At this very moment thousands of ignorant little Valve slaves are flocking to pick up the newest zombie horror game to hit the market--Left 4 Dead. Little do they know that they are about to get home and promptly shout a blood curdling WTF after playing the first chapter of the game. I'm not even going to try and fluff around the edges with this one. It sucks, it's boring, it's repetitive, it looks six years out of date, and it's little more than a bunch of multiplayer maps that can be played in single player. In fact, that's the game's only redeeming quality whatsoever. I'm not going to lie, I had huge expectations for this game, but the reality is a complete joke.

Yesterday like many other slaves to the market, I trudged over to the local Gamestop to pick up my reserved copy of Left 4 Dead. On the way home I was extremely pumped... partially from my recent Fallout 3 high, but also because I knew this was going to be some quality zombie killing action. Holy shit, was I completely wrong! After an hour I was already itching to turn the game off and after two I completely stopped taking the game seriously and started to just wander into zombies in order to let my teammates save me for fun.

Ok, quick rant because this has been pissing me off. Seriously, what is so difficult about releasing a decent version of Adobe Flash for Linux? Granted, it has come a long way and the fact that it works at all is at least something I guess, but come on. Fedora is coming out with it's tenth release in a few weeks, Ubuntu is on their ninth, yet it seems like Flash is perpetually half assed. At this point, the web is literally saturated with everything from Flash ads, to video and audio players, to games, yet I always find myself having to accept a buggy user experience as status quo. I will give some praise to Adobe for actually releasing RPM's and DEB's, which is more than most companies offer, but there is no way they have more than three guys working on their Linux ports.

For example, with Flash 9 I had fairly solid playback when it worked, yet it was hit or miss whether it would actually load with the page. Often I had to reload the firefox tab three times before it would start, instead of just displaying a grey box.

It's a good thing that most video game film adaptions have been horrible, because instead of getting my hopes up in anticipation of Max Payne, I was prepared for the pile of shit that would attempt to pass for a decent movie. Looking back, Silent Hill wasn't all that bad, and the first Resident Evil was ok, but overall I still haven't seen a single adaption that really brought the game to life. They all set you up for a major let down and never stay true to the original game that gave life to the movie in the first place. At least this time knowing full well that the $10 I just spent would have been better saved for a new game allows me to walk away feeling sane, rather than attempting to maim the first director I can find in a storm of rage... and boy am I glad my expectations were low going in.

First of all, what were they trying to accomplish here? A good video game adaption, or a good action flick for someone off the street?

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.