S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky

A short time ago I visited an old favorite of mine: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. A few days later, I rebooted S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. Both are great, but I want to talk about why I think that Shadows is better than Clear Sky. Clear Sky is the second game in the series and the prequel to Shadows: You play a stalker, a treasure hunter infiltrating into the forbidden zone around Chernobyl, where a strange, second incident after the meltdown in 1986 created physical anomalies, deadly radioactive eruptions and weird creatures. You haunt this desolate landscape, hoping to find a way of ending the eruptions in the zone, which become more frequent and violent. During the game, you set off the events which will take place in Shadow. And you shoot other denizens of the Zone. A lot. Also, it is mandatory to mention the following when talking about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Strugatsky, Tarkowsky, Roadside Picknick...Let's just say that this game is rooted in Russian culture, and it shows.
In comparison to other shooters, both games offer a very dense and remarkably bleak atmosphere: The levels are vast and often you spend an inordinate amount of time wandering through the ruins and forests without meeting anyone or anything else. The levels looks gorgeous and make the most of current graphics engines. This pervasive sense of solitude informs the games and makes them unique. At times it feels more like a very well implemented simulation of urban exploration than a standard shooter. The plot supports this bleakness: There is no Dr. Gordon Freeman in the ruins of Prypiat.
The first part of Clear Sky plays a lot like Shadow, but with one difference that appears like a weakness to me. To progress the plot, you are forced to conquer various bases in a large swamp for your faction, the scientists of clear sky. This feels a bit like a large capture-the-flag scenario. Instead of carefully exploring the swamp (which is a very well designed level), you are rushing about, trying to help your buddies. This hectic style of gameplay reduces the atmosphere somewhat, and if you try to visit the swamp later on, the game will try to get you back on the rails of its plot by plastering you with eruptions: The sky turns red, a counter appears, and off you go, running for your life to gain some kind of shelter. And hopefully you learn your lesson and gratefully return to the next stop in the plot which the game has prepared for you.
The middle part of the game is very well designed, although you are forced on lots of fetch quests, and revisiting some places featuring prominently in the first game is great fun and creates the feeling that the Zone is indeed a living, changing place. Again, the main plot features much stronger than in Shadow, and thus the most attractive point of the game, exploring the large, rambling levels creating the Zone, suffers. Also, you will be running back and forth a lot if you want to maintain and upgrade your gear: Selling loot to the Zone's merchants is the definition of slaving for The Man - they'll pay you in pennies for the stuff you lug around, and demand premium prices for their services. This means scooping up every piece of equipment you find and dragging it to some base or other if you do not want to run around in thin slices of kevlar grouped around large holes. So you will move around alot but not necessarily to new places.
It's the final part of Clear Sky which bugs me the most. Suddenly, the game becomes a complete rail shooter. You travel through a vast, deserted city, but unlike the corresponding level in Shadow - the brilliant recreation of Prypiat - you are taken firmly by the hand. There are scenes where an infinite number of opponents spawn until you have solved some tactical problem. I did not like that at all - it destroys the feeling of moving in a desolate and barren zone of exclusion.
Those who know Shadow may contend that this is not quite different from the last hour of the first game, where you are also set on rails and shown around the Chernobyl reactor, while passing an interminable number of jump gates and ambushes. But this was after the point where many first-time gamers of Shadow would be confronted with the bleak endings of the game: If you bet your fate on the wish granter, the rails a thankfully rather short.
Clear Sky is a great game: But by comparing it with its predecessor (which still looks very good on high-end machines), it becomes clear that it sacrificed some unique qualities. The Zone is a unique setting and begs to be explored on its own terms - putting the player on rails to follow a plot detracts from this experience, as is the attempt to bind the player to a faction. I think the story that Clear Sky has to tell is quite good, especially as it foreshadows (ahem) Shadow. But in this case, atmosphere trumps plot.