Well, I
did get it yesterday and I must say, my initial impression so far is that I don't really like it. However, the game is still in it's infancy so I'll save my final judgment until I've started playing the game properly, but so far, it's not how I thought it would be.
I really don't like how radiation is detected, like Ben said. It's awkward, and the new Armour system sucks. Another thing I really hate is when you want to put stuff in a trunk, chest or whatever to stash your stuff. You can't fuggin' double click the item, you have to drag and drop - this is
so demotivating when you have hundreds, even thousands of bullets to get across - that, I hope is changed in the next patch.
The performance, I was pleasantly surprised with how my rig ran the game at 1680 x 1050 without AA, and everything else on high. I had to disable Enhanced Dynamic Lighting to get the game to run smoothly though, which isn't too bad I guess, but I was a little annoyed that if I want it enabled I have to drop below my native resolution - not good!
I have managed however to pointlessly try Clear Sky (and Crysis) out on a über PC at work. One of our customers has ordered a Q6600 based set up with 4GB DDR2 800 (5-5-5-18) and a XFX 9800GX2 - he's getting it for a damn good price too! However, the nubs in Sales supplied the poor bastard with a pissing 19" monitor. Luckily it's a good monitor however, it's completely crippling the whole system. I did say you need to ring this lad ASAP and stress that the machine needs at least a 20.1" monitor to make use of the high-end GFX card. Anyroad, enough of the inabilities of my sales team.
With Clear Sky I was able to max out the game (obviously) in DX10 and it ran relatively respectively, no major lag issues that I get with SHoC and CS on my machine, so that was pleasant, however it was full of glitches. Now, I tested Crysis first as well and the same issue happened there. The issue? Menus flickered like buggery, as did shadows and water reflections (in Crysis) in CS, the main menu was almost impossible to read.
I'll fill in more details if necessary, but it's my break time and I've written I fuggin' essay here. I need a cuppa and cig.