Anger Foot Review | A Face-Kicking FPS That Channels Hotline Miami
A fast-paced, door-smashing FPS with tons of personality and a killer soundtrack, held back only by some noticeable performance issues.
REVIEWS
Caljb03
7/22/20266 min read
While searching through the PlayStation Store around my birthday, I spotted a game I’ve been interested in for a long while but never got around to buying. Anger Foot. Now seemed like the perfect time to finally pick the game up and give it a blast. And I’m so glad I did.
Anger Foot has its problems, but man it is an absolute blast from start to finish. It’s essentially an FPS Hotline Miamii, and as you could expect it is as addicting as that sounds.
A RoundHouse Kicking Good Time
The combat of Anger Foot is the reason most people would be picking it up, there’s not really much more to it than this.
Anger Foot plays, like I said earlier, like an FPS Hotline Miami. You go through a level, room by room, kicking doors of their hinges into enemies and then kicking them into oblivion. It’s a satisfying and cathartic system that feels great to pull off for the entirety of my 10 hours playing the game.
The further your progress, the more you start getting more firepower to use against your enemies. This is where the combat starts to stray for me. As much fun as the ass kicking melee combat is, I just never seemed to click with the guns. There’s a wide range of them available which you can find in levels, from pistols to SMGs to Shotguns or Grenade Launchers. It’s hard not to find one that you actually enjoy using, and I did (Namely the crossbow) but they still pale to the kicking nature this game is built around.
One fun part about Anger Foot is its shoe customisation, which I’m sure sounds incredibly silly. But, like hotline Miami’s masks, you can unlock shoes that change how you play the game. These can be pretty minor changes, like your guns reloading on kicks, or they can be major like doors exploding when you kick them open or your character being the size of a mouse.
They work incredibly well with the challenge system to push you to try new tactics. You’ll have challenges that specify beating the game with a specific shoe, one you might not have had experience with. Each of them feel pretty viable, some more than others, so it’s never a massive challenge to complete these. But it helps stop you from finding one you like and spending the entire time relying on it.
It’s hard to really dislike this gameplay though. The devs to an incredible job with each level making you feel both threatened and the threat. From the pumping music that’s a real challenge to not tap your feet to, or the satisfaction of seeing a kicked enemy fly across the room. You’re almost guaranteed to have a good time here.
A Backdrop to Your Carnage
Fun gameplay is nothing if there aren’t any interesting levels to go along with it, and Anger Foot delivers in droves with countless missions for you to work your way through as you kick your way to victory.
Anger Foot is split up into 5 separate regions (With the fifth being a much much shorter section), each which have their own unique styles and hazards that set them apart. You’re still doing the normal kick through doors and blast away bad guys routine, but in a variety of locations that keep it feeling fresh.
Granted, these locations CAN get stale towards the end due to the number of levels in each. You’ll likely be finishing about 20 missions in each region, so you’ll likely be seeing some similar locales and getting a little tired of it. But I do think they manage to change things up throughout, like towards the end of the first section, you’ll be running across rooftops. A nice change of pace from the hallway sprinting you’re doing earlier.
As I mentioned a little earlier, Anger Foot features challenges in each mission. You’ll get 3 challenges in every mission, the first will always be to “Beat the Level”, and then the others will be a mixture of different tasks. They could be something like killing every enemy in under a certain amount of time, or killing no one at all.
Overall, I think this system adds a hell of a lot of fun to Anger Foot, having to treat every mission almost like a dance. Go through this door at this angle, kick this guy, then shoot that one, making sure to throw your gun here. It takes a lot of work to figure out your own ideal route to finish these challenges, but when you get them done, it’s incredibly satisfying.
One thing to note is that I had quite a few pretty bad performance moments during my time with the game. They typically happened in areas with plenty of action going on, where my game would slow down dramatically. Usually, this was when doing pacifist challenges and having to leave enemies alive. I do think this could be a bit of a dealbreaker to some people due to the fact that it is fairly frequent. I’d usually have a bad slowdown once every half an hour. I can look past it due to the fun the game is delivering, but unless it’s fixed in the future, you might want to bear it in mind.
The last thing worth mentioning is how damn incredible the music is. It has that addictive arcadey charm that made Hotline Miamii’s soundtrack work so well. It almost feels like the music is pushing you to continue through the level and not slow down for a second. Even when a level is finished, and I’m in the menu, my feet will still be tapping along to the tunes.
No Citizen Kick (This is a Citizen Kane joke!)
It might not come as a shock to many, but the story in Anger Foot isn’t the bread and butter of the game. It does a decent job pushing you to more levels, but you likely won’t be thinking it’s a narrative masterpiece by the end.
And that’s not a bad thing by any means. Anger Foot knows what it is, and cinematic classic it isn’t. But I will give it some credit, the writing can be pretty damn funny at times. Sure, it’s hit or miss, but it feels like there are more hits than misses with it.
Overall
Anger Foot probably won’t appeal to everyone. It’s not a story-rich experience, and the performance problems might turn some away (And that’s completely understandable). But I do think if you’re able to take it for what it is, a fast-paced, face-kicking action romp, you’ll find a lot here to enjoy. I highly recommend you try Anger Foot out for yourself.
