Anger Foot Review | Foot Loose

As a big fan of Free Lives, Anger Foot caught my attention the moment it was revealed back in 2022. After finishing the demo, I knew it was going to be something special, and it is. Anger Foot is an exploration of the very feet we walk this earth on and their violent potential. Though, is the final game more of the same compared to its fairly extensive demo? To answer that, we need to get our feet wet in Shit City.

Shit City Is a Disease

Anger Foot’s premise isn’t that complicated. Our main character, like Kazuya Mishima, has a love for high-quality footwear, and when his top-shelf collection is stolen by the scum of Shit City, there’s only one thing he can do. Kick his way through every living thing and door until he gets his prized collection back. Everyone in Shit City is a criminal of some kind, but they’re not always hostile.

In between some levels, you’ll often walk through apartment buildings, shady streets, and shops to converse with the residents of Shit City. Yes, they’re all criminals, but when crime is the only currency, can you really blame them? These fun detours are hilarious, and there’s so much variety in characters who each have a few lines of dialogue that make the world feel more than just a playground for destruction.

Enemies aren’t just violent criminals; well, they are, but they’re also very funny. After you’re killed in a run, all the enemies in the room will start dancing over you. It’s hilarious and evil, and I love it.

Feet of Fury

Let’s get to the meat and potatoes of the game, though, and that’s the action. Anger Foot is a fast, frantic, and explosive first-person action game that delivers on mostly everything it sets out to do. While mechanically simple, Anger Foot sells the experience with its excellent presentation and hard-hitting combat. Compared to something like Hotline Miami, where you can seek through multiple rooms ahead, Anger Foot leaves the mystery behind the door, eager to be kicked down.

This randomness leaves room for a high chance of creative combat encounters and smart level design that doesn’t slow you down. Maybe the next room is filled with 30 crocodile thugs that you can endlessly kick or pigeon cops that can’t be shot at. Still, the game keeps things fresh with enough variety, weapons, and enemy types to keep you on your toes. The impact of each kick has been fine-tuned to perfection, and there hasn’t been a better kick since Dark Messiah.

While you can get through the entire game by just finishing the levels, killing and kicking everything in sight, that’s not what Anger Foot is really about, in my opinion.

No Small Feet

The real fun comes from the optional challenges in each level. These can be brutally difficult or straight-up hilarious. They force you to get creative, often restricting your toolkit, shoes, and even basic movement abilities.

For example, one level had an optional challenge where I had to kill 40 enemies while being drunk. It takes two beer bottles to become drunk, so now I’m not just sprinting through rooms, but I’m actively looking for more beer bottles to make sure I don’t become sober. I’ll chug a beer to stay drunk and keep track of how many enemies I’ve killed. This completely changed how I previously looked at this level, and even though it took way more tries than my regular run, I finally managed to remain drunk while killing all 40 enemies.

This is just one scenario, and each level has two challenges that reward you with additional stars, leading to faster unlocks of new shoes. Shoes are essentially the masks from Hotline Miami and add modifiers to the game. One of the earlier pairs allows you to get a bullet when you kick an enemy, while another increases the size of the enemies’ heads. These can often make certain challenges easier, so there’s tons of replayability, thanks to both the challenges and the new shoes you’ll unlock.

It’s an action game through and through that doesn’t want to waste your time. Yes, there is some downtime, but it’s the good kind of downtime that takes the control away to bore you with an exposition dump, but you’re free to engage with the world in a way you see fit.

My only real complaint with Anger Foot is the often uneven performance. Yes, all the explosions are awesome, the ragdoll physics are necessary, and the random open areas are a nice touch, but a lot of these seem to come at a cost of performance that can make drops a bit more noticeable than you’d expect. My recommendation is to externally limit the framerate to something a little below what you’re averaging so the sudden drops don’t feel as extreme.

9

Anger Foot

Anger Foot is a fantastic action game that's hilarious, frantic, and perfectly paced. Shit City is a well-realized setting home to all manner of criminal folk that are eager to die by our character's angry feet. While going through the levels provides a satisfying experience, the real variety in Anger Foot is in its challenges that force you to often restrict your toolkit in creative ways. Its excellent art direction, soundtrack, and enemy variety keep things fresh, but the PC performance can be a bit inconsistent at times.

Pros

• Fast-paced action that's mechanically simple, but very polished
• Shit City is a fun setting with tons of hilarious characters to interact with
• Challenges offer tons of replayability and force you to get creative
• Excellent pacing of levels that never feel too short or long

Cons

• PC performance can be inconsistent

A copy of this game was provided by the publisher for review. Reviewed on PC