Anger Foot Review

Anger Foot understands that form and function should fit together like a bunioned foot in an orthopedic shoe. The first-person shooter from developer Free Lives and publisher 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Devolver Digital rarely does anything that isn't fulfilling multiple purposes at once, smartly and consistently balancing what looks and feels good across its ten-hour campaign.

Form, Function, And Anger Foot

Take, for example, the title character's bright green skin, which you frequently see when he raises his leg to plant a powerful kick in an enemy's chest. It's a bold aesthetic choice, contrasting with whatever shoe is equipped, and visually sets Anger Foot apart from other shooter heroes. It fits the look of the '90s and '00s NickToons the game's aesthetic is drawing from, and brings to mind the green of toxic sludge, a reminder that our high-kicking hero was molded by the ultra-polluted Sh*t City, where all crime is legal. It keeps you thinking about the game's central mechanic — kicking dudes — and how playing the game well will earn you better shoes so you can kick dudes even better.

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This both/and ethos is alive in the cadre of criminals Anger Foot takes on, too. Enemies are similarly brightly colored, making the game feel alive and energetic, while having a practical purpose. There are low-level blue pistol-toting thugs, big green alligators in windbreakers, brown dog m🌱en with Uzis, purple knife-wielding tentacles, and leather jacket clad pigeons with riot shiel🌃ds. Each of these vibrant designs is distinct enough to be readable at a glance, essential for a game focused on speed and precision.

And Anger Foot is fast. The game occupies the same niche as recent speedrunner shooters like 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Neon White and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Hell of an Office, with a constantly ticking timer on screen at all times and bonus shoe-buyin🥀g currency doled out for beating levels lightning quick. There are no mechanical distractions. You use a gun until its ammo is spent, then chuck it at an enemy to stun them. You hoover up guns just by walking over them, with no time wasted moving from one to 🐻the next.

All you need to focus on is getting to grips with each of Anger Foots' many, many weapons and using them to get from point A to point B. The roster is varied, ranging from the traditional (the AK-47, the shotgun, the Uzi) to the esoteric (two pistols chained together, a plunger you can use to pull enemies across the room), but all are satisfying to use. I gravitated to the simplicity and precision of the pistol, clearing rooms with well-placed headshots, then trotting out a violent kick to break down any shields. The guns just work, which is essential in a game like this, because if you get distracted for a second, you'll die.

Getting Your Kicks In Anger Foot

This makes Anger Foot pretty tough at times, which I'm telling you less as a con, and more as a caution. I hadn't paid much attention during the pre-release cycle, and didn't even realize it was a speedrunning shooter. When I started to play, there was a flash of disappointment — "Man, this world looks so cool, it sucks that it isn't really designed to be explored" — but that was quickly replaced with the stress and excitement of figuring out how to successfully navigate my way through its meat grinder levels.

Kicking And Shooting Action In Anger Foot

It turns out that if you're cautious, the game is a lot easier. You can peek around corners, pistol in hand, and headshot every goon before you leap into the fray. These levels are designed to be played over and over again before you crack them, and you begin to memorize every little quirk, learning to recognize traps before you stumble into them. You can factor that caution into your build — equipping shoes that give you an extra life, for example — or you can strip it out, donning boots that let you store up a charge, then unleash it like a bull goring its prey. You can even go barefoot if you're really confident. Caution is well-pl༒aced on an initial run, but I really got a kick out of returning to levels I struggled through hours before and kicking my way through like a taekwondo tornado.

Though, given how quickly you can die, the game opting for a Call of Duty-style ‘the edges of the screen are bloody’ approach to health isn’t always like a good fit. I sometimes found it difficult to gauge whether or not I could afford a hit, and often found myself cursing loudly when a shotgun blast that I assumed was far enough away to only do a small amount of damage ended up actually being close enough to straight-up kill me. Since Anger Foot doesn't have checkpoints, that kind of amorphous design can repeatedly send you back multiple minutes for tiny mistakes.

As tough as it is on its default setting, Anger Foot allows you to modify its difficulty with Celeste-style sliders and power-ups that function like good old-fashioned cheats. There's even a shoe that enables Big Head Mode.

Despite this, Anger Foot's campaign is perfectly paced, always doling out new weapons, enemies, and shoes at just the right time. I had started to get stuck on a level that was positively loaded with goons, and was getting frustrated. When I backed out to the menu, I unlocked a new shoe that turned every weapon into a shotgun. The dozens of bullets that come stocked in the minigun were all replaced with shotgun shells. It was a wild power-up, and just what I needed to turn the tide of battle. Anger Foot is full of moments like that, always hiding another trick up its sleeve so you never get bored.

I do still wish the game had more consideration for how each level fit into the broader world. The opening cinematic — which introduces Sh*t City with 2D animation depicting its four gangs, the Violence Gang, Pollution Gang, Business Gang, and Debauchery Gang — had me excited to be let loose on this cartoonishly dystopian metropolis. But the game largely confines you to interiors: Violence Gang's apartments, Pollution's sewers, Business' offices, and Debauchery's dungeons.

There are moments that give you a sense of the city that serves as connective tissue between these locations. A few times per section, you'll get a more exploration-focused vignette which allows you to chat up local residents and gang members, and the Violence section has some rooftop levels. But by and large, you spend your time inside, and I began to wonder what was beyond those four walls.

But that's a minor gripe that stems more from my love of fictional grimy cities than anything Anger Foot is actually doing wrong. The FPS is well-paced, smartly designed, and looks like a cartoon you would joyously gulp down with a Capri-Sun after school. It can occasionally frustrate, but it gives you all the tools you need to tailor the experience to your taste. It does many things well, and it accomplishes them elegantly. That a game this focused on feet pulled all that off has got to be the gaming surprise of 2024.