I’ll admit it. After an hour with the Cleared Hot demo I decamped to the Steam forum in search of fellow failures. Surely the place would be teeming with others who, like me, loved the trial’s physics, visuals, and writing, yet found Mission 4 disagreeably hard.
The fact the forum is almost entirely free of difficulty complaints suggests I’m simply a bit of duffer where this new arcade heli game is concerned. I could blame a slightly questionable control scheme (Pressing A and D shifts your whirlybird left and right on the screen, rather than strafing it relative to its current facing) or have a go at Not Knowing Corp for making Mission 4 so linear (One of the reasons the Desert Strike series is so fondly remembered today is its operational freedom) but as nearly everyone else seems unperturbed by these factors, perhaps I just need head back to Texas and practice more.
On the evidence of Mission 3, CH’s most satisfying weapon isn’t going to be a high velocity or high explosive one. Your MH-6 can lift almost anything with its winch, then used suspended loads as wrecking balls or, in the case of oil drums, makeshift bombs. Squelching scampering foes and skittling them over is just as satisfying as it sounds. Hopefully the dev, Colin Karpfinger, realises this and provides plenty of opportunities for dangle-based destruction in the campaign.
Moving objects hither and thither is so enjoyable, it’s easy to picture a non-violent spin-off. Fighting wildfires, clearing rockfalls, airlifting accident victims, rescuing shipwrecked mariners… if Cleared Hot 2 comes without weaponry, you won’t hear me complaining.
You can strafe using Left Shift. I agree that the controls feels a bit dull when playing on keyboard. Maybe you could get a better felling with a controller or a more sensitive mouse.
Personally, I would also like to have a bigger field of view when playing.