Douglas Thigpen's Musings

In March of 2007 a relatively unknown developer from the Ukraine, GSC Game World, introduced us to a post apocalyptic vision that brought back fond memories of classic games such as Fallout and Wasteland but with the play style of a First Person Shooter with minor RPG elements, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. The game's release was met with mixed reviews due to a slew of bugs which plagued it upon release. However, due to the innovative game play, compelling story, and gorgeous graphics it was able to overcome the negative publicity and technical shortcomings and has became what many view as a modern classic.

Fast forward to September of 2008; after over a year of anticipation and hype, GSC Game World releases the prequel to S:SOC, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. Unfortunately it seems that GSC Game World failed to learn from the mistakes of S:SOC and repeated many of them in S:CS. The game's international release was riddled with show stopping bugs once again, as well as content which led many fans of S:SOC to ask themselves what exactly they were paying for. Fortunately by the time the September 15th US street date came around, GSC Game World had issued patched which fixed many of the shop stopping bugs as well as tweaked a couple elements of the gameplay which had left many international players and reviewers with a bad taste in their mouths.