S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Clear Sky Release For August?

[magerette]

Action Trip and Worthplaying are both posting a link to this Russian Blog comment from Kiev's International Fantasy Assembly “Portal-2008″ that the prequel to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, is slated for release August 31, 2008.
GSC Game World isn't confirming at this time, but states that an announcement will be made this week.
More information.

 

[curiously undead]

holy crap that's over 5 month away

 

[Dhruin]

Steam still says May.

 

[JDR13]

holy crap that's over 5 month away

Yeah maybe by then they'll have finally released another patch to fix the remaining bugs in the first STALKER.

 

[txa1265]

Yeah maybe by then they'll have finally released another patch to fix the remaining bugs in the first STALKER.

Delivered sealed in snowballs from hell and carried by flying pigs ...

 

[Dhruin]

What's wrong with the original? I'm playing 1.0005 and it seems pretty solid to me.

 

[curiously undead]

much like misophobia (no not a fear of japanese soup) some people can't overlook the 'little' things, 'bugs' and hence miss out of fully enjoyable and original games. but we all have our neroses and mine prevents me from enjoying perfectly packaged games with top notch graphics that make no effort to engross me in an orginal setting, tell me an interesting story, and or fail to be nothing other than a perfected killing simulator...

but i'm biased and much like those ready to trounch on games with technical flaws i am poised to do the same to games that give me every indication that their story could have been written by someone like myself in middle school (and i was never an honors english student, and i wasn't a poet at the time neither).

 

[JDR13]

What's wrong with the original? I'm playing 1.0005 and it seems pretty solid to me.

There are still quite a few quest related bugs in the single player game, such as stashes that you shouldn't know about appearing on your radar, and sometimes multiple npcs will reveal the exact same stash causing it to magically respawn.

 

[curiously undead]

the stashes don't respawn, they add more stuff on top of the old. so if you don't check that stash for a long time there could be quite a bit in it. also the stashes don't disappear until they are empty, so if you use one as storage i believe it stays on your radar. the alternative would be much more difficult in that it would mean there would be stashes every 10 feet in the game or you couldn't find any more stashes until you checked some which would be very annoying.

a stalker's life is a fleeting one so, much like yourself sometimes you got to much stuff to lug around and its loot or death. its pefectly reasonable for someone else to use the same stash, maybe they take the prior stalkers stuff but then have to drop of their own in someone elses. and all those stalkers have probably died by your hands or someone/thing elses and the loot piles up one vodka bottle at a time.

imagination, thankfully the game developers have one...

 

[curiously undead]

an enjoyable life is far from perfect, or without its hitches, messups, etc.
movies, tv, and games that try to hard to please there customers streamline and steamroller the quirks of their products into happier less frustrating ones. failing to do something no one, or few have done before is much more enjoyable, rewarding to me than 'winning' at something countless have done before. stalker is extremely frustrating at times, but the vast amount of new experiences it offers have lured me into starting up a new game every few months or so.

 

[JDR13]

the stashes don't respawn, they add more stuff on top of the old. so if you don't check that stash for a long time there could be quite a bit in it. also the stashes don't disappear until they are empty, so if you use one as storage i believe it stays on your radar. the alternative would be much more difficult in that it would mean there would be stashes every 10 feet in the game or you couldn't find any more stashes until you checked some which would be very annoying.

a stalker's life is a fleeting one so, much like yourself sometimes you got to much stuff to lug around and its loot or death. its pefectly reasonable for someone else to use the same stash, maybe they take the prior stalkers stuff but then have to drop of their own in someone elses. and all those stalkers have probably died by your hands or someone/thing elses and the loot piles up one vodka bottle at a time.

imagination, thankfully the game developers have one...

So I guess we should just imagine that they're doing an adequate job of supporting STALKER?

That was only 1 out of many examples, such as NPCs sometimes spawning out of thin air, shoddy AI in many situations, ongoing problems with 5.1 sound, poor performance on certain configurations... particularly ATI cards, and many people still experiencing crashes and lockups in general.

I could go on but my point is obviously that STALKER still has a lot of bugs for a game that has been out as long as it has. It's not a knock against the game itself, I thinks it's great. It's just that it could be so much better.

 

[txa1265]

I could go on but my point is obviously that STALKER still has a lot of bugs for a game that has been out as long as it has. It's not a knock against the game itself, I thinks it's great. It's just that it could be so much better.

I agree - and while the patches came along at a decent clip early on, and made some obvious progress, they soon stopped, leaving the game to languish in a not-yet-complete feeling state. It is a very good game, but it just felt a bit fragile to me ... too easy to break stuff and crash the whole thing.