at first blush clear sky's beautiful: rich sunlit autumn with its blues, greens, oranges, and browns warm and radiant; chornobyl's surface murk all but lifted entirely and soaked up into the soils and waters and still breathing bodies that inhabit the zone

but it soon becomes plain that the cosmetic changes are something of a diversion; sleight of hand that draws the eyes away from the coming suckerpunch: twenty odd hours of being flanked by grenades, bled to death, mulched by MGs, and robbed blind. a cursory search shows that the lion's share of its legacy revolves around torturing and bamboozling those who expected a straightforward sequel to SoP instead of an Iterative Pain Milker, but as the saying goes: "you opened it, we came"

the heart of the experience is nothing short of broken; theoretical emergent turf wars reduced to ceaseless big boss killing field masturbation due to poor macro level AI and myriad bugs and glitches. every claim and conquest soon snuffed out or stolen; all elaborate actors, a-life improvements, hard fought battles, pleas for help, and catastrophes rendered as droning background noise. this world is doomed, and your input is worthless

it's exhausting, and even more so to know a great deal of it's the result of a series of inefficiencies so great they actively sabotage the very firmament. at times it almost feels like a comedy of errors when the stoned anarchists or authoritarian paramilitary freaks manage to bungle every single lead or advantage you give them. five idiots loping so slowly across the zone that by the time they arrive (if they even bother) they're inevitably pressed into hamburger by the dozen guys who somehow respawned in the interim

when sutured up nicely with the likes of Sky Reclamation Project it lurches upward, alive. all the blood for blood's sake recontextualized: the junkyards and warehouses turned sacrificial pits summon successfully, allies arrive, and land changes hands; guns still jam, MG nests still butcher, and grenades still flow freely, but there's purpose and direction granted. movement in the zone is given breath and motive outside of the infinite looping thresher, conflict finds a utile path, and there's reprieve and closure and tangible winners and losers. unfortunately, it lasts about an hour

once you join a faction you'll walk point-by-point through enemy checkpoints, get into a few scraps, take their base, and that's about it. somehow adhering to intentionality and giving all the dopey wind-up toys a chance to fulfill their goals and retire does nothing but harm. without the futility it oddly ends up even more meaningless; all perpetual motion and conflict rendered still and dull in the blink of an eye. omnipresent inferno degraded into sidequest

the more I dabbled with alterations the more I came to feel that shaking it from its stasis and evening out the unintended caustics made for a lesser experience. SRP's default settings are undoubtedly the best option for keeping clear sky roughly in line with its original intentions, but the tradeoff between the accidental and the deliberate isn't always worth it

if you tinker a bit further there're countless other options that make "improvements" to the likes of ballistics, enemy behaviour, and damage values, but almost all of them do so at the cost of its core identity, sanding it down to another shadow of chernobyl at best and another call of pripyat at worst. most of SRP's optional addons in particular feel designed from the ground up to wrench its teeth out one by one, and while I'm not gonna be a shitty cop about how people wanna enjoy things, I can't help but feel like docile's the wrong look

for me clear sky's best as an experience in overwhelming reduction — of the player, of power, and of dominion. a living space occupied by the dead and a set of systems in perpetual, unavoidable collapse. gears turning and great machines moving in an endless cycle of yearning greed and control. one big dumb bright cozy purgatory

win today, lose tomorrow. spin the world's wheel again

I enjoyed but didn't love Shadow of Chernobyl since it had a lot that was ahead of its time, but some strange design decisions seriously held it back. Clear Sky manages to fix a couple of the game's problems (i.e. Shotguns are actually useful from time to time) while exacerbating others and making it just not worth finishing. Got through the Agroprom Underground and my patience was just spent.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest issue with Clear Sky is that clearly rushed development time. The team made some solid graphical upgrades this time around, but reused so much of SOC's world that this may as well be a DLC that had the rest of SOC strapped to it, making a massive portion of the experience the exact same game save for a few minor changes.

Some of the additions also skirt around certain problems instead of correct them. The faction's system for example, which is clearly intended to be the major aspect that sets it apart, is intended to give more reasoning to do side content. Adding a faction war system to barebones quests, however, doesn't fix the problem that they're barebones quests.

On top of all this is a story that, while interesting in concept, isn't executed all that well. Fleshing out Strelok's backstory and explaining his situation in SOC is a great idea in theory, but when told from the perspective of another Stalker who spends the whole time retracing his steps ironically feels like a massive retread.

The best thing I can say about Clear Sky is that there's a clear attempt to try and make something different and perhaps stronger than SOC. The addition of fast travel and improvement of inventory management are clear signs that the team wanted to improve where the first game suffered. With unnecessarily little time to do so though, Clear Sky fails dramatically at its goal and is just an objectively worse version of the previous entry in most aspects.

I'll still be trying Call of Pripyat since many have said it's the strongest of the three, but I can't see myself coming back to finish this game. If I wanted more SOC, I'd play more SOC.

STALKER: Clear sky is the second in the STALKER trilogy and a prequel to Shadow of Chernobyl. Honestly, and many will agree with me, this is the weakest in the series. It’s a rehash of the previous game with slightly better graphics, some new areas and a new but worse story. Still the core of STALKER is there so I can’t call it bad, it’s just mid. It’s not required to play to be able to understand the next game. I would only recommend it to anyone who just wants more STALKER.

Story
Same setting as the previous game with only minimal differences. The story itself is worse.
You are part of an organisation trying to stop people from going to the centre of the zone in the guise of - very bad things will happen. It’s mostly just doing the same as in SoC, but without the magic of experiencing it for the first time.

Mechanics and gameplay
Gameplay wise there are multiple improvements, but it’s overshadowed by the next game in the series, Call of Pripyat, that does everything even better.
My biggest problem is that 80% of the map is the same. Playing this right after SoC makes both blur together. It could have been used to good effect if the storyline was better, but it isn’t so.
There is one thing I wasn’t included in the next title - faction warfare. It was in SoC, but it didn’t have much depth. Here you can join your faction of choice and fight for them, even taking territory. I wasn’t interested in it, so ignored it, however if you do want to spice up your playthrough, consider it.

Graphics
Improved compared to the previous title. I mainly remember the lighting being better.

Atmosphere/Immersion
Even with all the criticism I dished out, I was still mostly immersed in the world of Clear Sky. So I can’t say anything bad about the atmosphere, it has even improved in some parts.

Music
These games share many of the songs in their soundtracks. They are almost exclusively dark ambience. Clear Sky does have exclusive songs in each of the faction bases, the bandit radio being very popular to the point where I had no idea it was even from Clear Sky. My favourite is “Loner Radio”.

Final thoughts
Ever heard that very popular “Cyka blyat” sound bite, I believe it comes from this game, or at the very least from the STALKER series.

WHY DID YOU STEAL MY STUFF AND KILL ME
8,0/10 - Length
7,0/10 - Enjoyment
3,5/10 - Perfomance/Bugs
6,5/10 - Story/Experience
8,0/10 - Gameplay

Score = 6,6/10

Bold move on GSC's part to make the second game in the series more broken than the first. But with mods and fixes applied the shooting is actually even better than SoC. With the addition of the faction wars system (while not being fully smoothed out to prevent repetition and annoyance) and a stronger emphasis on world building through tangible writing and conversations, Clear Sky is still a worthy entry in the series and provides some of the best and uniquely intense shootout sequences I've played in a game.

Overhated and underrated.
Definitely way more buggy than the other two games even with the unnoficial patch but its such an ambitious entry that nails so many aspects well, i had alot of fun with its more often than not bullshit difficulty and heat seeking grenades.
Honestly i really dont think there's a single bad STALKER game, yes we all know the x ray engine tends to work like an otherwordly artefact at times but the community has more than done their job of fixing and revamping so anyone can actually play these games.
Whether you prefer Shadow of Chernobyl's focus on the tense atmosphere, Clear Sky's faction warfare or Call of Pripyat's more slower paced survival horror gameplay, you cant deny each of the three main games bring something completely unique to the table, hence why i dont agree with the statement of "Dont bother with the main series! Just play Anomaly and other mods!", the main games offer so much variety already, why would you want to deny yourself from experiencing that?
Anyway, check out Tarkovsky's STALKER (1979) and Roadside picnic by the strugatsky brothers, they're both more than worth the read and the watch.

After a long break, I continued the series with Clear Sky after S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. After the first game, I noticed visible graphics and lighting improvements (Of course, I played this game with a mod pack called MYSTERY, which was made by the community, and it is a very comprehensive and successful mod pack, I recommend). In the story part, the game is about 5 years after the second disaster. The Zone is shaken by powerful and frequent blowouts, and many factions stationed in the Zone struggle to protect their territories and conquer new territories. As in the first game, we learn the story more from the people we talk to, and the story is not bad as a sequel. In the gameplay part, I didn't see much of an extra add-on as a weapon. But combat feels more sedate and fuller than the first game (at least the enemies have less bullet sponge). Artificial intelligence, on the other hand, is not much smarter than the first game, but there is little improvement. One of the new features to the game is that the weapon jams and the jamming varies from gun model to model. Although it is extremely annoying that the weapon suddenly jams in conflicts, it adds a different realism to the game. The equipment you use in the game can wear out now, and especially the wear of the armor gave me a lot of difficulty (Especially in the last mission :P) Also, factions play a special role in the game. You can participate in missions for different factions and make your faction stronger by fighting different factions, which is a nice feature that diversifies the gameplay. Unlike the first game, this game focuses more on anomalies and is more diversified, which is one of the features I like. One of the features that I can count as negative is that we are in conflict with too many people in the game and the game remains no different from FPS war games after a certain part. Especially in the last chapters, the game really wants you to be a one-man army and no matter how many enemies are piling up on you, and although I played the game on Stalker difficulty, I found myself dead almost every time 2-3 bullets were hit. This really pissed me off late in the game. As a result, Clear Sky is a much more advanced game than Shadow of Chernobyl. If you played the first game and liked it, I think you will like this one too. (I recommend the MYSTERY modpack, it's one of the best modpacks for Clear Sky.)