Anger Foot

I hated playing this game. I think part of that has to do with expectations, and the other part has to do with the way the game attempts to motivate you. - - - - - First off, this game is NOT a boomer shooter. The fact that is the third most common tag for this game is a joke, and honestly if I was the devs, I would be genuinely working to get it removed. This game is not a boomer shooter, it's in essence a speedrunner. Your objective, 9 times out of 10, involves getting to the end as fast as possible. Whether that includes killing all the enemies, not jumping, whatever else, generally speaking it involves speed. I mean, what boomer shooter have you ever played where you are frequently just one shot? Boomer shooters are about conservation of resources, while also killing everything you walk into. Even after playing the first couple hours, I accepted what it was, but I got to the point where I was just getting irritated beyond comprehension. Frequently in maps they'll deliberately hide enemies behind walls to disrupt your flow and slow you down, making you randomly die so you're forced to go back and redo the whole level again. The process simply forces you to repeat the same route, over and over, learning a bit more each time. However, the only reason this becomes a massive issue, is related to how it "rewards" you. - - - - - Anger Foot offers a set of 24 pairs of shoes, 4 of which you get from bosses in the game. The other 20 pairs are earned by getting stars: one star for completing the mission, two additional stars available for completing two seperate challenges on that mission. When I played, I would generally attempt to complete at least one challenge, rather than completing all the missions and then running back to do the challengeds, as I believed that would allow me the greatest variety of gameplay styles with the least time dedication. In part I was true, however trying to complete any challenges in the game genuinely makes the experience 10 times worse. For example, arguably the most common challenge, is to do a mission with feet only. The game is clearly not designed for that, as the enemies have extremely accurate aim, and using feet only often requires you to do a combination of dodging as you run through rooms, while also kicking any enemies in your path. This requires you to play a room, die, play another room, die, play another room, die, all while hoping an enemy doesn't shoot you from the previous room through the door while you're trying to run. Another challenge is having no shoes on at all, which utterly defeats the purpose of making me complete all these challenges to actually use the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ shoes. Other irritating ones include getting a certain number of headshots, which often forces you to have to kick in doors at an angle to avoid actually killing enemies, which is one of the stupidest ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ concepts in any game ever, because I am actively hampering the natural flow of the game, in order to NOT KILL SOMEONE. Arguably the best challenge type, and obviously one of the rarest, is having you use a specific shoe during a mission. That's right, Free Lives decided that with 24 pairs of shoes available to you, encouraging variety is actually the wrong way to encourage people to play. If someone is doing a challenge, do you think that they may, oh I don't know, WANT TO UNLOCK THE SHOES!? Honestly, I would've made shoe variety be a MANDATORY challenge on every single level, because then going back and re-playing the levels when you've actually unlocked the shoes allows you to see it in an entirely different way. But nooo, instead we get "use no shoes at all" or "speed through the level". As a result, there are very few genuinely good shoes, because "good" now involves completing achievements. For headshots, you get the big head shoes. If you need to set off explosives, or have to do a pacifist challenge, why not wear the extra life shoes? The worst ones are the boss shoes, where only one is good: the first one, which gives you a charged kick. This is NECESSARY for most speed running challenges, as well as 100% necessary for any no jump challenge. The other shoes include a slide kick and 'furry kicks', which are BASICALLY JUST NORMAL KICKS, meanwhile the charged kick literally launches you across the room. Meanwhile, there's shoes that actively hinder you: floating shoes that mess up your timing by making everything low gravity, shoes that make doors explode and injure you literally every time, the double jump shoes that set literally everything you kick on fire (thus leading you to getting injured). - - - - - I could talk about the fact the jokes wear thin exceedingly quickly, how the design feels ugly and lacks differentiation the longer you go, how the crass humour feels infantile in its repetition, how the gameplay only offers some decent variety in gunplay near the very end, I mean I just don't see myself recommending this to anyone I know unless they're a masochist. If anything, I'd just tell them to play Postal: Brain Damaged; it's visually great, there's a wide variety of level designs and gunplay, has all the crass potty humour you could want, and is a fantastic boomer shooter, all while being 2/3 of the cost. - - - - - The worst part is that this game shows clear talent and care, I just think there's some foundational errors that can't help but become obvious in literally every aspect of the game. I hope in their next game they can take what they learnt making Anger Foot and find something I genuinely enjoy, because trying to complete this game feels like some form of humiliation ritual, because trying to play it the way I ASSUME they want me to play it just isn't working. EDIT: ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, the ending boss fight has to be the most ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss fight I've ever played. After having this ENTIRE GAME be based around fast-paced, downright neurotic gameplay focused on SPEED above all else, they end it all with the most meandering, sluggish boss fight they could possibly make. Three phases of the least interesting gameplay, seeing this fat pig slowly circle around the stage, slowly throw bombs and wait until you can actually shoot him, then randomly having to drive a boat around and dodging enemies while using a gun that overheats in 2 seconds, with constant one-hit kill explosive enemies. This game is awful, and no one can argue I didn't give it a fair shake, because I literally finished the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ game AND unlocked all the shoes.