I've played plenty of games that were just way to difficult to be considered fun. I don't think this is one of them.
I concur. The snipers are annoying occasionally but I've still been able to get away from them and usually in doing so found some backwater path I've not travelled before, usually leading to diamonds.
Clear Sky was brutal a lot of the time, whether from deadly machine gun fire or radiation anomalies - that went so far that quicksaving all the time was pretty much essential if you didn't want to retread huge areas.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance."