S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky PC DVD £16.73 delivered from Lovefilm - add Quidco to get it for £15.89

I'd recommend checking reviews for this first though, it sounds like they've ramped the difficulty up to an almost unfair level.

Yeah this game seems to be a lot harder than the first one, although you can always put the difficulty on its lowest setting.

Good price, but, I too would recommend reading reviews first for a different reason - the ones I've read haven't been too kind on it!

I might add the first Stalker is excellent, well worth the cheap price it can be picked up for now.

And if you disable the dynamic lighting effects, it will run perfectly well on older 3D cards.

Agreed, the difficulty level has been ramped up to 'realistic' but the game is a much improved, and overhauled version of the first (which can now be picked up for around £8!). It's one of those games where you will either love it, or hate it - much like the first one. STALKER die hard fans will tell you this was the game that Shadow Of Chernobyl should have been.

I'd be interested to see some of the reviews Tickedon mentioned. I always use PC Zone as the benchmark for reviewing, and they gave it a 'Recommended' rating (ie if you're a fan of the genre, you should buy it). For the price up there at the top, it's a good investment...most games you buy these days last 5-6 hours, but this should last you twice as long, if not even longer due to the depth of it.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/plat...earsky#critics - shows the reviews from multiple publications.

Like you said, love or hate. Just there seems to be more 'hate' coming from sources where I put some weight on the reviews.

what?! its awful it ran like a dog on my factory oc 8800 and it was dull and formulaic. FEAR is much better as is COD4 doom3 bf2 / 2142 basically every other major shooter ever. if this is worse i shudder at the thought.

The first stalker (radiation pack) can be picked up in pc world for 4.98

I absolutely hated STALKER. In fact its sitting on my desk right now having been tried to death but ultimately failed. I bought it when I first got an HD 2900 XT and it ran really well and looked the part but thats all it did.

I just dont understand why the makers of games think that by making a game unfairly difficult it presents some kind of 'challenge' when all it really does is cause frustration to the player. Every 2 minutes you have packs of wild dogs or animals attacking you so that when you actually DO get to some action with the bad guys you either have no health or no bullets and I wont even get started on the radiation nonsense.

I wouldnt buy the second game if you paid me.

i bought it in asda says 16 pounds on asda site went in was 22 pounds not to impressed with it good eye candy but the multiplayer is pretty **** and it has a lot of bugs its an ok game but theres better out there.thinking off taking it back to asda to be honest do u think they would give me a refund lol got ripped off 22 quid :(

These comments demonstrate exactly what I said earlier - you either love it, or you hate it. To say that STALKER is worse than FEAR/COD4/DOOM etc though is a cheap shot, you're talking about a completely different type of game.

STALKER is not an action FPS with spectacular set-pieces and it was never meant to be. It's an RPG that's played in first person, which is complex, offering multiple endings and branching storylines (granted, they're a bit buggy and in pre-patched copies broken) but that was always the beauty of it. What the developers set out to do was very ambitious, and they almost pulled it off - hence where Clear Sky comes in, it's more of the game that the original should have been.

It was always meant to be challenging, to just before the point of frustration - you can't play STALKER like you'd play COD4/HL2 or any other 'on rails' FPS, you have to approach it with a different mentality. If you take the stealthy, thought out approach as opposed to going in all guns vlazing, you'll very soon get sick of it as the AI will beat you hands down every time. It's one of those games you need to persevere with, but ultimately it's a rewarding gameplay experience. Well, I thought it was anyway

FPS Stealth games only work if they allow you to be stealthy. STALKER doesnt do that. There is death everywhere you go in the game. Which probably would mimic a real life situation but does not for a good game make.

I'm one of those who thought it was a brilliant game and all this **** about there being death everywhere is bull. It is difficult but that’s what sets it apart. Unlike most games you have to actually use that thing called your brain. If you go in guns blazing your going to lose. And I absolutely agree you can't compare this to an FPS (Team Fortress 2 rules!) because they are totally different types of games. In my opinion its like comparing Civilisation to FEAR.

Action is dependant on your decisions. If you decide to attack everyone you meet then you’ll have a lot of it but at the start not everyone’s out to kill you because unlike most other games, they’re not part of some greater conspiracy to see you dead.

As for dogs and things chasing you if you stray off the beaten path then yes that’s true but the exact same thing can be said for other titles such as the extremely over rated Elder Scrolls: Oblivion where you bloody have the whole forest running after you. In fact it's much worse in that game.

The only thing that was bad about STALKER were the bugs and performance issues due to the huge world they created but the patches have fixed things up.

Here’s a link to reviews for the first game (and keep in mind this was despite all the bugs). As for the reviews for Clear Sky that someone linked to before I suggest you actually read the reviews as even the people who gave it 70 said it was a good game. And then there’s the point that only one reviewer gave it a score lower than 70. Overall 77 out of 100 isn’t bad.

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/stalkershadowofchernobyl?q=stalker#critics

I guess it is like Marmite! You either love it or hate it!

I posted that, and I did actually read some of them. The IGN one was particularly bad, saying how buggy it was and annoying changes they've made.

And BTW, I actually own the original STALKER. I'm not just someone out to bash it but someone who bought and played the first one