S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky developer GSC Game World is conflicted, and it shows. The recent announcement that their previous first-person shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl sold 2 million copies worldwide promises a bright future for the brand, but it also raises difficult questions about how to move the series forward. With more developers reaping financial rewards from populist game design (see: Team Fortress 2, Spore, and, to a lesser extent, BioShock), it stands to reason that GSC may follow suit with the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise -- and they have, to some degree. But the changes in Clear Sky are contradictory at best: Some oversimplify to the point of absurdity, while others encourage exploration and risk-taking.

Take the new PDA owned by Scar (Clear Sky’s mercenary protagonist) as a benchmark for dumbing down. The gadget displays not only mission objectives and points of interest, but also the location, disposition, and movement of all identified entities, be they man or mutant. It’s an almost inexplicable alteration to a world that relies so heavily on exploration and discovery to achieve suspense, and it’s especially perplexing alongside the new artifact-gathering system. Artifacts in Shadow of Chernobyl were immediately visible and littered, power-up-style, all over the ground. Here, they’re transparent trinkets spawned in dangerous anomalies and revealed by upgradeable locator tools. Nabbing an artifact from the center of a radioactive pit and escaping by the skin of your teeth is extremely rewarding, but the two tools are strangely disparate: The PDA minimizes exploration and depletion of your health bar, while artifact gathering demands both -- and the latter doesn’t balance out the former.

The most discussed incident in the game is also one of the best examples of conflicting design paths: At one point during Clear Sky’s storyline, a group of bandits stun and mug Scar, leaving him (and you) with little more than a pistol and some bandages to combat the Zone. In my case, the kit hit was negligible at best. Twenty minutes of scavenging and arms dealing, and my equipment was better off than before I fell for the bandit trap. But early European reviews panned the cut-scene, singling it out as an example of uncompromising difficulty -- and it was hastily patched into obscurity. In this case, broad appeal trumped perceived difficulty well before the game’s Stateside release.

Erratic design decisions like these, combined with the increased use of (admittedly corny) English voiceovers, have been decried by some as the undesirable end result of a rubber-stamping publisher. To me, it’s all evidence of a highly talented development team flush with cash and confused as to what role their game should play in the PC-shooter scene. Should S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ape the Battlefield series? Clear Sky does, now and then. It also mimics Call of Duty in more ways than one -- and not always for the better, if you’re not a fan of infinite enemy respawns. Should the target demographic be everyone, or the diehards? With Clear Sky, GSC tries to answer with "all of the above" and, in attempting to please everyone, may frustrate some.

Consider my nitpicking as the result of deep admiration. Clear Sky is a great game and a worthy successor to Shadow of Chernobyl, despite the identity crisis. Clear Sky’s concern is the human struggle to control, contain, and exploit the Zone -- which is itself presented as a conscious character to a far greater extent than in Shadow of Chernobyl. While various factions scrap over territory and philosophy, the Zone bellows ominously in the distance. As the battle inches towards the fiercely guarded Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the Zone fights back with deadly blowouts that bathe the world in red light and force the belligerents to seek cover. Far from wanting for eerie atmosphere, the Zone is more oppressive than ever.

What Clear Sky doesn’t deliver is the abject, adjust-your-gamma terror of its predecessor. Certainly, the tattletale PDA doesn’t help, but the more important difference is that Clear Sky is prehistory: This dystopian-but-densely populated Zone is the "before" snapshot to Shadow of Chernobyl’s hellish "after." Here, guns, ammo, and -- by extension -- rubles flow like water thanks to the constant (and vastly improved) combat. My inner coward couldn’t be happier.