How upsetting if so ? that Stalker's brilliance may have been a result of US publisher interference and not, after all, a team of Ukrainian developer-heroes defying the odds.
It sounds horribly presumptive but it really does come across as though a bunch of fairly inexperienced designers were let loose on this game with no-one in place to overrule their worst excesses. There's deeply amateurish sense of what's cool and what's funny to it, and an overwhelming concern that the developers are lacking vital quality control now they're unshackled from the first game's publisher, THQ. Without irony, Russian mercenaries speak like Tim Westwood and Levi Roots, all in English with heavy Soviet accenting, so the game comes off like a bad impressions show. Instead, it's a hotchpotch of repeated set-pieces, most too similar or too cursory, and ideas clumsily purloined from other games.
it just doesn't seem to realise what made STALKER great. Atmosphere is what Clear Sky most critically lacks, and why it could be the most disappointing PC game of 2008.
