Anger Foot Review

Do you ever just get so angry that you throw caution to the wind and start taking down all sorts of nefarious organisations through the sole use of your foot? That’s the elevator pitch for Anger Foot, a game developed by Free Lives, the team behind Genital Jousting and Broforce. After completing it and doing some of the additional challenges you can do, all I can say is: this is one hell of a First Person Booter.

Set in the city of Sydney…wait that doesn’t sound entirely correct. Ah, right, it is set in Shit City (you can see why I got the two confused). The city is run by four gangs: the Violence Gang, the Pollution Gang, the Business Gang, and the Debauchery Gang. These gangs also operate under the Crime Minister. You assume the role of the game’s namesake, Anger Foot, a crook who lives within said city and collects rare premium shoes. You’re about to have a movie night with your incredibly caked partner (crush me with those thighs) but it gets interrupted as the corrupt police who run the Violence Gang steal your premium shoe collection. From there you set forth and bring any and all involved to the heels of self-righteous justice. You aren’t exactly a “good guy” but more a dude bent on vengeance in order to recover their shoe collection.

I’ll get to the point: this game will not get any awards for its narrative. It’s clear that the story is set dressing to contextualise your actions as a player, while also being a platform for some silly jokes. That latter point is something where the writing of Anger Foot shines, though. I am a lover of dumb jokes and puns, and this game wears that style of humour on its sleeve. Throughout your time playing the game, you will encounter numerous members of each gang, and their dialogue leans entirely into the theme of each gang. A personal favourite of mine is the Pollution Gang, whose dialogue is either completely deranged or kind of reasonable until the last possible moment, though the Business Gang also outwardly states that no one does capitalism better than criminals, which isn’t an incorrect statement.

The game’s strongest point is by far its slick and fast-paced gameplay. If you are a fan of games like DOOM (2016) and Bears in Space then you will find some comfort here. No need to aim down sights, just incredibly fast movement. Its differences lie in the design of the combat. In those aforementioned games, the focus of the combat was the guns. Shooting was the core conceit of the combat, but in Anger Foot the focus is a little more on…well your foot. Okay, that might not be entirely fair. There is shooting in Anger Foot. In fact, there is quite a lot of it and a surprising variety of weapons. However, the game does not allow you to grow attached to your weapons because once a weapon runs out of ammo you have to throw it. There is no upgrading your weapons and you don’t have an arsenal at your disposal.

Anger Foot’s differences from other modern boomer shooters are one of its biggest strengths. It perfectly utilises the fast, frenetic pace that boomer shooters are known for and combines it with the chaotic and wanton destruction of Anger Foot’s path of vengeance. Unsurprisingly, you kick things quite a lot in this game as your foot is one of your primary forms of attack, but the feedback given from using these kicks is great. Your foot has some insanely destructive powers. Not only can you kick down virtually any door in your way but you are also able to kill almost anyone in one kick. Because you aren’t tied down to an ammo mechanic exclusively, it also means that you are able to be in the action as much as possible — your foot is as lethal as your guns, which is a scary thought.

The most addicting part of Anger Foot is how it uses its simplistic gameplay to craft encounters that vary wildly and how those encounters ask the player to adapt to the ever-changing dangers. Each level tests the player in various and nuanced ways, and it was something that felt weird for me at first, but I quickly learned to love this about the game. The flow of each level is unique and gratifying, with a gameplay cycle of kicking down a door, clearing the enemies, then kicking down more doors to either find a dead end or a room full of enemies to start the process once again. It sounds repetitive, but because anything can be behind those doors it always keeps you on your toes.

Adding to the variety of the encounters and levels are the shoes, which add various modifiers to the game. Whether it be changing the behaviour of your kicks, turning weapons into headshot-only weapons, making doors explode when they’re kicked down, and even a modifier to reduce the gravity of the world so things tend to float or fall down slowly. There are a total of 23 shoes to unlock, and your ability to unlock them is determined by your progress through the game and how many additional challenges you complete in each level.

The challenges are another layer that add to the fun of Anger Foot. The challenges often ask you to approach the levels in different ways or hone your execution of each level to complete in a timely manner. Some even require you to use certain shoes to modify the level and make it play remarkably differently. It’s a nice little feedback loop of needing to complete challenges to unlock more shoes, and needing shoes to complete some challenges.

Not everything about the game is peachy, however. Unsurprisingly, there are boss fights in this game and while they are all pretty cool, most of them feel like they are quite antithetical to everything else the game has to offer. There isn’t really room to adapt or alter your approach, as the answers are fairly clear and cut and so when they do kill you repeatedly it can feel grating. The first one isn’t too bad, but the later ones don’t feel particularly great, especially the third boss. For a game that is rather flexible in how you approach it, these bosses can be frustratingly rigid.

This game has so much style and attitude, and there is no better example of this than with the music. While its soundtrack is a style of music that isn’t exactly my taste, as its insistence on bass thumping does not play nice with my ears — and it certainly gave me flashbacks of school where there were a bunch of extremely white kids with mullets doing awful dance moves in the playground — I cannot argue against the soundtrack’s effectiveness at conveying Anger Foot’s atmosphere and style.

The game mostly runs and looks great too. The colours are vibrant and rich, and the art style lends itself to the silly and chaotic nature of the game. The only minor hiccups I noticed were when the particles and effects were going crazy and my frames would momentarily die. For the most part, though, the game runs fantastically and is even Steam Deck Verified. I didn’t personally play it on Steam Deck as I struggle with playing shooters on a gamepad, but if that is your thing then you should take solace in its verification for Valve’s PC Handheld.