Irrespective of how expert you might be or how fortunate you get, failure is unavoidable. But it surely’s what you do with failure that counts. And because the first-person shooter Anger Foot posits, you’re not solely allowed to chortle however ought to chortle at your failures. In comparison with many fashionable video games, the intentional friction in Anger Foot is refreshing, if a bit of irritating.
Anger Foot, a tremendously tough motion romp developed by South African indie studio Free Lives and revealed by Devolver Digital, hit Home windows PC in July 2024. After a yr on the platform, the place it has obtained combined reception, it made its option to PlayStation 5 on July 1.
Anger Foot instantly drew me in with its cartoonish aesthetics and and over-the-top, gory presentation, reminding me of my unsupervised time on the web as a child. (Vulnerable to displaying my age, its character design jogged my memory of that obscure late 2000s Nickelodeon present, Mr. Meaty.) Music and visuals are what differentiate it from the opposite video games of its sort. Anger Foot’s stylistic aptitude is its strongest asset. I discovered myself usually laughing at its goofiness; the sport is tough, but additionally simply humorous sufficient to maintain me from realizing how unhealthy I used to be at it.
Picture: Free Lives/Devolver Digital
Anger Foot doesn’t waste a second getting you to the motion — a mixture of kicking, capturing, dying, dying, and dying. Thoughts, the gameplay loop isn’t complicated by any means, as the one required goal is all the time the identical: Make it to the top of the extent. However even that job can appear insurmountable with how onerous the sport works to kill you. It is sensible whenever you issue within the context of the primary character being this unstoppable menace to society, and the extra you play, the extra you understand Anger Foot is a recreation designed round intentional failure.
The sport doesn’t allow you to focus in your failures for too lengthy, as a button press immediately places you on the prime of the extent. Every stage has bonus goals so that you can attempt for, encouraging you to replay them a number of occasions. Nonetheless, earlier than you may even take into consideration reaching goals comparable to ending a stage in underneath 45 seconds or with out taking successful, you have to first grasp finishing the extent by studying enemy placement and the extent’s structure, which is a job in and of itself. This core philosophy is an fascinating and attractive one, however sadly for me, the method of repetition and talent development wasn’t satisfying, at the least not at first.
For context, I’m not the perfect at first-person shooters, particularly on a controller. Enjoying Anger Foot on the PS5 DualSense controller was a nightmare, and not one of the obtainable accessibility choices offered any reduction. I used to be unable to discover a good steadiness of sensitivity and goal help that felt excellent. After I spent a ton of time fidgeting with the settings, I discovered one thing that felt ok, however the complete time I performed, I needed that both the time to kill was slower, or that the weapons felt higher to make use of, or that fewer enemies would conceal round corners, and on and on.
One loss of life led to a dozen within the first handful of ranges, however Anger Foot charmed me out of giving option to frustration. It’s straightforward to make (and simply as straightforward to disregard) “talent challenge” statements, however when a recreation has enemies that kill you sync right into a dance in time with the sport’s banging OST, properly, you may’t keep mad for lengthy. Anger Foot factors and laughs at you each single time you fail in a manner that makes you wish to hop again into the extent and get proper again to kickin’.
After six hours with Anger Foot, I got here away from it accepting that I’m simply no good at it. However that doesn’t imply I couldn’t have enjoyable with it. Anger Foot’s velocity makes it the right recreation to chip away at — the kind of recreation you may grind to perfection or boot it as much as kill a while.
On paper, Anger Foot is a dumb, enjoyable recreation about anger, respect, and dope sneakers — but when it has one lesson to impart, it’s to chortle at your self a bit of extra.
