Stalker: Clear Sky
Sep. 17th, 2008 02:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solipsistnationSo I acquired Stalker: Clear Sky pretty much the instant it was available on Steam. It has since taken over my evenings. (That's 2 evenings total, and although I did play me some Rock Band 2 last night, I then went back to the Zone for a bit of stalking.)
My first impressions are that it's MUCH harder than the first game. They put a little more work into easing the player into the game, though, so that cushions things a bit. There are a couple of what pass for tutorial missions before you're turned loose in the swamps to fend for yourself. They're pretty simple, just, I guess, to make sure you have your controls set up the way you want and to make sure you know how to talk to people and shoot things. There are a couple of places that you can't get to just by walking around, which is strange-- there are guides who take you places you can't go on your own. It's a strange an intrusive mechanic in what was originally a totally wide-open game (or at least wide-open in each area). Later, the guides turn into quick-travel waypoints, which is welcome, although they charge you for their services. That alone means I'm less likely to use them since money is super hard to come by these days. Artifacts are harder to find (I haven't found one yet, in 10 or 12 hours of playing!) and so far my main source of income is looting corpses and selling off their spare guns. This can get annoying with the limit on how much you can carry at once. I currently have a stash of about 40 rifles and shotguns stacked up waiting for me to haul them off to sell. The money drought made worse by bandits who, if you go talk to them, will steal your cash. All of it. And even if you then shoot their thieving asses you can't get it back. Feh.
One big improvement is the technicians who can repair your armor and weapons. This costs too, of course, but it's cheaper than having to go buy new armor every time you get mauled by a dog. Armor was disproportionately rare and expensive in the first game, and it's even worse here. Technicians can also upgrade armor and weapons.
I did get a decent rifle a little faster this time at least. Now I just have to keep an eye on my ammo. I spent a lot of time poking around with AK47 variants and the classic silenced pistol (which gets pretty awesome after a few upgrades), but now I have one of those bullpup rifles with a scope.
There are a couple of places where the game design plays nasty tricks on the player. There's one route in particular that looks like the only place to go but which is secretly a deathtrap. The game drops you in a tiny safe zone, another character calls you on the radio and says "hey, watch out for the military!" and if you take a few steps forward you get shot down by a guy in a bunker half a mile away. There's some cover, but I think that whole area is some kind of cruel joke. I went back to the previous region and took another route to get to the stuff I was trying to reach. It worked, but I wasted a lot of time getting killed and reloading before I decided to just go the long way around. This may have been the game teaching me a lesson, but man, it was annoying.
Otherwise, it's Stalker. Creatures and people roam the zone, shooting at and eating one another. They will ignore you if you don't bother them (usually). The zone is beautiful and creepy, and still has the weird unwelcoming atmosphere that made the first game so engaging. Overall, I'm enjoying it. Even though it's not quite the same Zone, it feels like a homecoming. Unlike so many other shooters, where the player mows his (or her) way through hordes of enemies and everything is there to be shot, Stalker is both more relaxed and more tense.
The best thing about the first game was the feeling that the world wasn't there just for the sake of the player's journey through it, and that if I wasn't there the inhabitants would go about their business without me. That's intensified in Clear Sky-- the faction warfare happens constantly, with little bands of other stalkers and bandits shooting at each other in the distance. The player doesn't need to be there, although if you go dive in the NPCs will cheerfully shoot you down or thank you for helping. Or possibly not thank you for helping. Gratitude isn't guaranteed, and the enemy of your enemy isn't necessarily even going to want to talk to you. Your best bet, unless you're trying to ingratiate yourself with one faction or another, is usually to just walk on by. They're doing their own thing-- you aren't needed or welcome. That's a very strange direction for a video game to take, and, I think, very Russian. American games are about being the center of everything-- even World War II shooters set the player up to be a hero. The Russian games I've played-- Stalker especially-- are about the player figuring out his place in the world they've created. You may not be the hero, but, well, do you need to be? You've done some stuff, helped some people, maybe hindered others, and maybe changed the world a little. Or maybe, if you made the right decisions along the way, changed the world a lot.
Maybe my opinion will change as I go on, since I'm only maybe a quarter or a third of the way into the game, but I doubt it. Still enjoying it, still in love with the Zone... It's nice to be back.
My first impressions are that it's MUCH harder than the first game. They put a little more work into easing the player into the game, though, so that cushions things a bit. There are a couple of what pass for tutorial missions before you're turned loose in the swamps to fend for yourself. They're pretty simple, just, I guess, to make sure you have your controls set up the way you want and to make sure you know how to talk to people and shoot things. There are a couple of places that you can't get to just by walking around, which is strange-- there are guides who take you places you can't go on your own. It's a strange an intrusive mechanic in what was originally a totally wide-open game (or at least wide-open in each area). Later, the guides turn into quick-travel waypoints, which is welcome, although they charge you for their services. That alone means I'm less likely to use them since money is super hard to come by these days. Artifacts are harder to find (I haven't found one yet, in 10 or 12 hours of playing!) and so far my main source of income is looting corpses and selling off their spare guns. This can get annoying with the limit on how much you can carry at once. I currently have a stash of about 40 rifles and shotguns stacked up waiting for me to haul them off to sell. The money drought made worse by bandits who, if you go talk to them, will steal your cash. All of it. And even if you then shoot their thieving asses you can't get it back. Feh.
One big improvement is the technicians who can repair your armor and weapons. This costs too, of course, but it's cheaper than having to go buy new armor every time you get mauled by a dog. Armor was disproportionately rare and expensive in the first game, and it's even worse here. Technicians can also upgrade armor and weapons.
I did get a decent rifle a little faster this time at least. Now I just have to keep an eye on my ammo. I spent a lot of time poking around with AK47 variants and the classic silenced pistol (which gets pretty awesome after a few upgrades), but now I have one of those bullpup rifles with a scope.
There are a couple of places where the game design plays nasty tricks on the player. There's one route in particular that looks like the only place to go but which is secretly a deathtrap. The game drops you in a tiny safe zone, another character calls you on the radio and says "hey, watch out for the military!" and if you take a few steps forward you get shot down by a guy in a bunker half a mile away. There's some cover, but I think that whole area is some kind of cruel joke. I went back to the previous region and took another route to get to the stuff I was trying to reach. It worked, but I wasted a lot of time getting killed and reloading before I decided to just go the long way around. This may have been the game teaching me a lesson, but man, it was annoying.
Otherwise, it's Stalker. Creatures and people roam the zone, shooting at and eating one another. They will ignore you if you don't bother them (usually). The zone is beautiful and creepy, and still has the weird unwelcoming atmosphere that made the first game so engaging. Overall, I'm enjoying it. Even though it's not quite the same Zone, it feels like a homecoming. Unlike so many other shooters, where the player mows his (or her) way through hordes of enemies and everything is there to be shot, Stalker is both more relaxed and more tense.
The best thing about the first game was the feeling that the world wasn't there just for the sake of the player's journey through it, and that if I wasn't there the inhabitants would go about their business without me. That's intensified in Clear Sky-- the faction warfare happens constantly, with little bands of other stalkers and bandits shooting at each other in the distance. The player doesn't need to be there, although if you go dive in the NPCs will cheerfully shoot you down or thank you for helping. Or possibly not thank you for helping. Gratitude isn't guaranteed, and the enemy of your enemy isn't necessarily even going to want to talk to you. Your best bet, unless you're trying to ingratiate yourself with one faction or another, is usually to just walk on by. They're doing their own thing-- you aren't needed or welcome. That's a very strange direction for a video game to take, and, I think, very Russian. American games are about being the center of everything-- even World War II shooters set the player up to be a hero. The Russian games I've played-- Stalker especially-- are about the player figuring out his place in the world they've created. You may not be the hero, but, well, do you need to be? You've done some stuff, helped some people, maybe hindered others, and maybe changed the world a little. Or maybe, if you made the right decisions along the way, changed the world a lot.
Maybe my opinion will change as I go on, since I'm only maybe a quarter or a third of the way into the game, but I doubt it. Still enjoying it, still in love with the Zone... It's nice to be back.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-17 10:41 pm (UTC)It is, unfortunately, a little buggy (especially with the mission assignments, and if you piss off the wrong people you may find that some missions are impossible to complete). There's a PDA in the game, and, well, just keep in mind that it's supposed to be a Russian knockoff of a Western PDA that's been hauled around through hard radiation and it might act a little funny when you're trying to use it. (That's a nice way of saying the interface is seriously broken.)
Don't expect it to play like Half-Life or HL2 or, really, any other FPS. Expect it to kick your ass really hard until you figure out how to do stuff. Expect for it to not hold your hand at all.
That said, yeah, go for it. It's only 20 bucks on Steam, and that's hard to beat... It's unlike almost anything else out there. Plus you'll get to learn some Russian curses.
Here's a review: http://www.fourfatchicks.com/Reviews/Stalker/Stalker.shtml