Anger Foot Review – Alive and Kicking

Shoes don’t get enough credit in gaming. They will take your protagonists everywhere, but the spotlight is always far from these often tired and potentially smelly hidden heroes. Anger Foot finally puts them front and center, your main way of taking out the endless mobs and also a clever means to add some twists to the core gameplay. This is a fast, crazy, addictive first-person kicker with a few hints of shooter action as well, with a focus on physics and speed-running that will get your blood pumping and your head banging. It’s a Devolver Digital game as well, which pretty much translates into a healthy dose of weirdness.

Kick to the Teeth

Anger Foot is set in this uncanny, depressing city where everything and everyone seems to be shady and/or part of a gang. The protagonist is going to be thrown into this relentless action adventure just as he completed his collection of stylish sneakers, only for it to be stolen by one of the four gang leaders. Now, it’s payback time, as you rush through the city areas in search of the shoes, from apartment complexes to rooftops, sewers, subways, business districts, and more.

With a distinct identity and a twist that marks a drastic departure from the traditional concept of an FPS, Anger Foot is all about speed and (almost) no second chances – you die, you restart the stage. Most of these are short and can be completed in a couple of minutes or less, assuming you know the area inside out, from the corners to the location and type of each enemy. Knowing that one mistake and often one hit can take you out, perfect timing with your kicks is mandatory, a slight distance miscalculation enough to expose you to a melee crocodile or a grenade throwing thug.

On the other hand, you can disregard the speed incentive – one of a few conditions presented before each level that you can try to achieve – and take a more careful approach, waiting around corners and making sure every kick, every bullet counts. You don’t open doors, you kick every single one of them, projecting them with enough force to kill any enemy that just happens to be standing in the trajectory of impact.

By completing levels and their respective optional achievements, you earn stars that can be exchanged for new shoes. These shoes are a clever way to seamlessly and stylishly integrate mods into the game, giving you a different condition depending on your pick. It’s a lot of fun experimenting with each one, and there’s not a single one that feels absolutely superior to the others, adapting our playstyle to the chosen one and potentially seeing how better it feels for each level. Some shoes are very useful, others are goofier, but it’s a blast seeing their effects, such as big enemy heads, kicks that replenish gun ammo, a second chance at life, a slide kick, doors that explode on contact after our kick, and so on. The offer is quite generous, with a couple dozen shoes to unlock and use.

Guns aren’t that diverse, however, with the selection including a pistol, rifle, shotgun, a plunger (to pull enemies closer), or a minigun. Ammo is scarce but the right pair of shoes will help you with this, and the feeling for the gunplay is just right for this type of arcade, silly, fast game; don’t expect any Escape from Tarkov-level mechanics, this is not that kind of shooter.

On the other hand, physics are both wacky and fantastic, like a true playground of destruction. You can kick pretty much anything inside a room, a lot of it for comic relief, but also for gameplay purposes, such as fire extinguishers, explosive barrels, canisters, and more, resulting in massive blinding explosions that shake the screen. You can even kick some larger objects in the direction of an enemy to take him out, often with hilarious results. This is a truly remarkable highlight of the game and one that many times has distracted me from the goal of rushing through the stage.

Area bosses are another high point of the game, being as crazy as I was expecting them to be, while providing various battle phases that require you to adapt to new patterns. They’re not hard, and sometimes have this nice progression that makes you feel like there was some real thought placed into these battles, not just a bigger enemy for you to repeatedly kick with your tired old shoes.

The Real Kicker

Anger Foot is a lot of fun, there’s no question about it. But some players may feel that it’s also something of a one-trick pony, which I understand to an extent. It’s all about furiously rushing through a stage kicking and shooting, reaching the end and doing it all over again in a different but often similar area. I didn’t get tired of doing this for a few hours, but your mileage may vary.

There are also some pain points to emphasize, such as the hit distance which may sometimes feel unfair… well, not exactly unfair, since the game has this loose approach and it feels very forgiving as you kick the enemies, but when it’s them who are insta-killing you from a distance that looks off, it can be frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating, there are balance issues here and there, with some earlier levels clearly more difficult than others that you find later on, and the rooftop area is filled with unforgiving jumps that are likely to send you plummeting to your death over and over, and make you consider hanging the shoes for good.

But minutes later, you remember the hard-hitting beats that got stuck inside your head, lighting and parts of the stages pulsating to the beat, how it goes from steady to frantic when a battle starts, and there’s this rush to return for one more try. Anger Foot has that strong pull that is a perfect mix of a fantastic art style, terrific soundtrack, and fast-paced action paired with childish humor that will bring out the idiot kid in you. It’s that good.

Score: 9/10

Pros:

• Fast, fun and engaging gameplay
• Oddly appealing and original art style
• Creative shoe abilities
• Very enjoyable physics
• Addictive soundtrack that fits nicely into the gameplay

Cons:

• Some issues with unforgiving rooftop jumping
• May be repetitive for some

Anger Foot review code was provided by the publisher. You can read MP1st’s review and scoring policy right here.

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