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

not a fan of the open world, walk out to quest from HQ then walk back to HQ formula

This game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ horrible. I don't understand the Very Positive rating. Did we all play the same game? The bleed mechanics are absurdly punishing, faction warfare becomes completely irrelevant past the first area, and the game actively despises the player. An unskippable cutscene literally deletes your entire life savings with zero way to recover your money. Once you reach Limansk, the game abandons its open-world sandbox entirely to become a miserable, linear corridor shooter full of invisible walls, laser-accurate grenade snipers, and pitch-black vertical meat grinders. To top it off, it features one of the single worst endgame sequences in gaming history: trying to shoot a pre-scripted Strelok who’s running on rails with a slow projectile weapon while teleport-spawning Monolith laser you down, screenshake makes you unable to aim, there is zero cover, and your faction leader screams in your ear on a 4-second loop to do the exact thing you are already doing. And yes, I ran the Sky Reclamation Project (SRP) mod. Even modded, the core level design and encounter scripts are fundamentally broken. Watch a 10-minute lore recap on YouTube and skip straight from Shadow of Chernob…

I can see why this is the worst in the franchise

peak

It's rough. Get mods to smooth over the problems this has. Like Sky Reclamation Project to tone down the grenade spammy AI. Or Horizon's Dawn if that's out when you read this. There's also LFO but it changes too much and has an ugly UI. Arsenal Overhaul might be fine too but isn't great for a Vanilla+ playthrough.

My favourite Stalker game. Creating your own unique guns is incredibly satisfying! And so is being able to join your favourite faction! Those two things combined really allowed me to customize my character the way I wanted it! 100/10