Conclusion--A Better Shooter Due To Upgrade System for Weapons

Stalker Clear Sky is Stalker v1.5 with the principle of the game changed a bit. The main tasks are fighting and exploring the Zone. The improvements are good, though. The local experts enable fast traveling between the camps. The anomalies are more deadly and the upgrade system for weapons and armor lifts the game up to a higher shooter level. The war between the coalitions brings in a strategic element, although you just have to keep eliminating the enemies to control the most important bases.

The voice output is very good, the translations sound professional, and the background noise is truly scary. The artificial intelligence of the enemies is well engineered—only rarely can you surprise renegades, stopping them for a short while. Usually the marksman seek shelter and if you try to go around them, the enemy will walk with you in the same direction. Enemy soldiers and Stalkers guard their camps at night and observe their surroundings with binoculars, making sneaking up almost impossible. Difficulty is even high at the beginner level—soldiers shoot very precisely, and without shelter, the bullets lower your life bar very quickly.

Performance Comparison: With the GeForce 9600 GT and Radeon HD 3870, you should switch to dynamic illumination (DirectX 9), as both graphics chips are too weak for DirectX 10 and maximum graphics quality. If you want to use DirectX 10 illumination, the GeForce 9800 GTX, 8800 GTS 512, GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4850 are good for resolutions up to 1680x1050 pixels. When running at higher resolutions, you should step down to dynamic illumination (DirectX 9). If you want to play at 1920x1200 with DirectX 10 illumination, you will need a Radeon HD 4870 or GeForce GTX 280.

With current 3D cards, it is best to select maximum or high graphics quality and use the full range of view. The largest fine-tuning potential comes from switching to illumination mode from extended dynamic illumination of objects to (DirectX 10) to dynamic illumination (DirectX 9). You should avoid static illumination and low graphics quality, as you gain little and the graphics are too shoddy.

One ugly development is that Stalker behaves a bit like Crysis in that, with DirectX 9, everything runs smoothly, but with DirectX 10, even the fast cards reach their limits at high resolutions. If you want to run at more than 1280x1024 pixels, don’t even think about activating anti-aliasing. The HD 3870 and 9600 GT are actually the second generation of DirectX 10 graphics cards, and already perform too poorly to display all the effects. The first DX10 generation Radeon 2000 and the old GeForce 8000-series cards will certainly have even more problems with the new illumination modes. What this shows is that the promised performance boost from optimized DirectX 10 drivers didn’t become a reality. If you want to see the sun rays with HDR in full high-def resolution and with DirectX 10, you need a high-end card like the HD 4870 or GTX 280. The old DX10 graphics chips were overextended with high resolutions and light effects, even before the gaming market switched to Windows Vista, thus proving the old maxim: never buy graphics performance for the future.