What is it? A fast-paced FPS with one of the most satisfying melee moves around.
Release date: July 11, 2024
Expect to pay: $25/£21
Developer: Free Lives
Publisher: Devolver
Reviewed on: Core i5-12600K, RTX 3070, 32GB RAM
Multiplayer: No
Steam Deck: Verified
Link: Steam
I don't mean to pigeonhole Anger Foot by reducing it to "First Person Hotline Miami," but that's pretty much the elevator pitch for the game. Enemies go down in one hit, but so do you (with a few exceptions) and levels are tight little labyrinths where each room demands you clear it with maximum aggression and efficiency. The other topline gameplay feature is your titular angry foot—not to be confused with the game's protagonist, Anger Foot.
My favorite moment came when I traded in my go-to shoe power-up—The Chargers, which grant a gap closing dash ability that also instakills enemies—for a pair of sexy sexy stilettos in order to clear a mission's challenge objective. The curve ball is that these hot heels make it so bullets only stun enemies, while thrown weapons become an instant kill, and this was a particularly firearm-heavy mission. Having to run the level back with fresh eyes and a completely different approach was Anger Foot at its best: its Hotline Miami flow state killing remixed on the fly by clever design.
You are always a single button press away from one of the better instant melees I've ever seen in a game. The Anger Foot kick has a different vibe from Dark Messiah or Deathloop's legendary NPC punts—it kills enemies outright instead of knocking them into traps—but it's similarly satisfying. Every fight begins with you blasting a door open with your clodhopper, often sending it flying right into an enemy for an instant kill. It's a fantastic mechanic, and my only gripe is that the powerup that activates bullet time on kicking a door down doesn't unlock until the very end of the game.
I really dig how much Anger Foot leans into the kick thematically and mechanically. Of course Anger Foot is a sneakerhead, with the game's whole plot kicked off by his prize collection getting stolen, and all of your power ups are different shoes: off-brand Birkenstocks for an extra life, Timbs for big head mode, and those throw-transforming high heels are just a few examples. There are some clear winners and losers in the arsenal, with some intentionally making the game harder while the dash attack and bullet time loafers are just plain better, but that's where optional objectives come in.
It feels weird to say that a game brimming with gleeful scatological humor shows restraint.
Each mission has two challenges to complete in addition to just clearing the level. There are a bunch of different flavors of speedrun (kill every enemy, no jumping), playstyle and loadout restrictions, creative multikills, and even a few gag/secret objectives. I started off trying to nail every one, but the challenge quickly ramps up, and some even require power ups you can only unlock later in the campaign.
Anger Foot feels generous and substantial, and it's about the perfect length for an arcadey, level-based shooter. I rolled credits at about nine hours with maybe 40% of the optional objectives left to go, but you could probably get it in under six if you just ignored them altogether. Anger Foot also keeps a lot in reserve for the back half, with most of my favorite weapons, levels, and enemies showing up in the third and fourth of four zones.
I didn't go in expecting to love Anger Foot's aesthetic, but it really grew on me. The vibe is "adult comedy animation, but one of the actually funny ones." Names like "Shit City" or "The Crime Minister" risk being goofy in a bad way or "cringe" as the kids say, but the bits always landed for me—it all felt cheeky and fun, and not self-consciously edgy.
A huge thing to Anger Foot's credit is that its jokes never overstay their welcome, and most of the comedy is strictly optional: There's no quirky mission control or Justin Roiland-voiced talking gun yapping at you all the time. There are interstitial non-combat levels full of NPCs to chat with or ignore at your leisure, all of whom deliver three or four-line jokes that usually got me to chuckle, and if you feel annoyed, you can just kick them after with zero consequence. My favorite bits, though, were countless sight gags that are easy to miss as you just zoom through the levels—shout out to the office conference room where all the chairs were toilets. It feels weird to say that a game brimming with gleeful scatological humor shows restraint, but it kinda does.
Anger Foot also has confoundingly good audio overall, and not just with the soundtrack its devs say was inspired by Dutch nightclub beats. Many of the different shoes have unique footstep sounds—catnip to a Thief enjoyer—with the standouts being the whimsical honks of the clown shoes and the disquietingly wet slapping of your bare feet. That thumping nightclub soundtrack may not be to all tastes: when I shared a gameplay clip of one of those in-level sight gags I love so much to the PC Gamer work chat, the reaction to the music was less than enthusiastic. I dig it, though, and I think it fits the game's whole streetwear hypebeast sendup.
My biggest issues were technical: There are "fun" bugs like the charge attack or situationally high-recoil weapons launching you outside the level, but I did have the misfortune of running into one of those late into my dozenth attempt on a difficult mission. More unambiguously frustrating was Anger Foot's performance: Some particularly busy rooms would leave the framerate chugging at 1440p on my RTX 3070 and 2021 i5, and I still ran into some hitches playing the game on a 1280x960 monitor.
None of that was a dealbreaker for me, though, and this feels like the sort of thing developer Free Lives can improve with patches. We've got a glut of indie shooters right now, but Anger Foot really sets itself apart: This feels very different from what most boomer shooters are attempting, and it's an easy recommendation whether you decide to tear through it once or really take the time to master its optional challenges.
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