I had a few restless days earlier this month. I had just put Pirates! back on the shelf for awhile, and was having a great time with EU3, but really wanted to play something else. I just didn’t know what, and none the games near the top of my Pile of Shame really did it for me. Aside from a vague desire for some violence, I really had no ideas.
Then my eyes fell on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky, still wrapped in its plastic and mixed reputation, and I realized that I wanted was not really a game, but a place. I wanted to go back to the Zone, and I didn’t care whether or not Clear Sky lived up to STALKER. I needed to be in that world again.
Perhaps it is because I’m suffering a bit from claustrophobia and urban fatigue, but I needed STALKER’s open fields, mist-shrouded marshland, and roiling sky. I actually felt relieved, like I had just come home, when I got control of my character in the opening scene and went over to the bedroom window. Just looking outside at the sunrise through the cold morning air, splintered into shafts of light by a bare tree, was enough to remind me of all the reasons that this is the best shooter series since Half-Life.
The opening sequence of Clear Sky may well be clunky and bordering on tedium, but I was at home the moment I was turned loose in the swamps outside the Clear Sky base. I couldn’t have been happier picking my away through prairie grass and shallow pools, trying to avoid pissing off the local fauna.
At one point I was trying to cut across the map and went off the trails, and as I came a narrow clearing hemmed in by a marsh to the right and a field of tall grass to the left, I thought I heard something in the brush. I froze stock-still and listened. Just listened. To the breeze rustling through the weeds and the cackle of some crows. To very distant gunfire from the ongoing battle. But nothing immediate. So I started moving again, and as I reached the narrowest point of the clearing, I heard rustling and snuffling in the bushes to my left.
Instantly I was down in a crouch on the edge of the pool, long-barreled shotgun leveled and ready. I strained my ears and definitely heard an animal coming closer through the brush. I started tracking the sound from left to right and just as it passed in front of me, I heard a hound’s bark and it came charging out of the weeds. I’d misjudged his location by a few degrees, and swept the gun back to the left and triggered both barrels. Both blasts of buckshot peppered him, but not enough to bring him down. He came hurtling toward me while I broke open the stock, pulled out the empty shells, and slapped in fresh ones. I got the new rounds chambered and closed the gun just as he started to leap. Boo-boom! The second round dropped him at point blank range. He died at my feet.
My heart was pounding.
And that was a random, relatively weak monster encounter. A normal day at the stalker’s office. But I couldn’t afford to get cute and just slug it out with the damned thing, or try and run, because he absolutely could have killed me. Maybe not right away, but if he’d mauled me out there the marshes, I’d have bled out before I could make it back to safety.
Another unbelievable, quintessentially STALKER sequence came when I ran into a squad of Clear Sky attackers heading to take a pumping station away from the bandits. We managed to get close without being spotted, but the moment our point man placed a foot on the duckboards, the bandits opened fire from the platform. We started shooting it out from across the pond. One of my shots missed wide of the mark and a gas tank exploded, blasting the guy I’d been shooting at into oblivion. That was the opening: I charged across the boards, shotgunned the first bandit to get in my way, then picked off another over by the pumps. We were clear.
But not finished. My squad kept pushing north through the swamps, clearing a herd of boars and then coming to a desolate, ruined village. As we approached, we ran into a squad of bandits that had been heading toward the pump station. Again, gunfire erupted everywhere.
At this stage of the game, my weapons were a hodgepodge. I had an AK-74 with no ammo. I had an MP-5 with half a clip, a sawed-off shotgun, the hunting shotgun, and a Fora 9mm pistol. All of which meant that in a huge firefight, with numbers definitely going against us, I was not really in good shape. I tried to pick off bandits with my pistol, but the engagement range was too long and every time I leaned out of cover, a torrent of pistol and shotgun fire came my way. I spotted a pair of hostiles trying to flank us on the right side, using a house foundation for cover, so I pulled my MP-5 and cut them both down with two bursts, emptying the weapon. Then I started taking potshots with the shotgun, hoping that the buckshot would at least start whittling their strength down.
After about five minutes of combat, I suddenly realized I could heard the wind and the birds again. The riot of gunfire, shotgun blasts, ricochets, and yelling had slowed to a sullen dialogue.
With a sinking feeling, already certain of what I would find, I turned to my left and saw that two of my squadmates dead in their cover. I sprinted farther towards our flank, drawing a fusillade of shots from the bandits holding the main road, and reached the other end of our firing line. Everyone was dead. I was alone with the bandits.
Reason and adrenaline collided head-on. The smart play would be to fall back into the swamp toward the pumping station we’d liberated a half hour earlier. The odds were terrible and there was really no upshot to continuing the fight. But as the shots continued to sail past, and the bandits continued trying to work their way around the flanks, I was too keyed-up to call it a day. I grabbed some ammo from my dead squaddies, and moved back to the right. Luckily, the bandits didn’t spot me until I was on their flank and I was able to take them one at a time.
Even with that minor advantage, it was still slow, bloody work. It took me several more minutes to clear the town. It also used up all my bandages, all but one of my first-aid kits, and 95% of my ammunition. By the time I drove the last gunman down in a hail of bullets over by an empty pig pen, I was down to three clips of pistol ammo and a salvo from each of my shotguns. I started stripping the dead to replenish my supplies, and realized how futile this battle had been. Nobody had much ammo, and I didn’t manage to find any medical supplies.
Not that I got a chance to collect more than a few handfuls of 9mm and buckshot rounds, because I spotted another squad of bandits coming in from the north. I took off on the road east before they spotted me, since they were already across my line of retreat to the pumping station.
I had completely screwed myself. The village was back in enemy hands. I was also trapped in the middle of nowhere between two bandit bases, with nothing but a long expanse of hostile countryside between me and a Clear Sky position. Overhead, the perfect autumn day had given way to a heavy sky that seemed to press down until it touched the tops of the prairie grass.
I checked my map, sketched a route, and reloaded my weapons. Then, turning away from the broken trail, I headed back into the marshes.
