So, you've played STALKER: Clear Sky and after hours of frustration, bugs, patching, and utterly failed game play, you're pissed as all hell. The good news is that if you haven't played the original in awhile, there are three great reasons to give it another spin: Oblivion Lost, Sky4ce, and Float32. As you've probably noticed, many of the top games these days have a huge community mod following. These three in particular stand out as must haves and really overhaul the game to what it was meant to be. In their early stages each promised to enhance varying aspects of the game, but now that they have matured combining them gives STALKER a completely different feel... and for the better!

Let's start with Oblivion Lost 2.2, the latest release as of this article. Designed as a complete reinvention of STALKER, OL adds all the elements they TRIED to use in Clear Sky without success. Faction wars, random deadly blow outs (pictured above), cooperative play, a larger selection of weapons and armor, tweaked game balancing, random and moving anomalies, new enemies, sound and weather overhaul, and a ton of additional features. OL really is STALKER as it should have been from the beginning! I definitely recommend installing this and starting a fresh game. You'll really feel as though Clear Sky was a completely botched attempt at doing what a couple of people implemented for free.

With Oblivion Lost taking care of the game mechanics and sound, image quality was the obvious next modification. Simply put, Sky4ce and Float32 (combined into one install) do an amazing job of this. Complete with shader upgrades, motion blur, god rays, and volumetric light, STALKER quickly becomes a beautiful and scary place to be. The nights are now realistically dark, really upping the horror element, and daily weather patterns look much more tangible than in the initial game. Textures have also been greatly improved. Walls and bricks actually look real and have depth to them unlike flat surface textures... honestly I was seriously freaking amazed at the impressive level of depth that the game now has. It really is a must have!

With these three mods combined the game is not even relatively similar to before. It's harder, better looking, and feels as realistic as it should. I found out later that a bunch of these enhancements were actually used in Clear Sky, but in doing so they either heavily modified the original idea or they completely broke what could have been some great new ideas. It's a shame really, so much potential. So, while you're waiting for patch number 32 to come out and finally (if ever) fix Clear Sky, try playing the original again, but this time with mods! I guarantee you'll enjoy it. Thanks to the dev's for putting these time consuming mods together in the first place, you guys rock!