Sometimes, big fancy worlds and arcade-like games have their place. Sometimes you want to blaze through a slew of enemies as a Robocop-like unstoppable juggernaut that fears nothing but brings with him nothing but pain and carnage. Some times, however, you want to play a game where running forward blindly means getting killed. Realism has its place too, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky brings it in droves.

Clear Sky brings you back to the Zone, the irradiated remnants of an alternate-world Chernobyl where things have gone terribly wrong. If you've played the original Stalker, you'll find the place oddly familiar, as many of the same locations are back. This time, however, you're playing before the events of Shadow over Chernobyl, as a mercenary who's lost the team he was guiding into the Zone and left with a bit of a pressing, fatal, problem. Your journey will take you through the entire Zone as you struggle to solve the mystery behind your condition.

The gameplay in Clear Sky is understandably very similar to that of Shadow over Chernobyl. You run, you gun, you try not to get too irradiated. Most of the time is spent exploring the irradiated Zone while performing tasks for others that can net you some nice rewards like cash or weaponry. If you want you can also just go exploring on your own, maybe finding a hidden stash or two along the way. Sometimes you'll find a valuable artifact, an anomalous object that can either help or hinder you.

The only problem here is that of your stamina bar, which always seems to drain far too quickly when you run (even more so when you're over-encumbered), forcing you to stop and rest every few minutes. Most of the time, it's not a problem when there's enough to do and look at along the way, but when you're just trying to get across an entire area, it can be really tiresome.

Clear Sky isn't just a rehash of the previous game, however: there are a few new things to do that separate it from Shadow over Chernobyl. For one, you can upgrade your weaponry and armour at mechanics scattered around the Zone. These cost a dime, but improve various aspects of your equipment like armor modifiers, clip size, damage, or more. Upgrading means making the right choices however, since certain upgrades will prevent you from getting other upgrades.

Another mode in the single-player experience is something called the Faction Wars. While the Faction Wars are engaged, you must perform a variety of missions do increase your faction's standing in the area, fighting off opponents and taking their territory. You're given missions to take over various positions across the map or fortify positions that your faction already controls, eventually driving the opposing faction off the map.

While these parts of the game are a decent change of pace from the usually-solo aspects of the rest of the game, they feel too loosely implemented. Missions will appear and disappear almost too quickly for you to actually respond to them, for example. All you can do is run to whatever objective is nearest and hope that you actually make it before the mission is solved by someone else. While it does give a better sense of teamwork, it feels off-putting when you can't solve the problems you're given.

The gunplay can be a little bit on the unfair side as well. Sometimes it feels that enemies will take half a dozen bullets to take down while you only take a few. On top of that, just a single hit into you will cause you to bleed; if you don't have any bandages and can't get access to them quickly, this will mean your death. Suffice to say, the quick save/load buttons are some oft-used tools. The enemy's AI is pretty good at what it does though, staying behind cover, poking their head out to unload a clip before ducking back to reload. They'll flank you, move forward to your position with their rifles raised, and in general act pretty well. Sometimes they can have problems though.

There are a variety of issues in the gameplay, many of them related to the AI of your enemies and your team. At times I've walked by what I thought were stalkers on my side only to have them randomly turn around and suddenly become my enemy. I've had enemies forget what they were doing entirely, deciding instead to walk back to their home base while I riddle them with bullets. The bugs are not limited to the AI; there are also things like graphical problems and random crashes to the desktop. It can get pretty frustrating at times.

The graphics of Clear Sky range from excellent to horribly dull, and it all depends on what kind of hardware your computer is made out of. On its highest settings, Clear Sky looks impressive, but it takes a lot of hardware to run it well, and for some reason, the first area of the game will tax your system even more than others. The color scheme is a little dull (with a range of dark brown to dark green), but it fits within the oppressive atmosphere of the game. You're not going to find mutated creatures and murderous bandits in a pastel land of plenty. The game pulls off the atmosphere of the Zone really well, graphics or not. There's something to be said about walking through a pitch-black wasteland equipped only with a flashlight, a pistol, and a rifle with half a clip.

There's also a multiplayer mode, where you can play a variety of game types against online opponents. There's the typical Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch to play through, as well as a kind of capture-the-flag mode (called Capture-the-Artifact). The last mode to play through is called Artifact Hunt, where two teams try to find an artifact placed somewhere randomly on the map. The variety of modes are interesting to play through, though it feels better to be walking through the wasteland alone, with only a flashlight to keep you company.

Realism is aplenty in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, and so is some satisfying gameplay. It can sometimes be a little frustrating, and there are issues with a few parts of the game. Overall, however, it comes together as a good post-apocalyptic first-person shooter. And trust me, when it comes to Russian post-apocalyptic shooters set in an alternate-reality Chernobyl site, Clear Sky tops the list.