Anger Foot Hands-on Preview – Gripping grippers-based FPS fun

I’m a simple girl. Sometimes all I need out of a game is to load into a first-person-shooter level and shoot everything to hell, knocking over explosive barrels and blowing everything to smithereens. As an iconic rap song on 2023 shooter El Paso, Elsewhere  so eloquently puts it: ‘Break shit, kill people.‘ Anger Foot is a hotly anticipated FPS title from publisher Devolver Digital that follows this mantra, with its main quirk being how efficiently you can move through tight hallways and corridors, using your devastatingly powerful kick to knock down everything that stands in your way.

The game’s been on my radar for some time and having experienced a new preview build of the game that features 2 out of the 4 biomes in-game, it’s already delivering on everything I need. Simply put: Anger Foot looks to be a seriously delectable game dedicated to shootin’ shit.

You live in Shit City. You are a sneakerhead. Four of your most beloved pairs are stolen from you by the hands of a mob. Suddenly, you’re thrust on a journey, taking on many a mobster and monster, stopping whoever stands in your way to get back your trusty kicks. Be prepared for some ludicrous goodness. Did you seriously expect any different from the publisher Devolver Digital and the developers of Genital Jousting?

Anger Foot is a title where gameplay is king. The game will feel like it’s playing a mile a minute. Our hero can only withstand a maximum of one or two hits depending on the enemy type you’re up against. When you die you start a level again. This means it will begin to feel a lot like an FPS version of Hotline Miami. You’re to comb rooms, take out every single enemy with a single shot or kick, making sure no one gets left behind and getting out in a timely fashion. This all needs to be perfected with little room for error. Backing you is loud, obnoxious hardstyle music that’ll worm its way into your brain. Trust me, normally I’m not too fond of this sort of stuff, but I’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t get amped up by it.

All while this occurs, you’re constantly strafing around every room, tensing up and holding your breath as you make your way down every corridor, praying the next bullet that comes your way doesn’t meet your brain. You’re kicking down doors to bathroom cubicles, crudely interrupting someone trying to take a leak. You’re blasting a shotgun in a thug’s face or kicking a grenade back at a gator wearing a tracksuit.  Still, the music continues, with every shot. Every kick. The music matches your every move. You feel it now. You’re in your own John Wick-style adventure on acid.

Anger Foot is oozing with style. The first biome sees you stampeding through an apartment complex floor by floor. You’ll intrude on grungey apartments littered with beer bottles, energy drinks, leftover pizza boxes and other garbage. Still, the game remains vibrant and colourful. Wooden walls look almost pastel pink while carpet or tiles of bathrooms are a soft green. Graffiti lines a lot of the walls, and the mobsters you’re tackling (humanoid blue guys in full tracksuit getups or anthropomorphic gators and the like in letter jackets) are distinguishable as they wear reds and purples.  The second was a sewer with snakes exiting portapotties, tentacles popping out of drain pipes, science labs tucked away in corners

The gameplay of Anger Foot boasts how cool it is with its dozens of explosions and heads you can kick in, but they also know the style is there and want you to see it as much as possible. This much is evident when it comes to the vignette levels that are peppered throughout each biome. Here you’re provided ample opportunity to slow down and take it all in. There are unmade mattresses on dingy bed frames. Peak male living spaces. Posters telling you to ‘Vote CRIME’ are laid about. Walls will have text inked in marker that says “Swearing is cool” or “vape vapes every day.” There are characters you can go and chat with that have funny anecdotes, including an individual sitting and staring at a CRT playing white noise. When you interact with him he tells you how this is his favourite show. Everywhere you go, if you take the time, you’re bound to find something equally gorgeous and absurd.

In my time across the two biomes, I worked my way through thirty levels, with each biome concluding with a boss fight. The first was a weird train/helicopter/van hybrid that took place on a rooftop and would periodically charge at and bomb you. No, I’m not kidding. The latter saw me in the depths of the sewer, battling a slime amalgam that started as a phallic form before becoming weirder and more amorphous with each phase before I was swallowed whole by it. Then the fight took place inside his body with his brain that darted around and had testicles. Again, I’m not kidding. Though always visually interesting this is the area of Anger Foot that I’m not yet sold on. Both boss encounters so far have been largely a waiting game, jumping and dodging relatively readable attacks before waiting for an opening or for an enemy to be slowed enough for me to place a single kick on them. Rinse and repeat. You don’t get guns in these encounters and you’re not required to do too crazy footwork around an arena. They stick out a bit so far in an otherwise excellent game.

I’m confident a game is going to hit hard when I’m already thinking about strategies and its replayability before the thing’s even out. Each level has additional objectives to complete. They don’t have to all be completed at once, meaning you can take re-runs at levels. Some of the tasks are hard but only require practice as plain as day as “don’t get hit” or “don’t blow up any barrels” in said level. Ones that I’m excited about task me with clearing a level under a certain time.  There are one or two I’ve experienced thus far that I am utterly stumped about how you can clear them in as little as 30 seconds. Still, in my good few runs through them, I was channelling my Neon White mantra, keeping an eye out for clear skips that’ll shave seconds off completing an area. I’m excited to see where the FPS community goes with this game and the crazy times they’ll get.

Adding just that little bit extra is that it’s worth going for these objectives. Each task you complete nets you a star. Every five stars and every boss you beat, you’re rewarded with a new pair of shoes that will change your play. A pair of Timberland knockoffs for instance will give every opponent a big head, making objectives such as “perform x amount of headshots” easier. I was genuinely excited each time I got a new pair and always rushed to check out what it did. Yes, there’s something funny about running the game barefoot, letting the dogs out. However, I would encourage keeping an eye out for shoes like the ‘Soul Suckers’ clogs and socks combo which lets you take reduced damage but you need to keep constantly killing or you’ll die. Getting your rear handed to you? I recommend the ‘Holy Sandals,’ which grants the chance for the clock to pause and gain a second life when you die.

Anger Foot might just become peak Devolver Digital. Never have I played a game that’s more of that publisher’s DNA. Kicking in gangsters’ heads, blowing up baddies and moving at the speed of sound with pervasive hardstyle music pulsating in my ears… It’s already a hell of a good time with a lot of promise. Anger Foot is due to come out in 2024. Keep an eye on this one for sure.