Irrespective 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 snigger however ought to snigger at your failures. In comparison with many fashionable video games, the intentional friction in Anger Foot is refreshing, if a bit irritating.
Anger Foot, a tremendously troublesome motion romp developed by South African indie studio Free Lives and revealed by Devolver Digital, hit Home windows PC in July 2024. After a 12 months on the platform, the place it has obtained blended 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. (Susceptible 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 type. Anger Foot’s stylistic aptitude is its strongest asset. I discovered myself often 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 advanced 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 process can appear insurmountable with how arduous the sport works to kill you. It is smart while you issue within the context of the primary character being this unstoppable menace to society, and the extra you play, the extra you notice Anger Foot is a sport 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 targets so that you can try for, encouraging you to replay them a number of instances. Nonetheless, earlier than you may even take into consideration reaching targets similar to ending a stage 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 process in and of itself. This core philosophy is an attention-grabbing and attractive one, however sadly for me, the method of repetition and ability development wasn’t satisfying, at the very least not at first.
For context, I’m not the very best at first-person shooters, particularly on a controller. Taking part in Anger Foot on the PS5 DualSense controller was a nightmare, and not one of the out there accessibility choices offered any reduction. I used to be unable to discover a good stability of sensitivity and purpose help that felt good. After I spent a ton of time fidgeting with the settings, I discovered one thing that felt ok, however all the time I performed, I wanted 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 dying led to a dozen within the first handful of ranges, however Anger Foot charmed me out of giving option to frustration. It’s simple to make (and simply as simple to disregard) “ability subject” statements, however when a sport has enemies that kill you sync right into a dance in time with the sport’s banging OST, effectively, you may’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 pace makes it the right sport to chip away at — the kind of sport you may grind to perfection or boot it as much as kill a while.
On paper, Anger Foot is a dumb, enjoyable sport about anger, respect, and dope sneakers — but when it has one lesson to impart, it’s to snigger at your self a bit extra.