Grimbeard - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (PC) - Review

[Music] [Applause] yes what's up goth gamer nation i said come in don't just stand there if you like that then you're gonna love the rest of this video and remember don't get out of here until you like comment and subscribe stalker clear sky is a first person survival horror game from ukrainian developer gsc game world and published by deep silver for pc in 2008 this game acts as a prequel to their game stalker shadow of chernobyl which was released one year prior well just in case you're some kind of wild card that isn't aware of this game's chronological sequel shadow of chernobyl was a game not unlike this game where in an alternate history timeline a second chernobyl disaster created a hostile and supernaturally altered zone which many different groups of people want to use explore or exploit for a number of reasons financial scientific and personal since this is a video about that game's prequel i'm just going to go ahead and say general spoiler warning foreshadow of chernobyl i don't want to get caught up recounting things from that game what am i clear sky that's a jokey that'll maybe make more sense later but anyway i'll warn you before major spoilers for clear sky though i'm not a monster my name's scar in shadow of chernobyl we played as a stalker a morally ambiguous adventurer thief type that trespasses into the zone in search of artifacts these strange objects created by the zone that are imbued with supernatural properties that game's development was fraught with conflict and confusion it was essentially built on an impossible promise and for a while thought to be vaporware in the six years between announcement and release two splinter studios were formed spawning two game series that each differently reflect what the respective gsc deserters wanted out of this project in the wake of numerous delays and setbacks their first publisher thq made an attempt to hasten the fledgling dev team which of course included cutting numerous aspects of the game and in some cases leaving them broken or unfinished the result was a pretty divisive game that failed to make good on its grander promises but was thankfully redeemed by a stellar atmosphere and tense gameplay unlike anything else beautifully rendering a sickly old dying world full of cruel people eager to make it even worse if it means more money even with its myriad issues bugs crashes and a storyline gamespot described as incoherent the first stalker game was well received and developed a rabid cult following it even spawned a recurring urban exploration themed festival called stalkerfest with q and a's what looks like a costume contest musical guests and some kind of interpretive dance stunt show looks like it would smell a little better than an anime convention gsc founder sergey grgorovich hopped on the mic to do a cover of sweet dreams [Music] like is it just me or is he somehow a million percent more relatable right now i just feel like i'm one step closer to getting him i almost forgive him for creating such a divided workplace on shadow of chernobyl work quickly began on the game's follow-up then titled stalker anarchy cell which was meant to fill in some of the story gaps left in shadow of chernobyl with the twist being you don't play as strelok the first game's amnesiac protagonist but instead as a mercenary with designs to stop him an idea borrowed from the half-life expansion opposing force but more importantly they wanted to make good on many of the game design promises from shadow of chernobyl like its a life ai system the way the game was meant to simulate routines and patterns in npcs and enemies in an ideal outcome of this concept every other stalker in the game would be capable of everything the protagonist is capable of meaning that presumably some random npc could disable the brain scorcher and get to the center of the zone before you something that was touted a great deal during the first game's development but ultimately one of the things that was short shrifted after proving to be a quagmire a money and time sink that they couldn't get right before the game went gold clear sky began as an attempt to see this dream through which shouldn't be the way this industry works but i suppose i can respect making the same game over and over until you get it right just kind of wish that happened in the office and uh preceded the game's actual release i'm not certain i have the timeline down correctly but if the date on these videos of clear sky being shown at e3 2007 are correct then that would mean a few months after shadow of chernobyl was released gsc already had a playable build of clear sky it could also be that the lumansk hospital scene was part of the cut content from shadow of chernobyl so that's why it was the only part of the game they seemed to show who's to say 2007 was an immeasurable amount of time ago i think more than ever we've just become dislodged from time noting its passage with only the accumulation of mountain dew kickstart orange citrus cans that occupy my desk even with another shaky release the game was received well enough critically certainly if a critic assigned it a numeric value it was respectable but it's kind of funny seeing a repeat of many of the same sentiments pointed at the previous game this mysterious infatuation in the face of an incomplete mess oh that's that's embarrassing i'm such a [ __ ] idiot yeah the first time i tried to play this i thought that that my inventory was the dead guy's inventor so i just gave this dead [ __ ] all my [ __ ] being vocally disappointed in the game's execution yet finding its world and ambience undeniably compelling even if the content of the article is 80 or 90 harsh criticism you sense that almost out of admiration for the previous game's effort they're holding back because the actual content of them implies a much lower score still haven't noticed i'm doing that later on i'm probably gonna be like where's all my stuff i started the game with so much [ __ ] no i have [ __ ] nothing dude clear sky underwent very few changes from its original design as they already had the foundation of their game built and spent most of its year in production tweaking their engine to something more closely approximating their original idea back when shadow of chernobyl was called oblivion lost back when stalker was just a twinkling empty promise in someone's eyes despite the confidence on display with the game's turnaround it was similarly plagued with game breaking bugs on release it turns out a buggy ukrainian game windows vista and unwieldy copy protection made for a dangerous mix and after several patches both official and community made the game still struggles in many ways there are a few ways you can view this one as abject failure and two slavic magic that unquantifiable fascinating jank that only they have the secret recipe for which is special and remarkable and how you just can't recreate it like the footage i used in my previous stalker video this is a mostly vanilla copy with only one mod in place the impression i wanted reflected in the video is as close as i can get to the game that was released by gsc gameworld but i'd like it to also be stable and playable i know their marketing director likes to describe the series as hardcore and not being for non-intellectuals but i really feel like that challenge should be retained within the game so i employed the use of a single community bug fix called sky reclamation project and just like the last one i found myself questioning whether or not it had even properly installed clear sky takes place about a year before the events of shadow of chernobyl a year before strelok's third and final attempt at making it to the center of the zone it opens with a mercenary named scar leading a group of scientists through the zone when there is a massive blowout a release of psychic energy from the noaa sphere that is lethal to anyone not protected from it that's right [ __ ] okay look on the off chance you didn't know what that was in short the noah sphere is a sphere of energy that surrounds the earth and is created by the combined consciousness of every living thing on it a group of scientists working in secret after the fall of the soviet union managed to combine their minds into one entity called sea consciousness and manipulate the noah sphere in hopes of creating like world peace or some [ __ ] but in doing so they [ __ ] it up and created the zone one of its many hazards is that it regularly sort of bends excess energy which kills most things within an ever increasing radius from the center of the zone this is a concept that was used narratively in shadow of chernobyl but in clear sky they appear to happen more frequently and are part of regular gameplay or might be depending on how bugged your playthrough proves to be this has been admitted as a goof on their part they meant to have them in that game but didn't have time to implement them until this iteration anyway the important part of this is scar was able to survive the effects of a blowout which until then was thought to be impossible he wakes up in the base of a secretive scientific military outfit called clear sky one of the first factions to populate the zone as they were formed from a divide in the group of scientists that made up sea consciousness they've instead devoted themselves to figuring out how to repair the noaa sphere and live with the zone seeing it in a similar way to the ecologists and freedom as a sort of gift or wonder for humanity to share and learn from though scar displays some kind of powerful resilience to the zone's emissions they learn that they are also slowly eating away at his immune system so he will likely die if they continue to increase in frequency and they theorize that so too will all the other stalkers the clear sky leader lebedev concludes that the increase in emissions must be the result of stalkers getting close to the zone's center where they are sort of consumed by it making the zone grow both in size and volatility so as scar we are sent out to track down whatever group has been making repeat trips to the center you can probably guess what group that is but we'll just carry on as if you don't the first step in this investigation leads us back to the cordon and sidorovich the traitor that helps out straylock for most of shadow of chernobyl in exchange for the information he knows he makes scar deal with a deteriorating alliance between the military and a group of loners stalkers with no faction affiliation i should mention this game's main plot is much much shorter than shadow of chernobyl's and that is felt even more so if you choose to ignore all the faction war missions you can get caught up in you're free to team up with whichever faction you vibe the most with but there is little in the way of deep lore or world building it's just another opportunity to get into a big shootout which is what this game seems to think was the only thing people enjoyed about the first game i guess now is it as good a place as any to take a spoiler break even though i don't know how necessary it is there is far from any game-changing revelation revealed in clear sky you'll probably have close to the same understanding of the story as you had after the first game but just as a courtesy and for the sake of uniformity if you'd like to not learn any late game details about clear skies plot feel free to skip to this time and in the meantime we'll just chill out maybe take some calls go ahead and call the number on the screen now just go ahead and give me that call put you on the air just give me a call ah there we go hello caller you're on the air oh the best video game youtuber on youtube wow well that's incredibly flattering uh-huh i should do more supernatural videos well if you say so i think hello that's not holy [ __ ] i i didn't think you would answer buddy it's been what six years it's not supposed to we've all been worried about [Music] sadorovich tells scar about strelok's group and that they've been looking around for components to some kind of exotic device following very flimsy breadcrumbs about this group scar eventually meets up with a dude who worked with somebody from straylock's team fang someone who we never actually met because they were already dead in the first game well we don't meet him in this game either but it's interesting i suppose i'm i'm really trying to wring out a plot here but uh so you don't find fang but you do find some people who robbed fang and they have his pda which clues you into everyone involved in straylock's group and that they have been to the center of the zone and they aim to return and find the wish granter the fabled monolith at the zone center lebedev posits that these guys must be who's responsible for all these dangerous emissions and give scar the grim task that straylock himself is soon to be given kill the straylock scar heads out to their last noted destination the agraprom research institute hey this place seems familiar it's interesting that clear sky starts this game off with something of an incorrect hypothesis they think the sole cause of emissions is human interference with the zone center a result of the zone fighting off intruders using blowouts like white blood cells to sentiently protect whatever is at its center which while sea consciousness is still alive might be partially true emissions are likely used both out of necessity and strategically but i'm guessing clear sky splintered away from the chernobyl scientists before learning all about the noah sphere and the zone being caused because of tampering with it and it needing to release built up energy after they [ __ ] up reality because they put a lot of stock into this mission to stop straylock as if once he's out of the picture the blowouts will stop when the truth is they don't know what's going to happen if you get to the center they still have a sort of whimsical idealization of what the zone is it seems like such a pointless and doomed mission to base this entire game around because there's no mention of clear sky in shadow of chernobyl it's not like they're remembered for this conflict which just confuses me i guess this confusion i had with the new faction and their motives is one of many plot points in this game that has me wondering who it's for oleg and crew often parroted the sentiment that the game was both meant to address shadow of chernobyl's unanswered questions but also as a game that people could pick up without playing the other one if you remember the first game we played as a strela guy who cleaned didn't actually remember his strelok but uh spoilers valentin this game came out like two days ago come on i can never stay mad at you but i think they may have pandered a bit more towards that second audience because in reality i think it much much easier to dream up a prequel to shadow of chernobyl than it is to dream up a sequel they kind of shot their shot with that story and sure there's plenty you could still do but i don't know if that's something you could figure out in under a year clear sky is largely a retread of the first game that shows off some new levels along the way see in shadow of chernobyl we're playing as straylock who doesn't know that he is straylock he lost his memory so he's looking for this guy named straylock unknowingly doubling over his own footsteps kinda weird that he's essentially going to a bunch of places he's already been asking people if they've seen him and they just shrug their shoulders but that's besides the point in this game we have a new character yes but we're still for the most part following the same path that straylock took it's just happening a little more actively we keep just missing him it will deviate every now and then in that he'll go one way and we'll find some secondary means of catching up to him but many of the same beats are still hit we work for sadorovich we go beneath the agriprom research center where we find a pda in strelok's hideout then we go to yantar and help professor sakharov do some [ __ ] so people's brains won't melt obviously by now the professor has already met straylock and given him the prototype psychic helmet device so you just go through the motions of this kind of mission without it having the same story significance and all this so you can catch up to straylock at the nuclear power plant and run through portals and mow down hordes of monolith soldiers yeah i i played this game before i played this game sakurov tells you that he still has a gps signal for the side device he gave straylock and it's picking up his signal in the red forest which if you're unfamiliar with some of this game's parallels to the actual chernobyl disaster the red forest is an area of about 10 kilometers around the power plant that was hit with such a powerful concentrated dose of radiation that the trees died and turned a red-brown color even after being bulldozed as part of the clean up process it remains one of the most radioactive areas then again the citation for that hasn't been updated since 2006 so maybe all these years and at least two wildfires have calmed it down a bit still probably uh probably wouldn't want to i don't know freaking make out there dude i don't know before we make it to the forest we get the briefest glimpse of straylock and holy [ __ ] that [ __ ] can move 1v1 i guess he anticipated this because he runs across a bridge blows up the tunnel that would have been a straight path to the power plant and sends a squad of hired loners after you how he knows who you are and that you intend to stop him from going to the center i don't know but if you're anything like me you've probably lost interest in the plot by now it's here we meet a new character named forrester who is probably the most intriguing character in this game maybe both games maybe this game should have been about him maybe i love him nah i don't know what love is i think i just wanna freaking make out or something i don't i don't know what this new bit i've invented this guy's been here since before the first disaster and has somehow developed an uncanny ability to navigate through the zone he truly has some kind of strange communion with it almost like it answers his prayers in a way it's really interesting and it's appropriately left unanswered and unexplained forrester helps you save a group of freedom stalkers that have become trapped in a spatial anomaly a delightful addition to the horrors that the zone throws at you they are essentially stuck in one area of the forest in a loop entering invisible portals that send them back to the starting point that's just fun i like the creepier sci-fi elements to the story and this whole part of the game really shines a light on how uncreepy this game is as a whole this is sort of the only moment you get like this where it feels like a survival horror game oh hey guys oh okay can we stop at mcdonald's she can become trust me i like to shoot a man sometimes there's just too many mans to shoot and i get bored of shoot a man this all works out rather serendipitously as the freedom squad emerges from the anomaly on the other side of the raised drawbridge where straylock escaped so clear sky mobilizes to provide them with cover as they lower the bridge which is currently under bandit control with the more dangerous route that straylock took destroyed scar and clear sky make for the scenic route through the town of lemansk much like the first game by now we are at the point of no return it's gonna be non-stop until the end as scar and clear sky are immediately met with heavy monolith resistance the army of brainwashed ex-stalkers that fight to protect the zone center the fighting is pretty relentless from here on it essentially becomes a corridor shooter and there's even a part where you gotta shoot a helicopter which i did with this pistol and they were nice enough to let me take my time oops i got a little jam there hang on alrighty oh snuggle jam [Music] all right well how do you like that when they get close enough clear sky just stays behind to hold them off so scar can go for the power plant and stop stray lock lebadev gives scar an electromagnetic pulse rifle which he has to use on straylock to disrupt the psi armor he got from sakharov without it straylock will be quickly overwhelmed by the intense psy energy when he tries to enter the sarcophagus the big scary tube or the monolith is said to be i don't know if this was a glitch but this is this is what it looked like it's kind of kind of weird anyway once we successfully disable straylock's psychic helmet thing clear sky has about a half second to celebrate before they realize the futility of this mission and the area is hit with a massive blowout with readings that are off the charts everyone safe for the monolith soldiers feels the effect of the emissions and either dies or is zombified effectively wiping out clear sky entirely and presumably scar along with them as he was already not long for this world but unlike shadow of chernobyl clear sky has one possible ending cut scene and it depicts a corridor inside the power plant lined with bodies being brainwashed by sea consciousness including our boy the marked one the cheeky breaky man he who would not get out of here stalker he who dared to just stand there and not come in the unwrapped mummy himself setting the stage for the events of this game's sequel i like this final cut scene and i like how grim the ending of this game is it really is just everyone dies slowly and horrifically and then the de facto villain i guess gets brainwashed to hunt and kill himself by a bunch of brains in jars i can't say i'm crazy about the execution and most of what led up to it couldn't really say it's earned but i guess i'm just a sucker for a bummer ending [Music] i don't think clear sky has a good story i guess to some extent neither did shadow of chernobyl but there was a lot of it there was this messy tangled ball of sci-fi schlock that was aided by some incredibly strong visual storytelling and atmosphere if anything i appreciate it a lot more now that it's been paired with this game story honestly i'm not really sure what actually was left to explore with the story of straylock i understand that he had tried to get to the center of the zone before and failed does knowing the specifics of this develop or reveal character does it build on the game's world i don't think there is any aspect of clear sky story that is so importantly intertwined with shadow of chernobyl that you couldn't just snip it out of the canon and have there be no effect the most substantial revelation i think is that clear sky as a group existed which is not necessary but noteworthy this is not to say i think all the ideas it comes up with are bad it makes some fun additions to the lore like spatial anomalies and red forest and we get to hang out by the dugo radar and there's like a little bit of lore about how they were using it to manipulate the citizens of le mans it's like a tenth of its size but it's co it's i recognized it and i thought that that was sweet there's a part where you have to escape a tunnel before it floods and you see a bunch of tiny mutants fleeing in the opposite direction like in the flashback sequences in the first game there's plenty that is downright lovely i disassociated through much of the experience of playing this game and it honestly feels manipulative but when the game decides to explore something new i'm right there again because i [ __ ] really like sock getting tired of saying the full title it's sock it's sock and kiss i just fundamentally don't see the point of the story i wouldn't be surprised if secretly this game exists because they just wanted a second crack at making oblivion lost the things they felt it necessary to get hard answers for are only things i couldn't give a [ __ ] about like i already got that it happened i was told an approximation of this off screen event and i got it thumbs up let's do this leeroy the thing we didn't know was that well the first couple times he tried to get at the monolith it played out much the same way except he didn't make it those times holy [ __ ] dude are you serious part of me feels like i'm being overly critical but part of me thinks i give them a lot of passes there's a lot of plot details that i think i'm subconsciously head cannoning away and and they probably just they didn't even [ __ ] know they just messed up and like contradicted their own lore and i i give them the benefit of the doubt we know straylock has attempted to get to the monolith three times we had a whole game about the third time that the one time that mattered the one time that had any significant effect on the zone so why would your instinct be to explore the failed attempt of the second trip through the eyes of someone who doesn't even see this [ __ ] guy for the whole story the quote-unquote unanswered questions from shadow of chernobyl for me we're all character related because you dumped all the info you could have about the zone so instinctively i would think a prequel would explore those fragmented flashbacks we see i figured we'd explore that early relationship between straylock and this doctor guy it's it seems like they have significant history it seems like straylock has history the game paints him as this mythical figure but doesn't really explain why i'd figure you'd take this opportunity to say something smaller scale that would affect the biggest story you could have told which you already told you know a small thing that would add more significance to that story but instead it seems they tried to match the scale and significance of it which is nullified when you realize that nobody in the story is really remembered all this conflict and life lost is in service to this guy getting brainwashed that's the only significant thing that results from all of the actions here at this point i'm just repeating myself but you got to give me a hook you gotta give me a dead girlfriend a dead boyfriend a daddy hates and not like a chernobyl like girlfriend that shows up every five seconds to whisper asmr exposition i i get it dude you had a girlfriend okay we all get that you [ __ ] i just mean an emotional core let me know straylock is more than a gi joe action figure man yeah it doesn't have to be clever just anything to hold on to can you can you help me with that i'm so lonely much of clear skies changes were focused on its gameplay and addressing the feedback they got from shadow of chernobyl for better and worse it still plays in much the same way that game does one of the most anomalous things about shadow of chernobyl is its gameplay it is all at once engaging immersive baffling frustrating and annoying delightful and empowering yet miserable and demoralizing it [ __ ] sucks i love it well like that game this is still an open world first-person shooter with rpg elements taking place across a hazardous violent post-apocalyptic-like ukraine filled with toxic radiation packs of wild mutants anomalies that make you implode set on fire or electrify and roving gangs of warring stalkers there is however a much heavier emphasis on that last one the faction warfare that made up a small but enjoyable part of shadow of chernobyl is now a large part of the makeup of this show game that's happening i'm developing a channel identity crisis am i the supernatural channel or am i the video game channel only time will tell like you and i both know there's a death clock on those videos it's gonna be games that's what's gonna save me on top of clear sky you can join duty or freedom or the loners or even the bandits which is enticing as hell because they do have the best theme song hell yeah you can pretty much join anyone except the military who are out to kill any stalkers regardless of which patch they wear or which absolute banger they bump in their bases but doing so makes you immediate enemies to whichever group or groups they antagonize once you join one of these groups you work to capture and hold control points around the map the more you hold the more resources and manpower you have in the continuing fight doing this benefits you in that you get special rewards for your assistance and you get access to certain camps but that's gonna vary wildly depending on who you join and in some cases can just be more troubled than they're worth in truth you don't need to participate in any of the faction wars you will have less enemies and an overall easier time traveling but you will miss out on a lot of rare items obviously when it comes to a stalker game my experience may have been an outlier but the entirety of the faction war system didn't seem like it was working all that well i'd try to take part in it but once i defeated all the enemies on a control point my faction just wouldn't send me back up so i'd wind up just holding the line for like an hour until i gave up then like two hours later i'd be on my way to a distress call in another area and get an update thanking me for taking over that last one that nobody showed up to or far more likely it would just go unacknowledged and then the next time i return to the area it's been repopulated by enemies it's really [ __ ] annoying when they need your help you'll just be managing your own business trying to enjoy the atmosphere of stalker when you get a stream of agitated radio help us out transmissions please they're killing our guys where are you soon it's gonna be too late quick we're getting slaughtered here damn you where on earth are you quick we're getting slaughtered even when i am helping them they'll still yell at me to like give them commands and stuff they'll say things like you know what waiting on your order or uh will fire on your command but they just do whatever the [ __ ] they want i'm sure they spent a lot of time on this and were proud of the result but its implementation is just as buggy as everything else that's a big piece of programming to add to this gordian knot of a game and it's admirable but not only do i think it has too many still prevalent issues i think it betrays a lot of what made shadow of chernobyl work you plot out who you're gonna help because all your enemies are depicted on your map so even if you have no intention of going near them you see groups of bandits and even mutants so you can just as easily avoid them entirely i feel like that kills a lot of surprise and mystery that this world used to have you didn't know what was going to be around the corner and now you kinda always do it's not really conductive to the survival horror aspect of stalker which was working really well before and with the focus on faction wars you're gonna be spending most of your time with a group of dudes shooting at a group of dudes which i can see the fun in but i preferred when this was mixed into other activities it sorta encourages the feeling that you have to keep moving and helping people and that works against my desire to take my time exploring the adjustments made to combat makes all this extra combat feel far more punishing and less fair the first stalker is an incredibly difficult game but i feel like i understood why it was there are little quirks in the mechanics of this one that i don't get and they upset me i think there is a degree of skill you develop playing stalker where it's still really [ __ ] hard but when you die you sort of learn a lesson from it these [ __ ] hurt for a nasty surprise in clear sky there are things that i can't believe they play tested and said hell yeah this game is better now firstly taking cover in this game when you're in a group is nearly impossible the ai of your teammates knows to take cover during fire fights but they in no way acknowledge you and your similar desire to take cover so instead of clipping through you to do the same thing they just shove you out of the way and out from cover where you're likely to just catch a stray bullet and immediately die i would even attempt to mitigate this by falling back and taking cover further away from them and it would still happen it was a consistent annoyance that i had to stay as far away from my team as possible because they had no concern for my safety something that bothered me a great deal but i can understand why some could perceive it as an improvement is how bleeding works in shadow of chernobyl there were stages of bleeding that you could halt using a bandage the first stage will drain your health but it will probably stop by itself and then it's just increasingly dire for the other two steps in clear sky if you're hit it's a coin toss you're either just hurt or you're bleeding and immediately in the red and if you don't have usually more than one bandage you will bleed out and die you could take this as realism but i take it as a needless frustration in an already punishing game the other clear difference in combat is that the enemies are way more likely to use grenades to flush you out of cover and they have [ __ ] laser guided sight with those things at a certain point i just understood if someone yells out i don't care how confident i am with my cover i'm just gonna run even with the hud indicator you have very little time to react to grenades and it often feels like the cheapest way to die in this game which is saying a lot cause there's a lot of cheap ways to die they introduced that to you within the first hour by leading you to this field with a turret at the other end of it you just have to death by death piece together the way out of this area and half of getting through this seems like just getting lucky because if you're hit you stop running it's [ __ ] unacceptable i need i need to watch someone else's playthrough to vindicate my frustration with this get the [ __ ] out of here as soon as i was out of range of the turret you're attacked by a pack of dogs i can easily see how this area could very early on turn away a new player i think this is one of many thresholds you hit that determine whether or not you're gonna keep playing to add insult to injury they offer a route without a turret in it but only if you enter this area determine you can't make it through here and turn back but nobody is actually telling you that's an option the game was telling me this is where i needed to go so why would i think entering here and leaving would magically trigger an alternate route that's not how games work i trusted you how could i know that the only new addition in combat that feels merciful is that now enemies will sort of stagger when you hit them in certain spots buying you a split second to finish them off or take cover again in shadow of chernobyl i had a lot of trouble understanding how iron sights worked i just didn't seem to be hitting what i was aiming at and while i was more comfortable with them in this game weirdly enough pistols just don't have them for some reason so my development as a gamer meant nothing to you this time there is much death in the wasteland a lot of just odd slight adjustments that make the game feel like a playground of experiments like the way your vision focuses on your weapon as you reload which is an interesting idea as you would be focusing on what your hands are doing while you're reloading you wouldn't perfectly have one eye on the gun and straight ahead not something i'd want in every shooter but i can appreciate trying things they must have also figured that the starvation mechanic or what was left of it it just didn't need to be there which i agree with though it does come back in the next game the addition of guides is also pretty merciful now that i think about it but not something i needed these allow you to pay to fast travel to different points of interest on the map but for me it's another thing that discourages exploration and emergent gameplay hoofing it everywhere is half the fun there's an almost meditative quality to it i imagine this is the same slight euphoria that those who play truck simulator games or things like that must feel this is where i'm comfortable this is familiar to me being afraid of the uncertainty in every step i take the rpg elements that came in the form of your weapon armor and artifact upgrades have all received either an overhaul or a redesign but like a lot of the changes this game makes i like the idea of them more so than how they wind up being integrated weapons still degrade with use causing more jams and effects on accuracy and you can still attach things like scopes or suppressors to them but now you can also take them to a mechanic that can both repair them and upgrade their barrels and grips if you've got the schematics unlocked because of this the majority of weapons you're gonna find from downed enemies are gonna be nearly useless i think this was done intentionally so you couldn't make an easy living selling your weapons because it's only the high quality upgraded ones that are worth anything and you're unlikely to stumble upon one outside of a quest reward and whatnot the result is sort of a mixed bag because it does wind up being absurd that areas will be left littered with piles of guns that nobody cares to collect it's a very un-american sentiment but somebody please take my guns anybody they're going to waste out here they're getting rained on i do appreciate that this kind of forces you to invest in a long-term relationship with one weapon instead of constantly swapping them out like a looter shooter but but all these things are are concepts i can go back and forth on because it's also weird that your enemies are very good at shooting these guns and then you pick it up it's a piece of [ __ ] they look all cool shooting their guns you pick it up you try shooting it a little flag pops out that says you suck you're an idiot they also wanted to encourage you to use the redesigned artifact system in shadow of chernobyl artifacts are not only plentiful but usually sort of laying around out in the open there is rarely anything impeding you from just walking over to it and picking it up aside from maybe a mutant or an anomaly and the puzzle of managing their buffs and debuffs was really enjoyable to me in clear sky artifacts are usually invisible and can only be found using a tracking device that bleeps when you're close to one but not passively you have to actually have the device out and be sweeping an area and you're likely to find it actually inside an anomaly which requires you to surgically pick it up without being hurt by it this is a change where i do think the logic behind it is sound i think it's a creative way to make something that wasn't all that interesting more of a challenge make it worth more to you i mean this this is kind of the premise of stalkers they're out here to find artifacts so it's kind of weird that you wouldn't also be making a living through artifacts you are a stalker it all makes sense it's it's more gamified really the only downside to it i think is that it's not really new user friendly it's like this anomaly one thing i appreciated about shadow of chernobyl was that it was good at teaching you how the game worked without patronizing you and leading you through an obnoxious tutorial and when it did try to do that it didn't seem like it actually gave a [ __ ] if you retained the information the artifact thing is something that's kind of esoteric and it's also completely optional you can go through the whole game never finding a single artifact and i think that is something worth taking an extra moment to explain would have taken all of two minutes and now you get the importance of it you can see oh this is probably my best way of making money where this personally bugs me is that you you just don't come across them very often and when you do they don't have that fun give and take with their stats that balance of equipping the right ones seems far less significant probably the biggest reason clear sky is often thought of as the black sheep of the series is its emphasis on dude on dude shooting and i think that is really regrettable but that's not to say that this isn't occasionally entertaining the level design often makes for some memorable shootouts there's one near the end that takes place in a construction site it's full of ledges and winding catwalks which pose a great challenge and on top of that at night it's mostly pitch black except for the occasional flare being shot into the sky giving you a momentary look at the layout it's really clever and atmospheric the moments i have the strongest affinity for in this series are the ones that feel lonely and oppressive which in the previous game at least were most likely to happen in one of the many underground areas the bunkers and labs and whatnot which clear sky is sorely lacking there is at least one and i was living for it this is my natural habitat i'm like a little rat a little gremlin a ghooly guy with beady eyes and tiny grabbies an outcast a loner real piece of [ __ ] blowouts are another new addition to gameplay but i'm almost positive they didn't work for me y'all dropped your beans yet i think i'm feeling something i don't think i experienced one of the randomly generated ones only the ones that were scripted that is until i started the game over and then they seem to start working which is a shame because they are visually very scary and powerful looking i'd imagine they would have added another layer of tension that's probably why i didn't even think to mention until now because it didn't work sure there are probably several things i've complained about that have been amended by mods like the still glaring lack of women which i actually don't trust modders to do anything reasonable with stalker was already one of the most beautifully atmospheric games to exist and there aren't a lot of changes to it visually but what they do change has a pretty noticeable effect advancements to that onerous and curious creation called x-ray engine allow for bits of lighting and particle trickery that while archaic looking now is not without its charm seeing the world of stalker rendered with volumetric lighting and dynamic wet surfaces is real easy on the eyes character models are still one of the more antiquated aspects of the game they probably could have used a little update and certainly more variety but they do have a little more versatility to their animations they'll hop over obstacles and stuff holy [ __ ] he moves like they do but you can also see their feet acclimating to the geometry of whatever they're standing on which is something even modern games don't really care to find a solution for these little changes are a welcome but not entirely needed improvement that's a feeling i had a lot about most aspects of clear sky because ultimately most of the things i wanted changed or addressed about shadow of chernobyl were left more or less the same and many of the things i was comfortable with were changed to mixed and often strange results they didn't do anything to npcs and their dialogue and your dialogue it's still stuck with this facade of branching conversations when really it may as well be one button that says talk and then that person spills their guts in a wall of text maybe a functioning stealth mechanic i don't know but they thought it more important to let bullets pass through trees that's what this game needs less cover when i like something that much i get real protective of any slight change to even the ui so i often butted against these i'm a creature of habit unhealthily so self-destructively so you might say i don't know the specifics of how exactly it was changed but the day and night cycle seem more dynamic i'm much more aware of the time of day and the weather and night specifically is way more atmospheric way darker which i think is a great change walking around at night was already terrifying and now that i can barely make out anything past my headlight it looks fantastic and forces you to become hyper aware of sound in areas like the red forest this intense dark mixed with some brilliantly effective sound design made for a really eerie experience just a light rustling in the bushes or a twig snapping enough to have you freeze in your tracks or just bolt out of there and most of the time it's not even anything this would again be far more effective if i couldn't just check my map and see if there actually was a mutant nearby oh oh hey look at that well there he is voice acting is of similar quality to the previous game which is technically bad but it's such a part of this series that i'd hate to see it go would you look at that the little [ __ ] cracked like an egg are you dumb or something piss off listen up get your ass in gear before i pass the cap in it well you asked for it i don't think it's as chock full of memeable lines unless you want to make a thing out of your needy faction asking if you've forgotten about them they're killing our guys where are you we can't hold them honey i and i didn't okay i'm hit with a pang of anxiety every time someone contacts me on the radio it is unignorable why do you think i haven't answered my phone or a text message in over three years russian composer vladimir frey aka moose is back doing the soundtrack well his music is back the majority of clear sky soundtrack is actually shadow of chernobyl soundtrack but that is an excellent soundtrack so i suppose i shouldn't complain but i couldn't help but think that a bit lazy could have had a whole new soundtrack of beautifully creepy ambience but what few new tracks this offers are enjoyable and most of the new ones are from composer alexi omalchuk the track that plays in the new hospital area is particularly tragic and industrial sounding another thing i kind of missed out on mostly because i did i just didn't know it was an option and it was turned off by default is that originally clear sky had a sort of dynamic soundtrack where these high energy compositions would kick in during moments of combat [Music] and and i don't mind listening to them it's competently written cheesy matrix adjacent scoring with that mix of orchestra guitar and drum and bass they're fun and sound like nice accompaniment to gunfights having said that they are also wildly out of place in this franchise immersion breaking to say the least and i can absolutely get why this paired with the abundance of big shootouts would make this already divisive game seem all the more strayed from what most fans loved about it i love how cold and empty the world of stalker is and this is way too modern and exciting for this dead world full of sad people and crumbling ruins where music that isn't bleak ambience is is a beacon of rest it's a sign that you're somewhere safe and for a moment you don't have to worry about what's lurking in every direction unless there's a blowout coming i guess you're never really safe she's dead he died in a fire there's no dental records the case is unsolved goodbye what makes this game so damn good i mean this game is amazing the others were better but i mean this is so different so unique not turned into crap mass effect 3 crisis 2 half-life 2 episodes 1 and 2 new vegas ok some of those are good but not as good as their prequels this game is good get it for 30 or less the ai are smart the rpg elements are very well integrated warning this game is scary and creepy no doubt it is scary as hell scarier than dead space 1 and fear combined just amazing get it if you want a new game to add to your favorites list my favorite part of this review is is the blind energy behind it just coming in hot and then the unwillingness to condemn all the games you listed it's incredibly relatable even when trying to collect my thoughts with this game it's like i instinctively want to praise it if anything out of its familiarity because it shares so many similarities to a game i think is very good it feels counterintuitive to say it's not all that great i i couldn't even do that couldn't even do it there i wanted to be meaner but that's all i could say i don't understand why people talk about this game like it is biggest [ __ ] they've ever seen play how much as i can see no one of them ever passed that great game because if they did things would be different my personal opinion is that those bugs in game and there are not so much of them doesn't matter if the story and the gameplay are great there are many details in this game and they are all awesome especially weapons the same thing is about stalker shadow of chernobyl both games are open world and you can actually pass it on many many different ways all of you who still think that game doesn't worth playing try passing more than one hour of gameplay your defense here is essentially how i would describe shadow of chernobyl it's a strange game that is held back by a lot of bugs and half implemented ideas but in that case i really do think its story and gameplay are redemptive but not because they're flawless i think it's the particular way they're flawed that results in a particular alchemy that just kind of works for reasons i'm not deluding myself that i couldn't imagine how one would think differently you like what you like i think we both just like different flavors of garbage from the moment i loaded this game i was amazed the great storyline the atmosphere and immersion i don't know why people rated this in the mid 70s score it's clearly an amazing game yes the dialogue is spoken with a broken russian accent but surprise the game is set in russia so it adds to the realism the action is much faster than the first docker the interface is better the ui is more responsive and the music is fantastic tip enable dynamic music in the sound option and you'll love the battle music in a way clear sky is what shadow of chernobyl should have been it's a night and day improvement in all aspects of the game and clear sky has beat all my expectations well firstly the game isn't set in russia i know it's weird the game about the famous ukrainian disaster not being set in russia what the heck but the problem is these things you're describing as its strengths are the things that differentiate it from the game people played a year earlier the things that make it feel disconnected from that initial experience which fulfilled a niche more so than something like clear sky we get shooter man games non-stop they literally don't stop making these but people don't really make what shadow of chernobyl was very often also of the laundry list of valid complaints people have for this game i don't think the accents are ever included in that i don't know we've got wildly different ideas of what inspires immersion there is rarely time to be immersed in this game because somebody's yelling at me or somebody's blowing up usually me got this from walmart 4 days prior to the release no cd key included as there is a major print debacle google is your friend what do i [ __ ] google walmart print debacle that doesn't bring anything up i abandon your review because you have sent me on a fool's errand wow this is seriously the best post-apocalyptic game ever except maybe fallout 3 when it comes out oh you dear sweet fool doesn't know what's coming oh it's like that dude from pompeii that died jerking off this is probably the best game in the stalker franchise yes the bugs were there but stalker series is bugged as a whole clear sky had a memorable story that even to this day after six years i can remember even the tiniest bits this is a game that is worth playing but keep in mind you need to save a lot it did have a memorable story i'll give you that i think i just preferred when it was actually in shadow of chernobyl fallout for men gross this is fallout for real men enough said absolutely zero women in the game 10 out of 10. i know i shouldn't have looked at steam not as good as the other stalker games but it is still fun and the bandit radio is in the game which makes it even better 8 out of 10. thank you to some extent i knew what i was getting into with clear sky i knew this was kind of the outlier of the franchise but i intentionally tried not to consume any information about it before playing in some flimsy attempt to be pleasantly surprised but i see now a lot of what i feel is probably the common consensus there is this weird part of me that doesn't want to just let go and say i didn't really like this game and i don't think i'll ever revisit it at least not in this vanilla form but it's just like how could i say that when hours into shadow of chernobyl i was thinking oh i love this this is like one of my favorite games now but minutes into clear sky i was contemplating not even going through with playing it it's entirely by the merit of that first game that i bothered to work through that first roadblock all the way to the end shadow of chernobyl has a multitude of problems but i don't think i ever considered just not playing it anymore just giving up whatever is at the end of the rainbow can't be worth the genuine frustration i'm feeling but i felt that more than once with clear sky it's a real slog before it gets anywhere near the cozy lovable zone present in the other two games there was a good while when i had a better weapon and a better grasp of the game's changes where i think i enjoyed it a lot but by that time i was already on my way to the point of no return where the game is put on rails and that was not my favorite part of the last game and i liked it even less in this one because it felt really disjointed for both narrative and gameplay reasons there's a part where you just spawn at the power plant and once his face is like that's a prototype magnetic weapon and i laughed out loud because it's just like okay well how did i get here and how did i get this i'm over encumbered now and being shot at it's like a [ __ ] scene was missing in shadow of chernobyl you get here by being teleported did i teleport here does clear sky guy teleporter there's also just so much reused i began to feel guilty that the things i enjoyed were the parts that were sort of an asset flip it was just the stuff that was borrowed from another game it makes me think gsc didn't really want to make a thoughtful addition to their world more like they wanted a do-over and they had already written off the first stalker game as a loss and started working on the next version of it one closer to an idea they had so long ago by now but i feel like with shadow of chernobyl they made changes to these ideas and compromises and alterations born out of limitation that resulted in something richly creative and then in a misguided way tried to undo these things and retroactively reinstall the concepts they couldn't fit in when they maybe should have just rolled with what they had because it was actually really good and if anything just for the sake of symmetry with the series of these three games this one stands out it's like oh i see what you're doing this is really cool oh so you're not doing that and now you're splitting the difference i guess i can live with that the story is fine if a little non-existent i'm just not convinced it provides anything of worth to the lore it could easily be removed with little effect to anything as it explores something that is just reset at the start of the next game uh sir i don't want to fault clear sky for being hard i like the difficulty in this series but this one seems particularly unbalanced i liked that playing master difficulty in shadow of chernobyl felt challenging but it felt like i was equally matched with my enemy they could kill me real fast but i could kill them real fast in this one they can kill me real fast over and over end of sentence the addition of things like blowouts and the one or two new horror areas do a lot to win me back they are a heavy dose of atmosphere in a game that doesn't want to give you a second to appreciate it it's because of things like that that i could never just write this game off entirely there are strengths to it i think it also looks charming it's just trying to be a game i don't want to play well that's the end of the video thank you for watching it hey here's here's a little engagement experiment in the comments below leave a comment maybe rank the stalker games do something i should give you an instruction i guess i don't know you don't have to do any of this really i'm sorry i didn't mean to inconvenience you uh but if you've got the time like comment and subscribe check the description for links to other things concerning my content like merch and music my twitter patreon my discord all these things can be found there it's a very loud motorcycle motorcycles are cool love it love hearing them right next to my bedroom window anyway thanks for watching the video and an extra special thanks to ailing uncle resurrection game master bayard brown this deal is getting worse all the time nazeem kamalu ray newstime karen mavel dark raptor 86 oysto alexander sunden octo alexander smith joseph zanoni dost days charles marr pizza shift daphne pittendry jacob sewers andre perkins matt bastard fart mother carrot whip it out turds free free plug for turts check him out on twitch under turts mcsquirts ruibisome goatee mcgork ken dog jay moonpix aubry also on twitch i should i shouldn't make this a habit over complicate the credits uh wayne bristol edward avila salvatore tosti stu cabliat the brave ava nerve nate blanchard sergey veronson p dizzle ophelia fish wife a hanging chad donut stalker simon murray brosuf jones ishanji rose persian air soren phil mad monty 98 mirden emery's nafis hook robert brandon technica spooky mandalore gaming david harpstreit dan cullen dazed clockwork brandon mcfadden travis houston whoops i got an update on my stalker pda there's a blow out coming where was i travis brandon mcfadden travis houston hannis jacoby big honk tyler robinson robert scotland nunu m nick timmons tommy steenrod aleister stewart junk food robert ombud hitoshi-san zj marcus chaney roland jordan bolzano stever thomas pelican brett weaver bishi 93 james bloom swood operator fickle pickle jar david from key teeth the teeth teeth teeth and true light commissar doxa pine flastan artist knight spider leland miliocus alas rat gunk atlantean goldfish sergey vedovan rowdy roddy peeper major millions tyler f mr boojangles evo zapp alec galler strahinka radenkovic dan richardson fred greisson otter soldier lost viadomis megan carmody dj necroman meme queen j marshall joe face el jazquar sweet pete backseat esquire declan j keane totally not a mimic michael king petrus montanu kyuchan jean philippe nicholas nelson faisy vivitis ross armstrong byron callan callum may grim beard and nero are my two dads rorke mckenzie austin scott keith pitt brianna maria mckenzie lucas kettner nikita denisov mr sark dylan sorum daniel person brendan naftal jojo evans colton rowe zuber tuber sebastian wappler sean clausen omar yid calavera bindle chris jordans janek banez colin boyd trenton wilkins big cheese 1000 david offered scotch 117 homeboy dirtbag nuan sonar mystical lint james young mangy mongrel tyler long crispy adam page a.i mike garza yak spiker khalil corey chris talarico dilda spicy milkand 4-hour depression nap nick hill anna trans rights xo ya boi nikki g roy gendron pen knight 89 vulpix chick diaz carmen a league of struggle terranism greg buchold arminius j smokey jefferson no i didn't forget about you smokey jefferson micah j best intj loves her intp yui cannon goboom city tino richter vargar verticus olympus 3dx sonata fanatica matt x ghost my waifu joe jamison aeris alessandrakis chris audi lorelei ben l alex theodoroff t stoney xanax od grindcore lover op downfall edward crawford or sandro sydney steverson tax deductible andre kalganov tino david moreau sir alohomora pedro costume adventure game geek ghost lps niles crane 19 johan cavand adrian fauci christopher white schneider ricky goss pixelfish wednesday v alex hannah professor next lucas kaz no bunny the gaming beehive little b drunk taco matthias waltman ricky rigatoni robert mcmahon hashy singh soul bad guys dragon punch aj leroy brad anthony daniel sam c warhopper kevin thurber jeep pete sierra prize the voyant claire gargantua joe reynolds ignacio de gougliami melon man level zero sven grell grim beard butt with bananas taped to his hands okay cat dad test done yoni niyamela homeboy dirtbag cram pig newt razzle dazzle b13 uncle dozer tv dickety d7187 kanem walbucktus slavic dreams phony soprano steven francisco santana the becker sattler clan piotr sankofsky nameless alexis pinsonalt visitor information nicholas monroe gato malo val halverson vincent cronin rith cynoys seaway jerk christian danny storgard alex stutson austin mathis drenched odd one indeed a.l carpenter ian laser stephen leflame solar box schluff brian sanson nick hoffman just hugh mjargar half asian viking sentient turtle yukovalus silvano gonzalez whiskey grenade adolencey qtp2t j raptor john thanos said i don't know about that one either of clemens karma the real kal-el qui-lay games brit cocoon slava chafnenko colin jameson baker tony glead lefazar bones malones eugene balder zan eric leong vucrules nagru daniel newberry manchester sweeney z fitzgerald 93 bimbizzle viet do pentagon black dust sucker conrad eastman oliver marshall luke gazaway furen pagan butler ickyfu inside my strange place brandon shock sam fuller cloister 56 yaserian allegory lucas mendel wendigo of fear worth living rasmus karis devaith faust ian michael b john adams ian baranek florian vogel bertie bertig rachel rose vinculus avalanche reviews negative creep chris barb sean lovett haimo statman boyee hl longboy manu weidman danny d tony brandt joshua stewart currano chef toker gideon zhu bear scott motus frand vay peachy pixel 8 sir tristan sarah denman stanislav casey ghoul zachary schulstad ross carmona khalifas sami 3d mikey tambourine schwab alaba moral daniel genn sean bradford demar unpolished mirror john stone frantic atlantic jack mager hamish batten mara elena jacob hanley octo raul vidal josh hessler cam palmy nylanthrope emilio hansen alex yui prod mage van the cheesen nick johnson franz leonardo antonio acquasanta buckaroo who done it bertigan dantech k3 frank eric long low c asroy the sid 4 zik lao andre kurankov edward wheeler someone finally pays me ren quirky top hat bit matter love you more lauren jacob gardner zane break dead alewives lewis quinn whalen robert shanovsky emmett arthur pager pj william riker astro shepherd pulpoed viggo love bubblegum kirapop lynn lovett epicdude467 poet russell freaky demon popeye bark tayano sandman rubin corn red ryan malone thyrork hazel connor perennial astronaut j-dog 3433 david badzinski fubar gubbins jalcore cryptid john joshua mclaren reyo palmista anthony h shantiva phoenix flames james lambert summerstorm big death energy eva graveladova will m kyle williams kimiya john brumley lauren miller roosevelt hoover the fourth cmg-161 gianni matrigrano oh i got both of you on here dua cinicellina savers could be soros and you're doing like a church's thing i'm sorry and 82 pedro for being a patron again thank you so much i can't even express how much i appreciate your support keep keeping my channel alive and keeping me alive and uh thanks for putting up with the uh influx of supernatural videos i am endlessly grateful for that uh hope you're staying safe hope you're staying goth hope you're staying gaming i'll see you in the next video okay bye i'll talk to you later [Music] you

Channel: Grim Beard

Views: 155,286

Keywords: grimbeard stalker, stalker clear sky review, stalker clear sky gameplay, stalker series, stalker clear sky opinion, grimbeard clear sky, stalker clear sky, survival horror, ukrainian game, shadow of chernobyl, call of pripyat, stalker soc, goth gamer nation

Id: P6Ul8-FRW60

Length: 66min 22sec (3982 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Blackboxeq]

just remembered why I like playing Escape from tarkov... and why I am looking forward to the next stalker. ty. ( also the mods for these games push the things you like up to 11)

[u/ellimist91]

Grimbeard is a fantastic channel with a criminally small sub count, you should check out his other vids

[u/Ajax_The_Bulwark]

Does this, or any other mod, make stalker better without making it harder? I've played a couple but they all made the game insanely difficult.