Regardless of how expert you’re or how fortunate you get, failure is unavoidable. However it’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 trendy video games, the intentional friction in Anger Foot is refreshing, if a bit 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 acquired blended reception, it made its approach 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. (Prone to exhibiting 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 form. Anger Foot’s stylistic aptitude is its strongest asset. I discovered myself often laughing at its goofiness; the sport is tough, but in addition 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, taking pictures, 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 tip of the extent. However even that job can appear insurmountable with how onerous the sport works to kill you. It is sensible once 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 degree has bonus aims so that you can try for, encouraging you to replay them a number of occasions. Nonetheless, earlier than you’ll be able to even take into consideration attaining aims equivalent to ending a degree in beneath 45 seconds or with out taking successful, you need 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 engaging one, however sadly for me, the method of repetition and ability development wasn’t satisfying, a minimum of not at first.
For context, I’m not the most effective at first-person shooters, particularly on a controller. Enjoying Anger Foot on the PS5 DualSense controller was a nightmare, and not one of the accessible accessibility choices offered any reduction. I used to be unable to discover a good stability of sensitivity and intention 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 cover round corners, and on and on.
One demise led to a dozen within the first handful of ranges, however Anger Foot charmed me out of giving approach to frustration. It’s straightforward to make (and simply as straightforward to disregard) “ability difficulty” statements, however when a recreation has enemies that kill you sync right into a dance in time with the sport’s banging OST, nicely, you’ll be able to’t keep mad for lengthy. Anger Foot factors and laughs at you each single time you fail in a approach 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’ll be able to 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 extra.
