only 2nd patch applied). I'll reserve my judgement for the UK version which should arrive today or tomorrow in my mailbox. I hope the next fabled patch can turn it around, last updates made some pretty gamechanging things ( stamina bar back in)
242 on 8/9/2008 at 10:44
Quote Posted by mothra
i played it on russian with some outside help and finished it
:eek: Someone hasn't enough patience methinks ;)
driver on 8/9/2008 at 13:42
I finished it the other day. It was good right up untill the end The hospital, though it reminded me strongly of Silent Hill was pretty poor with enemies spawning all over the shop. And that helicopter fight was dire. Less said about the fight on the NPP the better. It all seemed so terribly rushed, as if that part had been done the night before it went gold.
Ugh.
Still, the rest of it was brilliant. The only complaints I have (Aside from the bugs) were the insta kill enemy grenades (Why are the ones you throw a thousand times less effective?), the all-seeing, hyper-accurate machine gun tower at the military check point in Cordon, the crates stuffed with respawing ammo (Whatever happend to scavenging?) and lastly the lack of choice in some dialogues (Specifically when the bandits at the main entrance to Garbage hold you up and take all your money. You can't tell them to get stuffed, just meekly hand over all your money. To make it worse, if you kill them afterwards, they don't have it. Likewise when you get mugged as part of the main quest, you can get your gear back, but your money vanishes into thin air. Very annoying.)
GRRRR on 8/9/2008 at 17:32
Got it too and played some, up until the Garbage now. Kinda mixed bag for me. I got into it abit after feeling rather meh-ish the whole swamp area (very tame, only a few boars and some bandits) and then being hugely annoyed by that damn MG at the Cordon entrance (way to go after an easy peasy start you get a trial and error run-from-instadeath bit. Looking forward to do that crap again when the next patch invalidates all saves). Picked up abit in the Cordon, interesting stuff to do, and some artifacts to sniff out.
My main gripe is that the whole affair doesnt feel Stalkerish at all. No monsters to speak of and very little anomalies but people everywhere, one gotta wonder how the whole zone wasnt completely grazed by the time of SoC. Scavenging aspect seems totally gone, most weapons are rather worthless (did get less than 1k for a LR300 i found in Cordon), you get plenty of ammo from everywhere (i had about 300 shotgun shells within the first half hour, and 1k AK rounds within about an hour into Cordon, on Veteran) including supply chests which are everywhere, and i made the most money from just taking the best ammo (Nato and Val types, bugger the correct names) out of them and selling em. The whole affair seems streamlined into "take resource points" with the "resource gathering" cast aside, just like in Company of Heroes or something.
On the technical side its been ok, only one crash when the game got confused by two quests requiring me to get 3 ammo of the same type at the same time. Running it on high without the DX10 stuff, running smooth (PC runs old Stalker at max settings fine).
Some nitpicks :
-AI can still shoot with pinpoint accuracy thru foliage and in pitchblack night
-the whole "capturing" business gets stunted by the AI. Either they take ages, or prolly never come. Joined the Stalkers in Cordon then snuffed Bandit camps at the Garbage entrance (with some difficulties. Grenade rain yay), "concentration camp" aka carpark and around some area abit behind that and im waiting for someone to take over the bloody points since 5 ingame hours and counting. Plus, defense tasks (and linked capture tasks which came before that) fail if the squad assigned to the point dies, which could be some lonely sap with a pistol rushing 5 bandits.
-The chaser shotgun obviously took a successful diet because boy, is it fat in Clear Sky
Not feeling that same vibe like when playing (yes even buggy vanilla) Stalker tho. Bit sobering really, but lets see what patches and mods can do. :p
redrain85 on 8/9/2008 at 18:03
Maybe I missed it, but as far as I can tell: no one has mentioned anything about the copy protection on Clear Sky.
Because of the fact that no one has said anything, can I take that to mean there is no copy protection? Like was the case with SoC in North America?
If GSC and Deep Silver decided not to bother with the kind of rotten DRM that Spore is being blasted for, then thumbs up from me. :thumb:
Even if Clear Sky is as much of (if not more so) a rough jewel as SoC was, I still plan to support them anyway and buy the game. Just because of their more sensible attitude toward copy protection, and for at least trying to provide us with a game title that's markedly different from most of the drivel, that's being shoveled out the door by the majority of publishers.
D'Arcy on 8/9/2008 at 18:19
I just received my limited edition, and it states quite clearly on the cover that it has copy protection.
I think I'm going to wait a bit for the next patch to come out before I start playing.
