If you haven’t already heard, I want you to hear now:Anger Foot is one of the best games of the year. The shooter, from developer Free Lives and publisherDevolver Digital, sticks out most for its vibrant aesthetic — reds, greens, and blues are everywhere with the saturation turned up to 11 — and artful execution of crass humor — the second boss battle is against a massive green “pollution” monster shaped like a giant turd, and while that joke is for six-year-olds, it’s also a pretty good boss fight. Amid the obvious, the inner workings of the game may draw less attention. But Anger Foot is full-stop great because of its pace, not just its poop.
Strong Pacing Can Help Players Get To The Finish Line
There are a lot of things that can get me excited about a game in the opening hours. It might feel great to play. It might have a bombastic opening that sets the stage for an exhilarating campaign. It might have a terrific story hook that youneedto see pay off. All of those things are great ways to get you interested, but sustaining that interest is a different task entirely. Steam completion stats tell us that most players don’t finish the games they start and that happens for a whole host of reasons. Sometimes a game is too hard, sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes a story beat rubs you the wrong way. If developers want players to overcome those hurdles and get to the credits, strong pacing is the best tool to have in their toolbelt.
Anger Foot constantly surprised me with how much it had up its sleeves. A few hours in, I felt like I’d seen all the weapons the game had to throw at me. And then I got a crossbow, and two pistols chained together, and a grenade launcher, and a plunger gun, and a bunch more. Most are traditional video game weapons, but when you’ve gone several hours without seeing an AK-47 or a shotgun, finally getting your hands on those old favorites is a ton of fun.
Consistent New Guns, Shoes, And Enemies Keep Anger Foot Moving
The shoe upgrades, which can radically change how a level plays, are doled out at a consistent pace, too. When you earn five stars, you unlock a new shoe. You can earn three stars per level if you complete the two optional objectives. Even if you’re beelining the game, you’ll still get a star for each level you complete, which means you’ll get new shoes, at minimum, once every five levels. Those can introduce game-changing mechanics, like turning every gun you find into a shotgun. If you lean into the customization, the game constantly feels like it’s changing.
Each of the four quadrants are hugely different, too. The Violence Gang operates out of decrepit apartments, but then the levels ascend to the rooftops for the section’s conclusion. The Pollution Gang works out of the green and gray sewers, which takes you on a Heart of Darkness-esque journey to that monstrous poop I mentioned. The Business Gang work from dingy offices, with lots of wall-sized plate glass windows to shoot through, and mazes of cubicles for cover. And the Debauchery Gang hang out in a dungeon filled with molten cheese sauce which you may kick your enemies in to drown them. Each feels distinct, and the boss battles that cap them off — like a gunboat battle and a kicking match against a helicopter — are memorably distinct, too.
The game offers these small changes out at such a regular pace that you’re almost always experiencing something new. Anger Foot doesn’t take long to find its footing (or its anger) and then spends the rest of its runtime sprinting toward its conclusion. When most games are a little padded and don’t have enough ideas to support their length, it’s a breath of fresh air to play one that almost has too many.
