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When you hear “cartoonishly violent,” think Anger Foot. It’s Trepang2 but with High On Life‘s humor and art, aggressive in its cuteness and weirdly adorable in its violence. Blood covers the walls, but it’s the color and consistency of grape jelly, turning a sewer massacre into an off-kilter breakfast scene. You won’t get Quake‘s gibs, but you’ll get its breakneck action, with levels tightly designed around the handful of things Anger Foot excels at. Toss in some supernatural footwear and gameplay tuned for speedrunners, and you can see why it works. There are no problems too big to be kicked in the face.
Anger Foot Review
Free Lives developed Broforce as well as Anger Foot, so I knew to expect two things: humor and action, both ridiculous. This crime-ridden, comic book FPS didn’t disappoint. Shit City (yes, that’s the game’s signature metropolis) includes 60 levels of door-kicking, face-kicking, brutal shotgun kills, ragdolling, and explosions. Though you can finish its story in 6-8 hours, levels are built around replayability. If someone tells Future Me that they put 1,000 hours into this absurdist FPS, I’ll believe them. Also, Anger Foot has knife-wielding, anthropomorphic rats in booty shorts, so make of that what you will.
Story: Footwear and Felonies
“Crime is the law,” the opening cutscene declares. Like Bomb Queen‘s New Port City, Shit City is run by and for criminals. Specifically, it’s run by four gangs: the Violence Gang, Pollution Gang, Business Gang, and Debauchery Gang. The names aren’t subtle, so you can guess their specialties. With cops and robbers on the exact same side, everyone contributes to the misery, and everyone serves one man: the Crime Minister. Everyone except Anger Foot, that is.
Why is this footwear-obsessed action hero the only remaining rebel? Because that’s cool, and Anger Foot respects the Rule of Cool above all others. Anger Foot further defies the Crime Minister by owning four pairs of Preemo shoes, every sneakerhead’s dream. At least he owned them until the opening cutscene, during which the Violence Gang steals the four crowning pieces of Anger Foot’s shoe collection. What follows is an energy drink and shootout-obsessed adventure to destroy the four gangs and take down the Crime Minister once and for all.
Despite all the odds, Anger Foot has some of the best worldbuilding I’ve seen this year, which is bizarre. Its plot is silly, but Anger Foot takes the quality of its setting seriously, and there’s surprising depth here. Between murder-sprint levels, you get to walk through the apartment buildings, sewer tunnels, and corporate offices where the people of Shit City live and do crime. Chatting with the locals reveals a hideous tapestry of human (well, anthropomorphic) drama. A receptionist, falling asleep at her desk, says, “My other job is a cat burglar. The cats are very slippery.” Later, we find an office building celebrating “bring your child and make them work day.”
If you appreciate Rick and Morty, Duke Nukem, or Big Mouth, you’ll enjoy Anger Foot‘s humor. That humor even explains and justifies some otherwise inexplicable design choices. There are 30 fire extinguishers in this random room because the devs wanted you to see what happens when you shoot one. There are also 30 fire extinguishers in this random room because the Business Gang used them for money laundering, and the Pollution Gang left the extinguishers to rot because screw nature. Every aspiring FPS dev should study this game.
Gameplay: Anyway, I Started Kicking
There are guns, and the guns are great, but there’s also a foot, and the foot is better. Anger Foot has one of the best kicks in gaming, a spring-loaded jackhammer of meat that puts anything it hits on a collision course with the nearest wall. It is absolutely silly how fun and effective this kick is, and kick-only runs are not only possible but actual optional challenges throughout the game. It’s probably a good thing that there’s no gibbing or gore, but bodies are persistent, so your famed feet will leave rooms looking like The Shining.
You’ll find pistols, shotguns, and other weapons, including a plunger that acts as a grappling hook, pulling enemies toward you. There’s no reload mechanic, however. When you run out of bullets, just throw your gun at the nearest enemy and grab a new one off a corpse. Neither disposable guns nor throw mechanics are unique to Anger Foot, but it uses them better than most. During some hectic firefights, you might bounce half a dozen pistols off your enemies’ fuzzy muppet skulls.
Despite your incredible lethality, however, Anger Foot doesn’t feel like John Wick taking on Sesame Street. Knives and shotguns will one-shot you, while enemy pistols and miniguns require a few hits to put you down. You’re often fighting multiple foes in cramped hallways or sewer tunnels, so one mistake and you’re probably dead. You’ll die a lot, but levels reload fast, giving your enemies just enough time to do a celebration dance over your body. That’s right: enemies break it down and boogie like a Fortnite emote when they murder you.
When it comes to level design, spawn point placement, and kickable objects, Free Lives has a jeweler’s eye for detail. Levels in Anger Foot are bloody puzzle boxes. You can do pacifist and no-jumping runs. You can beat many levels in under a minute if you know where to go and who to kill. On my first playthrough of each level, I focused on just soaking in the ambiance, learning the map, and not dying. I’m not a completionist, and it takes a Herculean effort to entice me to 100% most games. These levels beg for it.
The shoes are a big reason why. As you beat levels and complete challenges you unlock new shoes, each of which grants a unique ability. These shoes turn on Big Head mode. These shoes let you double-jump. Wear this pair to regain a spent bullet whenever you kick someone. You haven’t mastered a level until you understand how every pair of shoes changes your strategic options. Some challenges require you to wear specific footwear, but if you never want to give up your extra life-granting Holy Sandals, you don’t have to.
The game does a good job of introducing new weapons and enemy types throughout the game. That said, I’d prefer more in both categories. Enemy AI is simple (and occasionally glitchy). For the most part, however, it does a great job of trying to shoot, stab, bludgeon, and otherwise end Anger Foot. The bosses remind me of something out of Conker’s Bad Fur Day, showing off some great ideas but presenting little actual challenge. That’s fine. Anger Foot soars high on its mechanics and level design, and boss battles are serviceable palate cleansers before the real kicking starts.
Graphics & Audio: Toe Jamming Out
Three alligators wielding lead pipes chase you through the subway and up an escalator. You turn as you reach the top, kicking the first alligator into his friends, sending all three goons flying. The train car behind you is packed with hissing snakes, and as you turn your pistol on them, you realize you’re out of bullets. Thinking fast, you throw the useless gun at a nearby police officer, kick him through his riot shield, and take his weapon for yourself. You have thirty seconds left to complete your challenge, but more alligators are pouring in from all sides. This is Anger Foot.
To understand Anger Foot, you need to understand its toilets. Open an elevator? Toilet. Packed conference hall? Toilets. Hidden room only accessible through a random bathroom stall? A giant toilet worshipped by skeletons. It’s the ultimate symbol of the absurdism that informs so much of the game’s visual design. The excellent foley work and thudding EDM soundtrack, meanwhile, are like that one friend who keeps a straight face while everything around them gets increasingly foolish. The design works with a wink and a nod.
There’s a perfect crunch when you kick a door. There’s also a perfect crunch-BOOM when you kick an explosive barrel into a pistol-wielding kraken. The rats with knives and booty shorts? They’re throwing a corporate birthday party, and you can interrupt it with a chaingun, snuffing two dozen members of the Business Gang like a blow of the candles. Explosions, flashbangs, and fire extinguishers fill the screen with gorgeous particle effects when you’re not too busy kicking people off rooftops to notice. The clean and simple visual style let the devs focus on mechanics while still conveying the grit and glitter of the city. If you need proof that games don’t require realism to be immersive, this is it.
Anger Foot nails visual feedback, essential for this kind of FPS. Whether it qualifies as a boomer shooter or not, it’s a game that needs to sell every kick and gunshot. Anger Foot pulls it off, using musical cues and sound effects to escalate the tension. That’s true whether you’re fighting a helicopter or a gangster shooting it out with you from his porcelain throne. Every level is a visual treat, composed in funny and satisfying ways, even when they don’t make architectural sense.
Conclusion: Flushing the Competition
Anger Foot might be the best shooter of the year. You’ll need to look elsewhere for PvP, photorealism, and a complex narrative, but this game is head and shoulders (and feet) above most of its comrades. It’s a paradise for speedrunners and replay enthusiasts, tells a funny and unsettling story, and takes its core mechanics seriously. If you’re the type to play through a stage once and never want to touch it again, you have better options. For everyone else, Anger Foot sets the FPS bar for 2024.
Anger Foot (PC Reviewed)
Anger Foot nails its aggressive mechanics to deliver a fast, funny, and highly replayable FPS experience.
Pros
- High replayability
- Great humor
- Excellent sound design
Cons
- Bosses are just okay
- Somewhat limited enemy pool
- Minor glitches and pathfinding issues
