Anger Foot. As you probably already guessed, it is about foot that is angry. The game is basically what you expect from Hotline Miami if it were in first person and instead of synthwave, made drum’n’bass as the cornerstone of the soundtrack, and revolved around fast fashion.
We’re playing as one mean dude known as Anger Foot. Anger Foot is one angry lizard, at least that’s how he was called in one of the promotional trailers. For me, he looks like Nemesis from Resident Evil 3 got leaner and got into the hooligan scene.
As the introduction shows, Anger Foot lives in Shit City, and is a hardcore fan of fast fashion. Sneakers in particular.
Shit City is the worst place to be. It is the city where crime was legalized and the only real crime is to be a law-obedient citizen. Perhaps it is a smart allegory to the current state of some cities in the US, but since I was in the US long ago, right before the COVID-19, I have no saying in it. The only thing I know, this city is in favor of 2nd amendment, because everyone is armed to the teeth.
The game starts when Anger Foot gets hold of the last pair of rare sneakers and finishes his collection. Having it in his possession, he returns home and puts it in his vault. Once it is done, his girlfriend plans their movie night. Unfortunately for them, the local gang leaders have different plans for the night, breach the wall to his vault, and snatch all the sneakers, leaving Anger Foot angry and his feet naked.
His girlfriend, being a real trooper she really is, vapes like a train and suggests going on the quest to return the sneakers. And so the game starts.
The game itself is fairly simple. You have five episodes in total. Each episode is dedicated to a specific crime gang in the city. You beat the levels, earn the stars for specific challenges in each level, open sneakers, and at the end of each zone you have to fight with the boss for the exclusive pair of sneakers. Simple? Simple.
Gameplay is even simpler. You can shoot, you can kick with your feet, you can move, and you can jump. No super powers, no finishers, no extra-buttons. Controls are simple to the core.
Does it mean that the game is easy? Hell no. Maybe for someone who plays games for a living, but I beat it without using assist mode, and by the end of my playthrough it was getting really intense. To a point where I had to replay some levels dozens of times before I even got to the end of the level.
On the difficulty scale, I would say Anger Foot is easier than Hotline Miami, but harder than Mullet Mad Jack (says the guy, who still didn’t beat it on hard, but I’m almost there, I’m on the final level before the final boss, I’ll get there eventually).
It requires precision, speed, aggression, and nerves of steel. If you’re prone to rage quitting, or taking failure too close to heart, probably you should spare your nerves and avoid playing it. I didn’t, and have a bitter taste at the end of the game.
Without going into spoilers too much, after all the game is new, linear, and probably most of us aren’t going to play it more than once, I can say that by the end of chapter 3, I was already tired of the game. By the end of chapter 4, I just wanted it to end.
The gameplay smooth, the music is cool even if hardbass aren’t your cup of coffee, so what’s the problem? Well, in my humble opinion, levels are just too damn long after the second chapter. The game is fast. You kill fast; you die fast. It most often than not, requires memorization of the levels, enemies placement, and developing the best strategy. Basically, same as Super Meat Boy or N++ or Hotline Miami, you have to be fast and aggressive. This is when the game shines. Unfortunately, here, after the second chapter, more often than not, I was just standing behind the doors, and waiting for the enemies to come. And that’s actually what sucked for me.
In the beginning, you’re playing fast and reckless. You jump inside the room without really knowing what’s behind it and deal with the danger on the go. Sometimes you win, sometimes you die. But just like it was in Hotline Miami, you have no time to get bored, because the levels are short, the action is fast, and your error, while painful, isn’t the end of the run. It fits the character and the overall atmosphere of surrealistic violence.
Later, when the enemies are armed to the teeth and can one-shot you from the other end of the map, when there are so many enemy types at times you even forget they are in the game, and levels all of a sudden become pretty long and hard to navigate without pausing for a moment to find the right door, the game turns into a slow shooter. I bet there are gamers who keep playing like they played the first levels, but I suck at games. And when I suck too hard, I start to adjust the way I play. And in case of Anger Foot, I spent almost half of the game camping and playing slow. Basically, the fast-paced FPS about very angry and reckless dude turns into tactical shooter, where I’m just taking out enemies one by one ignoring timer in the left upper corner of the screen.
All in all, I enjoyed this game. Even despite my rant, it’s still a good game. It has good humor, awesome satire on the corporate world and on life in general, if you can look past the most primitive toilet humor. There are at least a couple of dialogues that made me laugh out loud, and the ending turned out to be fun, even if pretty predictable. But between you and me, I would rather go for a predictable light-hearted ending than for the serious-unexpected-turn-to-shock-and-remind-that-life-is-shit bad kind of ending.