I sure hope Clear Sky wasn't the first Stalker game you tried, because really, that one was a horribly buggy pile of...well, bugs. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't already a fan of the series, and even then I'd add a warning label.
Personally I greatly prefer the first one (SoC) for its atmosphere and the sense of mystery, though the third (CoP) one had vastly better mechanics (well, they basically fixed the rather broken "gun upgrades" stuff from Clear Sky). Unfortunately the mod packs I used to use on SoC (OLmod fwiw) no longer works on the latest patch (yeah, it really is that old), it did stuff like add repair to shops and allow silencer to be used on a lot of guns that they didn't work on in SoC (like the Russian ARs). Though I think Stalker Complete added some of the same stuff, I should probably look up which mods I used last time through).
I still remember how me and two friends were playing SoC not too long after its release and we all got slaughtered trying to take out the bandits with just a pistol, over and over again... Of the three I was the only one that actually made it past that part and continued to play the game, I don't think the others ever believed me when I told them I easily took out those bandits nowadays on hardest difficulty. Man, that first fight used to be so intense...
Or getting past the Cordon, the hard way, with just a pistol and a sewn off dual barrel shotgun. Hehe, so many memorable moments in that game...
Played the first game a lot back in the days. This is also one of the reasons why I am so burned out. It was pretty much the same- I was in love with the setting, but the game just couldn't make up what it should have been. Made some mods for it too, but that was it then. Clear Sky came and made me ragequit. Then CoP came and I was out of that genre / universe already.