S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky - Review @ Eurogamer

Balance and difficulty concerns hold back Kieron Gillen's opinion of STALKER: Clear Sky in the first review we've seen.  The score is 7/10 and here's a sample:

The problem is simply a string of design and balancing issues. In practice, after I received my first artifact in the training sequence, I didn't get a second for at least ten hours of play. That's "get", not "find", by the way. In some cases I was in the right spot - or, at least as close as I was when I managed to get hold of one - but completely failed to make the thing appear. In most cases, however, the area I was lead to was toxic above what I could survive for long enough to locate the tricky blighter without burning medkits. So I mostly just ignored it and carried on.