Anger Foot will have you kicking and screaming as you make your way through its grimy levels and colorful enemies. And it’ll always be through pure rage, whether you’re on an unstoppable rampage or dying suddenly to a stray bullet.
The game is a speedrunner and first-person shooter, with plenty of gameplay variety through its many weapons, shoes, and objectives. However, Anger Foot is held back by its poor technical performance on PC, as well as some control issues.
One night, you’re just chilling at your girl’s place getting ready to watch a movie. All of a sudden, someone breaks into your apartment and steals your best pair of sneakers.
The four of your sneakers are divided amongst Shit City’s gangs: Violence, Pollution, Business, and Debauchery. It’s up to you to kick your way through four districts in order to reclaim your sneaker collection.
It’s obvious that the story in Anger Foot isn’t deep, but that’s not the game’s core focus. It’s the perfect and simple setup that gets straight to the point in order to focus on its main strength: gameplay.
The characters in Anger Foot are rather one dimensional, but just like the story, the characters aren’t really the biggest focus here.
Enemies are just there to kick down, but the bosses are uniquely designed and have personality. For example, the first boss is a helicopter and it’s insanely funny to see your character just constantly kicking it down.
Anger Foot is a first-person shooter, but with the extra hook of using your left foot to kick down enemies. It’s incredibly chaotic and fun, and it feels like I’m playing as John Wick, trying to avoid getting shot while shooting myself and kicking enemies everywhere.
Every level in Anger Foot has two optional objectives, such as completing the level in a certain amount of time or completing the level without killing anyone. They’re worth doing as fulfilling them earns you stars that unlock Sneakers. Each Sneaker has a special ability that can drastically change how you play, and help you gain an advantage in certain situations. It’s a smart form of progression that doesn’t rely on grinding.
For example, my favorite is the Holy Shoe, which is designed after Christ’s sandals. With them, I get a second chance at life after dying one time. This particular one really helped me complete levels I otherwise had trouble finishing.
Not only are there a huge number of Sneakers to equip, but the guns come in a good variety as well. There’s your standard pistol, as well as machine guns and even a toilet plunger grappling hook. This item made me feel like I was playing Doom Eternal or Halo: Infinite sometimes, as it would pull enemies towards me and I could kick them back. While you can only pick up guns from dead enemies, the mix and matching between your weapon and Sneaker is incredibly fun as that constantly switches up the gameplay.
The enemy variety is great, too. For example, Anger Foot has its standard henchmen with pistols, but there are stronger ones that have shotguns, as well as alligators with pipes that will charge at you. The sewers even have tentacles that emerge from the wastewater holding weapons and poisonous snakes. You have to figure out how to deal with a bunch of different enemies on the fly, which makes the game so exhilarating to play through.
However, there are some levels, especially in the first area with the Violence Gang, that have huge skyscrapers. Here, you sometimes have to jump from building to building. The jumping physics don't feel quite right — and there were plenty of times where I misjudged my distance and fell to my death.
Anger Foot has a great cartoon-ish art style that fits its juvenile premise. Each of the game’s areas and level design reflect different themes effectively, such as the Pollution Gang’s home turf of a sewer, and the Business Gang’s home turf being an interconnected subway system.
The colorful anthropomorphic enemies are made up of different animal species and dress in streetwear clothing, which adds to the grimy setting. Trash is littered everywhere with largely comical flies surrounding them, and you can even kick down stall doors to see enemies using the toilet and a censor covering them. Shit City feels disgustingly charming, even if I personally wouldn’t want to live there myself.
Anger Foot has a lot of funk and hip-hop tracks that add to the energy and excitement as you kick your way through the levels.
It’s a game that doesn’t really need a complex soundtrack, but the sound effects also heighten the experience. Guns sound snappy, explosions sound intense, and your foot sounds forceful. All of those sound effects help you get immersed in the game.
Anger Foot can be surprisingly difficult since you’re very frail. It only takes a few stray bullets to kill you and then you have to restart the level. You have to be aware of your surroundings. Sometimes, rooms have explosive barrels, and if you accidentally shoot them, you could be caught in the blast and die.
It may take a few tries to complete a level, but Anger Foot feels fair. But if you want to make the game easier, there are a bevy of accessibility features. Auto aim is available, and Never Die mode, you can guess, makes it so you never die and live out your power fantasy.
The performance in Anger Foot is its biggest pitfall. If there’s too much going on, the game’s framerate tanks. There have been situations where I accidentally blew up a barrel, causing a chain reaction that blows up other barrels. In a game where one single bullet from an enemy can mean the difference between life and death, a dip in performance feels discouraging.
Additionally, there are some surprisingly long load times between selecting a level and loading it up. The wait between booting up the game on my PC and Steam to get to the main menu is annoying too. In many instances, I thought the game froze, but it’s just that the loading times are unacceptably long.
Anger Foot has a lot of replayability, as you can go back to previous levels to see if you can complete the optional objectives and earn more stars, thus unlocking more Sneakers. And the game is quite cheap at $25, making it feel like it’s worth both your time and money.
If you like speedrunners or gameplay loops that require learning the layout of levels to overcome them, such as Neon White, Ghostrunner, and Celeste, then Anger Foot is definitely one to give a try. It’s got great gameplay and enemy variety, but the overall performance needs improvement.
