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

iron sights on pistols gone breaks the game? BWHAHAHAHA, WOW. terrible review, bit-tech fanboys won't hear any of it. great game, bugs being fixed faster then most big name studios. Better then SOC.

True, but most big name studios don't release games in this state to start with...

Just saying.

Even one game stopping bug is enough to give the game lower than 4 and the gameplay have no word there. I know that I'll like the game because I loved SoC, but good gameplay isn't excuse for crappy release and never will be. I don't care how fast they push out patches. If they could have fixed the problems way didn't they do it before releasing the game?
Great review BT, I really appreciate when you say what you have to and don't go with the hype.

downloaded clear sky from steam tues. with the latest patch and have not had a crash yet and no major problems after reading the above
I guess I'm lucky that said I love the game. If any are having problems or would just like to tweak the game this is a great guide



http://www.tweakguides.com/ClearSky_1.html

Originally Posted by Lepermessiah
iron sights on pistols gone breaks the game? BWHAHAHAHA, WOW. terrible review, bit-tech fanboys won't hear any of it. great game, bugs being fixed faster then most big name studios. Better then SOC.

Ok so not gamebreaking, but a turnoff for sure. I finally managed to get my 22" to scale smaller resolutions correct! so now i'm doing some games in 1360x1024 centered in the middle with black bars on the sides. This really helps pulling the game, and i'm now on DX10 renderer and haven't looked back.

Also looking to install the "Solyanka" mod before i go any further, can't stand the all the pelletguns ^^, landed 6 shotgun shells on a guy 8 meters away and he killed me after that, so i quit and played SoC;O.L2.2.

I agree on the review, but maybe bit-tech should have just postponed the review and stated a recomendation to not play the game for 1 month after release?

Maybe - but we had already postponed by a week as it was. Besides, how were we to know what state the game would be in in a month?

Originally Posted by CardJoe
Maybe - but we had already postponed by a week as it was. Besides, how were we to know what state the game would be in in a month?

hook up all your hw, run some scripts and travel to the future! i bet you have quite a lot of prosessing power lyin/lieing/lyieing/lying around.

Originally Posted by stoff3r
hook up all your hw, run some scripts and travel to the future! i bet you have quite a lot of prosessing power lyin/lieing/lyieing/lying around.

We do, and in fact we only travel anywhere at 88MPH.

Throw another flux capacitor on the fire, will you, Joe?

Try it: latest pach, 3 BSOD on Vista x64 in less then 5 hours of game play. Good think I get it from a friend. Will wait for a month or so for price drop and some more patching. Good game otherwise. I love most of it when it works. The autosave is abysmal though.

Just had an idea: why don't you score the games same way you score hardware? I mean in hardware reviews you have Features, Performance, Value and Overall. Why don't you use Gameplay, Graphics/Sound, Innovations, Bug ifestation and Overall (for example) for games?

Originally Posted by Grasshopper
Just had an idea: why don't you score the games same way you score hardware? I mean in hardware reviews you have Features, Performance, Value and Overall. Why don't you use Gameplay, Graphics/Sound, Innovations, Bug ifestation and Overall (for example) for games?

Maybe, although the more you break a score down the more the numbers become meaningless. However (creative thinking hat on here), a breakdown of something like Gameplay, Media (i.e. graphics, sound, physics implimentation etc.), Product (is it worth it to buy? Looks at bugs, cost, hardware requirements etc.) and then an Overall might give a wonderful new look at games. So for example:

Stalker Clear Sky:
Gameplay: 8
Media: 8
Product: 2
Overall: 3

Cyrsis Warhead:
Gameplay: 7
Media: 10
Product: 6
Overall: 8

Given Bit-Tech's (welcome) emphasis on looking at products as a purchase, not as an abstract art-form, this might work quite well.

I think I'll name it the Bauul Scale. You can buy me a pint for my efforts next time I see you Joe. And perhaps actually finish a game of Zombie Flux.

We've typically avoided that type of rubric in the past because it's so hard to quantify. We can all pretty much judge a game as being either a 7 or an 8, but when you break things up it becomes tricky. It's why we don't have decimal or percents in our score - can PC Gamer really distinguish between an 81% and an 82%? Who's to say it isn't an 81.5%?

This comes into play with this too - can I say that the graphics in one game are definitely an 8 or 9? Surely it will depend on your settings and hardware anyway? It becomes pointless and is useless to people who prefer to focus on other things, like story, or games where the multiplayer is massively different to singleplayer.

Plsu, how do you judge these things? Mass Effect is a great looking game with fantastic gameplay in my eyes - but it can't do AA because it uses the UE3 engine and has multiple render target technology. Does the lack of AA force it down from an 8 to a 7 in graphics? Does your overall have to be an average of the other meters?

Then there's other circumstances to consider - take Crysis. You can buy that off the shelf as a standard product - like most things, probably a 7. OR you can buy it on Steam and have the joy of that - maybe an 8? Or do you get it from EA store and give it a 3? These things matter.

We've talked this over a lot recently in the office and our general opinion is that the best way to do it is to go ahead an give an overall score which takes all these elements into account, but which doesn't favour any one setting or represent an average of these points. If the details are really that important to people then a summary would never suffice anyway, and that's what the text is for and why our reviews follow a Story-Gameplay-Graphics-Multiplayer-Discussion template in general.

Has that Leppermessiah been banned/killed yet?
I don't think I've seen someone rant about the number three and telling me everyone else prefers the number eight more than he has.
Although I must say, his facts and figures really back up his argument, telling us how "tonens of people run it well" yes, tonens. And how BT should have waited longer (not that we expect reviews around launch time for a product on a ... what's it called ... review site!) even though they waited long enough to use the patches that were readily available. Come on Joe, can't you go into the future, what are you playing at?
I played the first Stalker and stopped just before I went mad from all the BSODs and CTDs, I know I don't need a review to tell me the new one wont be too different.
I just want to say that I have read a lot of this thread and I'm quite enraged to be perfectly honest. People like Leppermessiah should have internet privileges taken away until they can use them properly. The guys at BT do this for a living, this reviewing malarky, so I think they know more than most others here. They always do a great job and they never show any bias.
So to end this I wanna say well done BT for your reviews but more for putting up with arseholes like him and and that people like that should quit your whining, show some respect and be happy you haven't been banned yet!

Originally Posted by CardJoe
Wise words

I totally understand what you mean, although arguably you could take that same logic to the extreme and ask "what's the difference between an 8 and a 9 to someone with a particular taste in games special to themselves"? It's a balancing act. Arguably the best scale on the Internet is Rotten Tomatoes, which basically says that if a product has a 70% Fresh rating (for example), there's a 70% chance you'll overall like the product. So, even if you subsequently hate it or love it, the rating is still applicable to you.

Personally, I always use Metacritic and look at the lowest scores a game has. If a game averages 80%, but the lowest score is 72%, I'll be confident it's a good buy, but if it's gotten 85% but the lowest rating is 20%, I know there's a chance I might agree with the 20% person, so it requires some more research. Really it just emphasises the problems with using a mean average and ignoring the range, something all statistics fall down on. So, if we're being truley good, we should ignore every single numbered mark ever given, and just read the text.

Or better yet, ignore everyone's opinion and play the game, it's the only way to be sure.

The problem with Metacritic though is that (I believe) it's owned by the same group that owns Gamespy and that it has restrictions on who can be listed on there. Hence, the rating on Stalker is more than I feel it should be (especially considering those reviews came out first, long before the UK release for some) because they stop taking reviews after a certain period and will only take them from certain people. Bit-tech for example isn't listed with metacritic because we aren't a gaming focused site, prioritise one format over others, and don't always produce more than five game reviews a month (though 90% of the time we do).

Well clear sky has just been released in NZ, and it came with patch 1.5 something and I love it. have not had a single problem with it.

not sure if its a bug or not. but i've just got robbed (im sure that's not the bug) but after i recovered, the little dialog from Clear Sky leader ended, and i now have no primary objective!! only the "get your stuff back" secondary.

wtf? what am i supposed to do for the main quest? should i restart from earlier?

EDIT: fixed that bug by removing my mod folder.

now i can't get into the mid-left map..... the one with Duty base in it. it keeps crashing whenever i move into it and/or load the autosave. removed the mod-folder and still the same.

EDIT2: fixed that now by stop using the Affinity.exe fix. STALKER only launches in single core mode, so i used that fix for multi-core usage, smoother gameplay, but crashes a little more often.