The Games of Christmas '08: GPU Performance Part II

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

Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl was one of the hit games of 2007 so it was only a matter of time until a sequel (or prequel in this case) was released. Clear Sky takes place before the events of Shadow of Chernobyl and this time you take the role of Scar who is a Stalker mercenary. Since you are the only survivor of a failed mission through the area surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear plant - the “Zone” as it is called in the game – you catch they eye of Lebedev, the leader of the Clear Sky zone faction. This leads to Scar being tasked with finding more information about some odd happenings in the Zone. And thus the story begins…


Clear Sky is a first person shooter with healthy doses of survival horror thrown in for good measure since you will find yourself battling everything from mutants to your regular, run of the mill, gun-totting humans. There is also a small dose of RPG gameplay due to the fact you are able to customize and hone your character’s weapons, take on quests, join and combat other factions and also increase some of your stats throughout the game.


The original Stalker game used the X-Ray game engine which has been significantly updated to X-Ray 1.5 for Clear Sky. This means the addition of features like volumetric lighting (this is a massive resource hog), DirectX 10 and 10.1 support, dynamic fluid behavior and many other things.


While it may look stunning, turning up the detail settings will have a massive impact on playability and as you will see in the charts on the next page, it isn’t pretty. That being said, Stalker: Clear Sky has been a hit since its release and the developers are still supporting it with regular updates.