Just completed STALKER SOC, is Clear Sky any good?

Mark A

Mark A

Mark A

Soldato
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Hi,

Well, I bought STALKER a year or so ago for £1.60 or something silly in the Steam sales. Didnt like it at first due to the head bobbing and it just seemed a bit rubbish. Then I saw a thread on here about the Complete mod and I couldn't stop playing it after installing that. So much better! Also cranked everything up to full and it didn't drop below 70 fps once :).

My only criticism is that it was far too short. Even with the side missions, which were a bit pants when all you get is money (that is useless).


Anyway, I was going to play through again with the oblivion lost mod this time, but really didn't like the dot for a crosshair and it didn't look anywhere near as good as the complete mod.

So now I want to play clearsky but ive read that it isn't as good. Its fairly dear on Steam @ £8 so I thought I'd ask you guys if its any good first.
 
Cheers, i think I might just get it then. Its cheaper from a few online stores but i'd rather have it on steam.

Is it advisable to install the complete mod for it straight away? Or play vanilla first?

I say Stalker SOC was shot but ive just looked on steam and ive apparently been playing for 28 hours over the past week lol :D. The zone just looks so awesome it made me want to search every area of it. Just a shame there are unreachable areas due to radiation :(.
 
Clearsky with complete mod is very nice, looks as good as most new games also you should enjoy it as much as SOC.(i actually liked Clearsky the most of all 3...)

I found Pripyat too short out of all 3 but the other 2 about the right length.
 
Yeah, ' if ' they could make the zone even more accessible then it would be simply amazing. Easy for me to point it out though, another to actually pull it off. :)
 
I really enjoyed Clear Sky. If you liked the first one you will love CS. Playing through Pripyat just now for the first time, still quite near the start and so far I'm loving it. The STALKER series is a seriously underrated sequence of games for the PC IMO.
 
Clear sky is my favourite.

But install the complete mod.


With Soh i found myself doing things because a mission told me so, with CS I spent so much time exploring :D

Hell i could guide you round every obscure land mark and anomaly in cs :p

Tefal said:
Some stalker clear sky (complete mod)



ssalan041310020609marsh.jpg



love the way things look when they get wet in the rain :p


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Sadly no before shot, but can you guess what the former bandit is missing? :p

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lovely detail on the snorks now


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Just inside the front iornsight you can see the last of an unfortunate zombie group running into an anomaly :p

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MY brains are melting!

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Artefact fun

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None spawned all collected by me, trying to choose what to sell (still got the very first artefact i picked up in the tutorial :D)




So beautiful :eek:

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Tefal said:
Few more :)


ssalan042410045745milit.jpg



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I love how there's actually shadows on the textures, of an otherwise flat surface :p


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they even get removed by shining another light on them :p


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detail on the world models of guns in incredible considering how rarely you ever look at them closely

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Notice something wrong with the walls? :p


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Click to expand...
 
SOLD! :D

Thanks for posting those screenshots, I cant wait to play it now, looks awesome!

I can't believe I've had Stalker sat on my hdd untouched for so long, such an immersive games once it gets going.

Yeah, ' if ' they could make the zone even more accessible then it would be simply amazing. Easy for me to point it out though, another to actually pull it off.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't have thought it would be that hard, GTA4 manages pretty well. I think it would be better if you could just go anywhere instead of having to head towards a point on the map to enter a new area. Like nip across a hill, rather than having to walk a long way around due to a barbed wire fence or radiation.

But thats just a very minor niggle really. Once you're in a new area its a very big area to explore with unbelievable level of detail. I found myself taking screenshots of flaking paint and all sorts lol :o.

Loved the area near the portable research lab thing. Made Ravenholm from HL2 look like Disney land!
 
STALKER games are epic! Can't wait to get my 480 so I can crank up the settings in Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat!

From what I've played of Clear Sky, I loved it! And the same with Call of Pripyat! It's even better!
 
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SoC and CS are great, but CoP is 10/10. It is much more open, has much better quests and more memorable characters. It even has choices and consequences!

And hunting bloodsuckers at night in swamp during storm = most immersive experience ever.
 
:D yey, glad to hear the other games are as good if not better than the first. I just seemed to get the impression they weren't as good after reading a few forums found via google.

Is it any more demanding than the first? I maxed everything out and my Q6600 (@3.4ghz), gtx280 and 4 gig of ram handled it very welll. Hoping it'll do the same with CS.

74% @ 1.2mb/s <3 steam :D

right, think i'll go and have a mug of ovaltine while I wait for it to complete.
 
Mark A said:
Is it any more demanding than the first? I maxed everything out and my Q6600 (@3.4ghz), gtx280 and 4 gig of ram handled it very welll. Hoping it'll do the same with CS.
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I ran CS and am running Pripyat with the rig in my sig below ( Similar to yours ) , maxed out on all settings. Ran superbly. :cool:

Enjoy yer Ovaltine. :D
 
Mark A said:
I just seemed to get the impression they weren't as good after reading a few forums found via google.
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that's cause CS was more buggy than britboys ant farms on release :p

it's fixed now (and complete fixes it even more)


CoP i thought felt empty though :(

CS is definitely the best.
 
Tefal said:
that's cause CS was more buggy than britboys ant farms on release :p

it's fixed now (and complete fixes it even more)


CoP i thought felt empty though :(

CS is definitely the best.
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+1 on CoP being a bit on the empty side, very good game still..but is the weakest of the three imo. Still, a must buy for Stalker fans though imo.

Time for a shake up or a new engine in the series I think.
 
The good:

OMG it looks amazing :eek:

The bad:

22fps :(

Put the latest Nvidia driver on and it made no difference. Turned of EAX as I heard that reduced performance and that made no difference. Looks like I may have to turn off 'full dynamic lighting DX10' :(, or is there anything else I could try to get a few more fps without reducing the beauty too much?

My GTX280 is stock at the moment but I'm not sure I want to up that too much as it gets very hot as it is.
 
Mark A said:
The good:

OMG it looks amazing :eek:

The bad:

22fps :(

Put the latest Nvidia driver on and it made no difference. Turned of EAX as I heard that reduced performance and that made no difference. Looks like I may have to turn off 'full dynamic lighting DX10' :(, or is there anything else I could try to get a few more fps without reducing the beauty too much?

My GTX280 is stock at the moment but I'm not sure I want to up that too much as it gets very hot as it is.
Click to expand...

It's because the full dynamic lighting is DX10.1 in Clearsky which i think the GTX280 suffers against.(my GTX275 had the same problem but my 5870 doesn't ever besides it didn't look much different if i remember.)
 
Well the first area is actually one of the most demanding in the game and I think at the beginning they've set it to pretty o'clock in the morning just to make it even more of a graphics hog.

You can safely lower the view distance, foliage density and shadow quality a reasonable amount for very little change in graphical quality (in fact most sliders except texture quality can be lowered a lot at the top end before having a major impact in looks). If I remember rightly as well AA is a bit wonky in the game so its worth fiddling about with it or just turning it off.
 
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