Now I know not to listen to the elitist "hardcore" crowd who go about liking everything people hate and hating everything people like because they go out of their way to be different, this seems to be what the fans of Stalker are to me. I played the first game and thought it was a horrible, broken and buggy game that was sooo frustrating because of all the bugs and I hate bugs. So I got into Stalker Clear sky thinking they'd have fixed all the problems from the first game but all they've seemed to do is create more problems. I mean I have a 4870X2 but the game runs like crap and I can max out Crysis with a smooth high Framerate and I can max out Age of Conan with no problem, however Stalker Clear Sky which is a mediocre looking game I'm getting anything of 10-30FPS and it's not veen on the highest settings. Really the only good looking thing about the game is the lighting and the character models look like they come from the 90's and the tree's are horrible and jaggies everywhere because I wont even attempt to turn AA on lol. I would almost forgive the game if it was seemless but again to my disappointment the game has these loading screen gates about the place which make for alot of annoying untatural feeling invisible walls everywhere.
Anyways I get into the game and the problems keep coming with like when I'm talking to characters the text is always up on the screen blocking my view of the world and breaking my immersion and I just want to be able to listen and watch him talking rather than having aload of text thrown at me. I don't like how I feel stuck to the gorund because when I jump it feels rather animated and clunky. So the first mission comes and even though I've killed everyone it still wont update so I run aorund for 10 mins and then suddenly oh look I get an update. While I was doing that I noticed how walking through the tiniest puddle slows your walking speed down so much which got on my nerves. Also for some reason I randomly loose all my life and die and it's like wtf why is my life draining? lol.
So my next mission was to take over this camp and wipe out these guys and I'm getting a very mmorpg feel here of doing these boring repetitive quests, lots and lots of bugs and looting corpses for shit I don't want because I just wanna go through the story and kill things and find out what happens. I go in and I kill all the dudes but the gun combat is really naff as I fire 8 rounds at someone and they still don't go down to the floor and when they do it's poorly animated anyways and looks rather pathetic. The character models all look the same too with these giant shoulders and short looking arms and they animate like they came outta Half-Life. When they die too it's like i'm playing Star Wars Galaxies after the NGE when you killed someone they were missing and animation sometimes and fell striaght to the ground lol. So I put god mode on because I can't be bothered with the horrible combat and I try to knife everyone, only the closest you can get to anyways still gives the impression you're 2m away from them like some over sided collision boxes and knifing them didn't even feel like I was doing so which was pathetic.
I've killed them all and it tells me to wait for backup, only I'm running about wondering what to do because nothing is happening so like 30 mins later finally they arrive and it's like i'm close to quiting the game because theres just so many problems with it, like why did I have to wait so long? Then the next problem is like lack of direction in the game, I don't know what to do next because they arrive and I'm told nothing but to hold the position so I'm there for another 10 mins before I go over to a guy and ask him what to do and he instances me somewhere like a mmorpg and frigging it's even more running and I couldn't be bothered anymore and went back to these guys and killed them all where it told me to wait for backup again because it's been overrun......... no I've just killed them all so I'm coming back to kill all of you. Only I found out you can't use your guns at the home base so then I quit because the game is just like they made a world designed for a mmorpg and decided they'll turn it into a buggy single player game.
I didn't even know if I was doing a side quest or a main mission one because it just kept throwing random crap at me. The UI is sooo cumbersome to use and it takes ages to work most things out like the map and what everything means. Also annoying things like looting corpses and for some reason I can't delete weapons so I have to drop them back ont he corpse. When I try to loot a corpse it always seems to want to pick up their weapon first and it's like nooooooooo I don't need another one. Why do I have to run everywhere? I want a vehicle like someone must be able to repair one of the hundreds of broken ones laying about within the game.
I just thought the game was so bad and I hated every moment of it, I don't understand how anyone could like it unless in their sex life they like pain and get a thrill outta it, because this game is just painful to play. If it wasn't for the kool setting I don't think I would have stayed playing for as long as I did.
It's like all the people who say System Shock 2 is amazing and yet whenever I've tried to play the game like back in 2001 and just recently all the game wanted to do to me was crash and crash some more and I can't even get 5m off the train before it crashes. you can't even get it into a good resolution......... The game is just broken and I don't get why people praise it other than thinking it makes them hardcore that they liked it while noone else cared so they're all set for when they make System Shock 3, they can say "THIS GAME SUCKS IT WAS SOO MUCH BETTER IN THE OLD DAYS" or "THEY'VE DUMBED IT DOWN FOR CONSOLES BECAUSE YOU DON'T NEED TO BE A PROGRAMMER AND FIX THE GAME BEFORE YOU CAN PLAY IT ANYMORE" lol.