Just finished STALKER: SoC. Got the rich ending.
Brilliant game, still tons to explore and do.
However, I was wondering. Is Clear Sky worth buying. I have heard and read bad reviews on it. I am very unsure whether to get it or not.
So that is why I come to ask you, the people of GOG to help me in my seach for an answer.
Sounded cheesey didn't it...
Anywayz! Thanks in advance.

Firstly, It is not the real ending. :) Anway Clear Sky is good game but harder than the first one and has some optimizations problems and bugs. If you like the first one just go and buy the Clear Sky too you won't regret it.

The second sequel is almost out (in English) and is supposed to be head and shoulders above Clear Sky. I'd wait a little longer and see how that one shapes up if I were you.

I know. Should have done that last background quest after getting the stuff in the hotel in Prypiat. But oh well... I have saved before then so I can always do so etc...
Thats exactly what I though. I really enjoyed it, but I think I'll wait until there is some kind of sale in that case (bought Stalker when it was £3.50 xD Twas a bargain!).

Actually the real ending is something you can find immediately before you approach the monolith. There's a ladder that's easily overlooked that leads up to the true ending.

Yeah, when you see the monolith from across the room for the first time, backtrack a bit and you should find it. You then have to hold off a load of militia while you hack the code to a door. Or something like that. It's been a while since I last played it to completion now.
CoP looks good. But apparently the vast environments are a mixed blessing given your characters reduced stamina. But that might be fixed by release or easily modded.

I see STALKER Clear Sky on sale pretty regularly at www.gogamer.com. You should be able to get it for about $5 USD. I'm not sure about British pounds though.

Clear Sky will inevitably go on sale around the time of Call of Pripyat's English release. It's roughly slated for February 2010 at the moment, so if you're patient that's probably the best way to get it as cheaply as possible.
EDIT: also, if you're wondering how well Call of Pripyat will run on your system you can try the benchmark tool which runs through a complex game environment with the video settings of your choice.

I just started it a couple of days ago and while it's no SoC it has a lot of the fun gameplay. I like the UI a lot more and weapons upgrades give you something to spend all that money on.
My biggest problem is CS feels like it's constantly pushing you down a fixed path with the factions. It's like you feel obliged to run alongside a group and help them down a path. I'm about 4 hours in and I've done maybe two sidequests because the rest of time I felt like the game was pushing me in a certain direction.
Of course I could have ignored it and broken away at any moment and struck off on my own, it just seemed like every time I tried the game punished be for it by giving me a quest I wasn't ready for or hemming me in with radiation and anomalies on one side and a tough group of enemies on the other side.

I liked the first STALKER game a lot and grabbed Clear Sky for 14.90 EUR, which was the first sale I saw.
I've been sadly unable to enjoy the game at all. With patches 1.00008 (enough zeroes?) and above, the game says that it requires a GPU with a Shader Model 1.0 or above, where in fact I have X1950 XT which has SM 3.0. There were some issues in the initial versions so I wanted to patch the game before playing it. A sad fate since I really wanted to play the game. I'll just have to wait for when I get a new GPU.

I've played it some more and while it still has some of that great SoC fun the faction stuff isn't quite as good as I thought it would be so far. It seems more like a chore as you are constantly asked to help defend some point from an enemy faction when you just want to move to the next area.
I should just ignore it, after all, I'm a loner but I can't. I can't leave my fellow stalkers to die by the men in black parkas. Dammit.
Still, when I had that great moment of running completely out of ammo, frantically running up to the last 3 bandits, dancing around, weaving this way and that to avoid fire while I slowly carving their faces with my hunting knife I fell in love again.
Then those damn stalkers lost the point again five minutes later...