Anger Foot is an immersion into an acidic mix of surrealism, dystopia and rave parties of the Netherlands of the 90s. A counter-cultural warhead that hits the target: straight at the pompous foreheads of the “white collars” who have perverted the idea of capitalism, reducing it to idolatry. However, the main goal of Anger Foot is to send you in one blow to a world where Hotline Miami in 3D has become a reality.
They stole and sneaked up on me
The plot of Anger Foot is as simple as a pair of sneakers: local bandits steal a hard-earned collection of top super sneakers and John Hulk wakes up in the main character… oh, Hulk Wick. No, sorry, Anger Foot! Exactly!
The wonderful evening is completely ruined and watching a movie with a girlfriend will have to be postponed until better times. First of all, we will return the “sneakers”, and the girls – later. We have to bring revenge to the house of four local gang leaders, and, what is not typical for the genre – the main character still has to choose between the “red and blue pill”. Let our journey through the local valley of darkness, called “Shield City”, begin.
Love at first punch
Anger Foote’s passion for sneakers is not a banal “sneakerheadism” – since he does everything with his feet, including those that ordinary people are used to doing with their hands! Driving a car, eating popcorn and other obscenities. Perhaps this is somehow connected with his frog past… Consequently, Anger Foote also does good old-fashioned fistfights with his feet.
Each level is a kind of combat puzzle: we kick down the door and methodically move around the location to the rhythmic pounding of hard techno, breaking the face of everyone who gets under our hot foot. Enemies die with a “half-kick”, but the main character can withstand no more than one blow in close combat or a couple of hits from a firearm.
Hotline Miami in 3D
Death in Anger Foot is just a reason to restart the level, take into account the mistakes, remember the location and composition of the enemies in order to return and stuff them even harder, even faster. At the same time, successful completion of the level takes from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. By the way, for this it is not necessary to kill everyone on the level – it is enough to run to the finish.
The game map is divided into five regions – at the end of each you will find the head of the local gang, who has stolen one of the pairs of super sneakers. A classic helicopter boss, a local version of a rapper with three sixes on his forehead and even a catwoman who dreams of literally peeing in your slippers – the local bestiary in Anger Foot is capable of surprising.
The gameplay is constantly evolving and developing. With each level, the game throws up new opponents, weapons, or additional conditions for moving forward. All this is mixed in different proportions so that the feeling of novelty does not leave until the very end.
You won’t have to fight only with your “two”. The local arsenal varies from a pistol to a flamethrower, and having got hold of a plunger, you can attract opponents like Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. The game doesn’t spoil you with ammunition, but even an empty “gun” will do for throwing it at the head of the first person you meet.
Progress against the laws of physics
Meta-progression in Anger Foot is implemented through completing challenges and collecting shoes. For completing each level, you can get up to 3 stars – one for successfully completing it and two for fulfilling additional conditions: completing in N seconds, completing the level without jumping, completing without killing, etc.
For every 5 stars, you unlock one pair of shoes. And what shoes! Here you will find slippers that grant a second life, antigravity boots or shoes that allow you to kill an enemy by throwing a weapon. The local shoe collection allows you to modify the gameplay or add another drop of madness to this theater of the absurd.
Difficulty for everyone
Anger Food is a hardcore shooter that can offer a fair share of challenge. However, this representative of the genre is indulgent towards the mass user – in the settings there are functions that allow you to make battles with ordinary opponents and bosses easier or even make the hero immortal. Thus, everyone is free to choose the level of challenge. However, it is worth understanding – excessive reduction of complexity is fraught with devaluation of many game mechanics. Want a dumb action movie for the evening? Welcome. Need a jaw-dropping action? It is here.
Every few levels we are allowed to take a break from the intense hack and slash and are offered walks around local hub locations, where we can chat with locals, whose phrases are time to be taken apart for quotes for VKontakte publics and philosophical treatises on rotten capitalism. Oh, how many wonderful discoveries are in store for us… “Shield City”.
Oh, wonderful ***** world!
“Shield City” – the name itself tells us that this place holds many smelly stories. This version of “sin city” is a world upside down. Crime rules the roost, corporations are promoted for embezzling funds, and secretaries cheat on their bosses with their husbands.
The zones of influence in Shield City are divided between four gangs: the Thugs, the Bigwigs, and the Party Animals. And at the top of the food chain is the Minister of Crime and his retinue of corrupt cops.
On the path of revenge, we will pass through the most diverse corners of “Shield City”: residential areas and stinking streets, sewers and subway, office buildings and a castle with an underground nightclub. The locations delight with their diversity and attention to detail, and the local population is so colorful that I took more than a hundred screenshots of their phrases – in case of important negotiations.
Theatre of the Absurd
Here’s a kid selling hot dogs he stole from his mother. And next to him is a cop who doesn’t care – he’s a thief of sorts himself, gobbling up those hot dogs when no one’s looking. An office clerk fancies himself a developer – he’s developing his stomach so he can fit more food in. In this city, you’re trash if you don’t steal from those around you. Here you can meet typical representatives of the “successful success” faith, reclining not far from the “effective manager”, and dozens of other comical, grotesque and simply pathetic characters.
The amount of black humor of varying degrees of filthiness in Anger Foot flows like a cornucopia stuck in a dirty toilet. Even for me, a fan of black humor, there is so much of this “content” that you soon stop paying attention to it, it becomes part of the overall picture, quite normal for this world.
From game jam to release
Technically, it’s hard to fault the project – South African studio Free Lives doesn’t have the budgets of major studios and has clearly used all the resources at its disposal. In addition, the initial version of Anger Foot was developed in a week for a competition among indie developers.
The visual component of the project is a riot of colors, executed in the eclectic style inherent to Devolver Digital. Which is not surprising, since the backbone of the studio consists of former DD employees. One can find fault with the visual effects, which in places look too simple, even by the standards of such a modest game as Anger Foot.
The game’s optimization is excellent – the project runs fast even on the old GeForce GTX 750ti, but microfreezes occur even on the RTX 3070. However, I did not encounter any critical bugs.
The game, by the way, is translated into Russian. I learned about this on the second day of the game, when I looked more closely at the game’s page on Steam. On the first day, the inscription “English” in the main menu did not bother me at all and I did not even think to click on it. No way, sir!
Lost in translation. He’s not hardbass!
The developers highlight the musical component as an important part of the project. “Anger Foot is a lightning-fast hardbass game <…>,” reads the first line of the game’s description on Steam. I don’t know how the Steam page is designed in different languages, but in fact there is no talk of any “hardbass”. All the fighting is accompanied by frantic rhythms of hard techno aka Hardcore and various derivatives like gabber with notes of acid house and hardstyle. These genres of music have little in common with the invention of St. Petersburg ravers of the 00s
Gabber originated in the Netherlands in the 90s of the last century as a counterpoint to the glamorous club culture of those years, which perfectly underlines the general mood of the game. Among the decorations of the game, you can find many references to gabber culture, the hardcore techno festival Masters of Hardcore. The name of the game Anger Foot itself refers to the famous Dutch figure of the hardcore scene – Angerfist. Gabber is characterized by a dark sound with corresponding textual content and the predominance of the “kick” and “distortion” over the bass.
Domestic hardbass, on the contrary, arose as a mockery of famous St. Petersburg party-goers about simple “workers” who sought to join the club culture in the 2000s. Hardbass, as a rule, has a softer sound with a pronounced bass and humorous lyrics.
Diagnosis
The “game industry punks” have once again proven their expertise in finding something fresh and unique. Anger Foot has burst onto the summer release calendar with both feet and has given me genuine pleasure.
If you love Hotline Miami, Katana Zero or Ghostrunner, then Anger Foot is a must-play. The festival of colors, satire, overflowing black humor and complete opposition to corporate culture allowed Devolver Digital and Free Lives to create a unique gaming experience. This game is destined to find a loyal audience!
I’m sure this game will have many opponents – some won’t like the “toilet” humor, others will spit from the “hellish pounding on the ears”, but behind the external simplicity lies a deeply developed world, full of allusions to modern reality, and simply a fun game.
If you are tired of modern AAA blockbusters and have lost interest in games, launch Anger Foot and kick down the first door. I am sure you will spend the next six hours with pleasure.
Pro
- Dynamic gameplay
- Humor (for those who like dark stuff)
- Hotline Miami in 3D
- A world you can readily believe in
- Various levels
- High replayability
- Flexible difficulty settings
Contra
- Rare microfreezes
- Humor (for gentle people)
- Poor visual effects
- Unstable Difficulty Curve