With a unique gimmick and plenty of action, Anger Foot is everything a tongue-in-cheek FPS should be: short, sweet, and to the door-kicking point.
Sometimes, the most exciting games are the ones you didn’t even know you were waiting for. And while I certainly didn’t have it on my wish list, “first-person Hotline Miami with a focus on kicking doors and enemies” turned out to be something I definitely wanted, and Anger Foot offers it. It’s a natural progression from South-African developer Free Lives’ last title, Terra Nil (a relaxing puzzle/strategy game) — in that Free Lives seems set on making a completely different type of game with every new project. It’s been a long time since an FPS title grabbed me, but Anger Foot came in kicking and kept me hooked to the last level.
The premise is simple: someone stole your four sickest pairs of sneakers, and you’ll need to kick and shoot your way through a series of increasingly goofy-looking goons to reclaim your dope kicks from the bosses protecting them. You’ll make your way through a handful of areas, most with just over a dozen levels, each boasting a unique tileset, enemies, weapons, and gimmicks.
No fancy-shmancy paths to choose from here — in Crime City there’s one path to each boss
Most enemies die from one bullet or kick, and your character can only take a couple of whacks or shots himself before going down. You might think this would lead to slow gameplay, with careful peeking around each corner; in reality, I ended up running through most levels as fast as I could. You can earn up to three stars in each level: one for simply beating it, and two more for doing a specific challenge like completing the level in under 30 seconds, while wearing a specific pair of shoes, or without taking damage. In addition to the potential star-earnings encouraging faster gameplay, the thumping soundtrack (which got a bit repetitive but feels so integral I never turned it off) also urges you to go faster and kick more — and really, it’s more fun the faster you go.
Earning stars is the primary way you unlock new sneakers. Shoes have a variety of effects, like giving you a double jump or a sliding kick, or granting ammo on kick kills. One set of shoes even makes clown noises and causes kicked enemies to fly around like a deflated balloon, just because. More interesting still is how you’ll need to utilize specific shoes to complete some of the level challenges. Some paths may require specific shoes to reach, but the “beat the level while wearing X shoes” are also quite fun simply because they encourage you to try out something new. Levels tend to be designed with the challenges in mind, so it’s rarely frustrating to attempt the challenges (though I can’t pretend I’ve completed them all yet).
You can actually track your progress on the level’s challenges while in-game. Take note, other devs!
Much of the game’s appeal comes from the “just one more try” effect that Hotline Miami always induced in me. With a few exceptions, the levels all feel very fair, and so there’s a real urge to go back and do it right when you mess up. Once you get the hang of a level, you can really fly through it, and there’s a very satisfying flow state where you’re just kicking everyone’s face in and headshotting distant enemies in between door kicks. There’s also plenty to see and do if you do go slow every once and awhile, with silly environmental jokes and secret paths through the level you can discover.
The jokes continue in the little interstitial sections, where you walk through a few rooms with friendly NPCs you can chat up. Almost all of them have something to say, and almost all of what they have to say is at least a little bit funny. Of course, you can also just kick everyone to death as you run through each room to the next level — it’s always nice when dialogue is optional.
I think it’s called alcohol
The game is very well paced, with new sneakers, enemies, weapons, and level gimmicks showing up just before things get stale. The older enemies and mechanics remain, so levels simply become more challenging and complex — but you’re a wiser, more experienced kicker now, and you’ve got more sneakers to choose from, so the game remains challenging but fair.
At least most of the time, anyway. There were a few spots near the end where I had to retry levels quite a few times thanks to particularly tricky sections, but I hadn’t unlocked all the sneakers yet and I suspect I was simply missing the requisite tools. More frustrating were the bosses — while they were definitely spectacles, and the various phases made me laugh on more than one occasion, the fact that you have to restart the whole thing if you mess up a phase felt like a poor design choice, given that it can take 2-3 minutes to get back to where you were in the fight.
My character may or may not have gotten a tan from the Holy Sandals that let you get one revive on death
But even in the sometimes-annoying boss fights, the attention to detail on display in Anger Foot is noteworthy. Boss icons make faces when you do damage and change with each phase. The soundtrack changes to let you know when the boss is about to do a crucial move you need to respond to. Lights pulse to the beat of the music. Enemies flex on you and dance to the very same music when you die. The basic croc goons, when encountered in dark subway tunnels, wear headlamps. More generally, everything in the game is colorful, creatively designed, and often hilarious.
Besides the handful of minutes I felt I “wasted” on bosses, I generally had a great time in Anger Foot. If anything, I would have liked just one more full area to kick through, or a few more additional platforming/combat mechanics near the end of the game. I beat the game in about 5 hours, but that’s with less than half of the challenges complete, and a handful of sneakers still a mystery — completionists who want to beat all the levels and do all the achievements are probably looking at 10+ hours of gameplay.
Free Lives have crafted a tight, focused, and effective action game that feels well worth the $24.99 Anger Foot will run you on Steam right now. There’s also a demo on the Steam page, so if you’re interested, go check it out!
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DanielD
Unabashed FromSoftware fanboy still learning to take his time with games (and everything else, really). The time he doesn't spend on games is spent on music, books, or occasionally going outside.
