First thing first – I’m afraid I can’t be bothered to type out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. throughout this review, so let’s put Deep Silver’s marketing department out to pasture in radioactive fields and simply call it STALKER, eh? Awesome.

The original game was something of a sleeper hit back at the beginning of 2007, taking many jaded gamers quite by surprise with its sudden and rich depth of story expanding the typical FPS gameplay exponentially. This sequel has therefore become highly anticipated, though it’s ultimately going to live in the toxic shadow of the previous game – and not simply because it’s now been done before.

Clear Sky gets around the well resolved incidents of Shadow of Chernobyl by adopting the popular prequel tact; showing us the events that lead up to the beginning of the game that originally captured our attention so sublimely, while highlighting the inevitable, paradoxical contradiction that a technically superior game could exist before the original.