S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

Despite the QoL upgrades, the dual expansion/prequel of Clear Sky failed to re-enact the brutal magic of SoC, playing like a story-driven, shackled appendix that indulged in vastly inferior missions and areas. On the other hand, features like weapon upgrades and their infrequent, deadly emission events hinted at more substantial ideas that they couldn't quite flesh out here.

the worst stalker game, because the AI is fucked to all hell. they throw grenades from almost 1km away (almost not even lying) and 1shot you with a peashooter. the world is mostly rehashed from the same game (except the beginner swap zone, which admittedly is a really cool zone) the writing is good, and as usual the setting is good. but like I said the AI and some mission designed is fucking atrocious like, what were they thinking?

7/10

You have to work for everything in this game. Nothing comes easy. The difficulty in the first stalker game came almost entirely from the enemies, but in Clear Sky, most of the difficulty is...everything else. You're constantly scrounging for money, traveling huge distances, and searching every anomalous zone for artifacts. Not a damn bit of it is easy, but you're generally rewarded appropriately for your efforts. I hated artifact hunting though. It's a cheap and unnecessary gameplay component that's straight up repetitive trial and error—I edited a program file in the game to make me invulnerable to anomalies, that's how much I disliked artifact hunting.

The only other thing I disliked was the ending of the game. Similar to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, the last 1/3 of the game goes on much too long.