Almak: I'd like to second Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, what a great game that was! Too bad Clear Sky is more of a hit and miss.

sheepdragon: Yeah, I liked Clear Sky, but parts of it was so damned hard that it was rather incredible. Of course, I suppose it didn't help that I was playing on the hardest difficulty, but that doesn't mean that the enemies should have telescopic x-ray eyes in their necks, that are able to see an amoeba attack a tiny furious rabbit on Venus, or ears that can hear a bacteria fart on the moon (vacuum listening! GASP!). When I finally managed to integrate my self into it, I enjoyed it enough though.

Almak: I agree, there really is a specific state of mind you need to get in to enjoy Stalker fully.
I also found some areas in Clear Sky much more interesting than the original. Red forest for example really stood out for me.
What I didn't like most of all about both stalkers though is how it presents itself as an open world experience and when you're just about settled into that frame of approaching the world it throws you into a situation not unlike a linear shooter would, which I didn't like at all. For me Stalker is always an open world first and shooter second and when it flips the scales like that it becomes tedious. There's plenty of mods that address that (for both games) now though, but it was aggravating at launch.

Almak: I'd like to second Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, what a great game that was!

moonfear: spellcross - cauldron - SK
those are games I can remember now and are quite good