Boss Helicopter Strikes Back. Cleared Hot Action Review [Early Access]

For many years, helicopters in games have been minor annoyances that only exploded beautifully. The Strike series of games corrected this shortcoming - allowing you to feel like a boss helicopter. Cleared Hot skillfully drew inspiration from the classics and returned the player to the cockpit of a powerful machine.

From the very beginning, the player is thrown into the center of the fighting. A brave helicopter pilot named Travis was fiercely destroying bad guys when his combat buddy got into trouble. The authorities gave the order to retreat, but Travis disobeyed and rushed to help. And everything would have gone smoothly, if not for the intervention of a fighter - one successful attack cost the hero his military career.

In civilian life, Travis did not part with his dream and saved up for a new helicopter. His new job was reduced to carrying garbage and chickens with a cable. He would have continued to do the dirty work if the bad guys hadn't attacked a comrade who suddenly needed air support. A simple scuffle at the junkyard became a ticket to new adventures and an opportunity to feel like a hero again.

At the beginning, the game doesn't even give you ammunition - you'll have to use your wits and physics to fight the villains. With the help of an easy-to-use cable, you can lift and drop various objects. This mechanic opens up room for creativity:

• A soldier can be picked up and dropped from a height;

• Containers, stones, or appropriately sized objects are convenient for dropping on heads, or using as a kind of hammer;

• You can pick up a truck and shake out the passengers with lethal consequences.

If desired, you can change the altitude. If you go lower, you can mow down the enemies with the rotors - repeating the epic scene from the movie "28 Weeks Later."

A little later, Travis will be allowed to use a machine gun - a weapon with endless ammo. It is convenient to destroy infantry, but you will have to put up with overheating. Additional weapons are missiles, which are good against armored vehicles.

Most missions involve finding and destroying certain targets, which is helped by a convenient map and mini-map. Enemy bases are guarded by turrets and soldiers standing on towers. Outside the bases are search parties that guard useful items in the form of missiles and health.

A well-thought-out destruction system makes storming bases a particularly spectacular process. Few buildings will survive under a hail of bullets and rockets - in 99% of cases, it will fall apart under colorful explosions. As a bonus, the destruction of towers will cause the guards standing on them to fall and crash, and if someone was hiding in a conditional hangar, then pieces of concrete that hit the poor fellows will cause additional damage. But that's not all - marks remain on the buildings where the machine gun hits!

The chances of survival will increase if you capture landing sites - repairs are made on them when landing. The trusty cable will help lift not only missiles, first-aid kits and a shield that saves from deadly damage, but also hostages. If the hostages are delivered to the evacuation site, they will share resources as a reward.

More rarely, there are missions to protect a convoy. You need to escort ground transport and protect it from waves of enemies. If there is an obstacle in the way, then you either disassemble it, or move the transport yourself. A brilliant solution on the part of the developers is that you can use first-aid kits to repair allied transport - this makes mistakes less fatal, allowing you to correct your "jams."

The enemies themselves are not intelligent, but they can be dangerous - a couple of missiles are enough to shoot down the initial helicopter. Sometimes the enemy AI is so weak that their equipment gets stuck on the way to the target and this greatly simplifies the defense. I would also like the infantry to stand out better - it can be difficult to notice against the general background.

Completing missions rewards you with money, which you can use to purchase and use new helicopter models. They differ in speed, maneuverability, survivability, installed guns and missiles, as well as the capacity of the passenger compartment. You can play as a powerful flying tank, or a nimble iron bird.

You can also buy different types of machine guns and missiles, which perform well against enemies with different levels of armor. However, you will have to shell out for each machine - weapons are not transferred from one "bird" to another. The cherry on top is the change in the appearance of the helicopter that accompanies the installation - improvements allow you to see how you are progressing.

Diagnosis

The simplicity of the idea and execution benefits Cleared Hot, and is complemented by the quality of detail. This is not a meticulous simulator where you need to have a real pilot's license to control a virtual helicopter. This is a fun game, as if from the 00s, with convenient controls, where everything explodes in the most colorful way. And although the game is in early access – the only thing you want to complain about is the drop in performance in some places.

At the moment, the first chapter is available, which can be completed in a relaxed state in about three hours. It remains to be hoped that the remaining chapters will be released as soon as possible - so that you can properly test all the helicopters and guns installed on them.