Video Game / Anger Foot

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Anger Foot is a speed-and-aesthetic-intensive First-Person Shooter developed by Free Lives (also notable for Broforce and Genital Jousting) and published by Devolver Digital. The game officially released on July 11, 2024.

Anger Foot is a masked vigilante with some serious anger issues and a penchant for collecting designer shoes, living in Shit City - where crime is the law. When the four biggest gangs of Shit City unite to steal his prized Preemo sneakers, Anger Foot and his girlfriend set out to quite literally kick their asses, recover their stolen goods, and get back in time for movie night.

Gameplay is most readily comparable to a 3D version of Hotline Miami, focusing on tightly constructed levels, lightning fast combat and a variety of disposable weapons with some ass-kicking beats playing in the background. Anger Foot's signature feet can send doors flying into enemies and can generally take down enemies with a single well-timed kick. Collectible shoes can be unlocked through achieving side objectives that modify the game in unique ways.

Tropes applying to Anger Foot include:

• Action Bomb: Men with red skull-shaped cherry bombs for heads scream at you when they're alerted to your presence, and then proceed to chase you down and blow up rather spectacularly. As with most things in this game, they can be defused by either kicking (which will send them flying, blowing up on contact with whatever is behind them) or shooting them (if shot in the head, they'll immediately explode).
• Action Girl: The girlfriend is plenty capable of kicking ass like Anger Foot does, dispatching an assassin from the Debauchery Gang in a single kick.
• Affably Evil: For such a horrible place that is riddled with crime, the denizens of Shit City (for the most part) are actually fairly kind individuals. Throughout the game, Anger Foot will come across criminals who openly announce their misdeeds in casual conversations, and these same individuals engage in regular activities like taking group photos with their friends, cooking, swimming, and raising children. The same people won't hesitate to shoot Anger Foot to pieces during his bloody quest to get his shoes back.
• Affectionate Parody: Of retro-infused Heroic Bloodshed such as Hotline Miami, along with 90s beat-em-up such as Streets of Rage.
• All for Nothing: If you pick the Choose Change ending, then Anger Foot is forced to prove his devotion to the Crime Minister by kicking all of his shoes into a fireplace, rendering his entire journey to reclaim them pointless.
• Anarcho-Tyranny: Despite the daily chaos of life in Shit City, where muggings, murders, vandalism, and arson are widespread, it is not a lawless society. The caveat is that committing crime is the law, making Shit City probably the most literal example of an Anarcho-Tyrannical society.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: New shoes are unlocked as stars are earned or gang leaders are defeated. Some of them are just for fun, some add some extra challenge, and others change up the gameplay by offering new abilities.
• Apathetic Citizens: During the various intermission levels, you can talk to various residents of Shit City, or simply kick them in the face. No one reacts at all to Anger Foot kicking their friends, destroying their property, or even seems to acknowledge Anger Foot's path of destruction in his wake.
• Asymmetric Dilemma: One NPC says she wants to read in the ball pit (an in-ground swimming pool full of balls that's being treated like it's a pool full of water by everyone in the room), but she never learned how to swim. Or read.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The assault rifle, despite doing more damage, is more trouble to use than it's worth. The gun has eighteen bullets, but fires in bursts of three, meaning you can only fire the gun six times. On top of this, the gun has ridiculous recoil, meaning that once you start firing, your accuracy plummets. You're much better off using the submachine gun because while it does less damage, there's no recoil and no need to worry about the accuracy going down. The gun also has twenty-two bullets and doesn't fire in bursts, so you only use up one or two bullets at a time.
• Bad Boss: Unlike the other gang leaders, who treat their gangs well or are at least respected by them, the CEO and the other top Business Gang executives work their employees as if they're slaves. Many of them resort to drinking too much caffeine to stay awake, are constantly on edge, take "vacations" inside poorly-simulated rooms, and in multiple cases, some of them work while they're on the toilet so they won't waste time. It says a lot when one of the employees has to hide in the corner of a ball pit because it's his only "happy place."
• Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Among the denizens of Shit City, crime is so incredibly normalized that nobody bats an eye when people are murdered or robbed in broad daylight. Crime is treated as more than a means of income, it's also a recreational activity. Crime and general misconduct is normalized to the point that the citizens are genuinely confused by the concept of clean non-irradiated drinking water.
• The Bad Guys Are Cops: The Violence Gang is run by the Shit City Police Gang, and they enforce the law... by making everyone commit crimes ranging from violent ones like murder and theft to minor ones like loitering and defacing public property.
• Batman Gambit: The Crime Minister had the big four gangs steal Anger Foot's Preemos knowing that he'd go on a revenge spree and send the gangs into chaos, allowing the Crime Minister to advance his plans to build Nice City.
• Bittersweet Ending: Both endings are uplifting to some degree, but they come at a cost to the city as a whole.
  • "Choose Crime": Anger Foot effortlessly kills the Crime Minister, reclaims his final pair of shoes, and goes back home to enjoy Movie Night with his girlfriend. Unfortunately, Anger Foot has murdered the leader of the city and neutered four of the city's major gangs. By killing the Crime Minister, Anger Foot has ensured a massive gang war and power struggle will soon follow as all the other smaller gangs and the surviving criminals scramble to become the new ruler of Shit City.
  • "Choose Change": The Crime Minister keeps his word and turns Shit City into Nice City, eliminating crime forever. Nice City is so clean and crime-free that children can play outside in the park. Unfortunately, this also means that everybody, including Anger Foot, is now perpetually stuck at a boring desk job in boring, brown clothing and unable to so much as knock over a stack of cans or break a window without being penalized for it. Also, Anger Foot's precious shoes are all gone forever.
• Black-and-Grey Morality: Anger Foot may be a mean son of a bitch, but he's more content to just stay at home with his girlfriend and doesn't seem to be as into crime as the rest of Shit City. He's at least a little better than the gangs of Shit City in that he much prefers minding his own business and isn't out committing crime for the hell of it. Then the Crime Minister turns out to be an Anti-Villain who wants to make a crime-free city.
• Bland-Name Product: Averted with the final form of the Goocopkopter being a 1997 Lucida, a Toyota minivan.
• Boring, but Practical: The handgun is just a regular pistol with six bullets. It's also very commonplace, has high accuracy, impressive range, and can kill just about every enemy (sans the shield-carrying ducks, the armored bears, and the floating fire-breathing enemies from the Debauchery Gang) in a single shot. Even the bears can go down in two hits if you manage to perfectly shoot them in the head.
• Camping a Crapper: It's very common to come across gangsters who are busy taking a dump on the toilet. Since they can't move due to being "indisposed," they're the easiest enemies to kill.
• Car Fu: If Anger Foot is in a vehicle and you can control it, you are most certainly ramming mooks down by the dozens.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Everyone in Shit City seems to revel in crime, save for Anger Foot, his girlfriend (who has other priorities), and the Crime Minister (whose pro-crime stance is actually a facade).
• Challenge Run: A few shoe types alter the game to make it more challenging.
  • The Stilettos nerf bullets to only stun enemies, requiring them to be kicked or have a weapon thrown at them in order to kill them.
  • The Soul Suckers make Anger Foot almost invulnerable to damage, but rapidly drains health unless you kill enemies - going five seconds without killing an enemy or kicking a door will kill you.
  • Size Threes make Anger Foot tiny, thereby reducing how high/far he can jump and limit his reach for kicking foes.
  • The Plakkies make everyone drunk—including Anger Foot, meaning everyone's accuracy is considerably low and it's hard to see and move around.
  • There's also the option in every level of using only your feet to complete the run (meaning no guns), which is required for a full three-star completion rating. In addition to this, some challenges require you to go barefoot, meaning you'll have no special abilities to aid you.
• Co-Dragons: The leaders of Shit City's big four serve as this, as they're acting under the orders of the Crime Minister.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The leader of the Business Gang goes by the title of "The CEO" and certainly has the attitude to match.
• Corrupt Politician: The Crime Minister, Shit City's elected representative, serves as the Big Bad of the game and has secret plans to reduce crime in the city. If he wasn't crooked, he probably wouldn't have been elected in the first place.
• Crapsack World: Inverted/Downplayed. Shit City is described bluntly as a hellhole where crime is not only legal, but mandatory. Muggings, murders, crimes against nature, and all sorts of disgusting debauchery are a facet of everyday life. However, the citizens of Shit City seem to be very happy living in such conditions. In fact, various citizens you interact with are upset about not being mugged, their stores not being looted, drinking clean water, and so forth.
  Storeowner: Are you a looter? It's been days since I've been looted. I'm starting to think no one likes me.
• Dark Action Girl:
  • From the Business Gang onwards, you'll encounter certain female enemies who move very quickly and engage in cover shooting, as well as diving towards cover while shooting at you. The Debauchery Gang also introduces the feminine crossbow-wielders, who not only do tons of damage but knock Anger Foot backwards with their bolts.
  • The CEO is a very difficult Mirror Boss who is more than happy to hold her own when facing off against Anger Foot—either with a handgun with infinite ammo, a Gatling gun, or a mech suit. She's also the only boss who doesn't spawn other enemies to come help her in later phases.
• Decapitated Army: Once you defeat a gang leader, everyone else in the gang who's still alive will promptly leave and join another gang.
• Denser and Wackier: Compared to Hotline Miami, its inspiration, which has, along with the high octane action, Psychological Horror with penchant of nihilism, this one is a fun throwback to the 90s era of gaming, with a plot resembling Streets of Rage. It's still edgy and ultraviolent, but in a goofy way.
• Destination Defenestration: Aside from the multiple instances where you can invoke this in game, Choosing Crime over Change will have Anger Foot kick the Crime Minister out of the window alongside himself and kick him senseless before he is killed by the fall.
• Down the Drain: The Pollution Gang's turf is the sewers of Shit City.
• Early-Bird Cameo: A few levels before the game introduces mooks wielding grenade launchers, you can find a stash of them in an out-of-the-way storage closet.
• Establishing Character Moment: Anger Foot is introduced coming up to an apartment complex holding an advertisement for new, never opened sneakers, and promptly fighting his way in to grab them. Upon getting to where they are, the poor mook begs not to be kicked as he fearfully tells Anger Foot that he'll give him the sneakers, only to get kicked anyway. This quickly tells us that Anger Foot believes in Murder Is the Best Solution with regards to his sneakers, even when it makes no sense.
• Establishing Series Moment: Our first foray into the game is a quick level involving Anger Foot fighting his way into an apartment complex for shoes that were advertised as for sale, followed by an intro sequence discussing who runs Shit City. All this establishes the game as a high octane FPS set in a Wretched Hive where crime isn't just widespread, it's downright expected of everyone to perform, including our protagonist.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Many of the criminals in Shit City have friends or coworkers they value as legitimate companions, not just acquaintances they work with. A few of them even have families.
• Evil, Inc.: All of the gangs have business ventures within Shit City that gladly advertise their criminal nature. The Violence Gang has the Shit City Police, the Pollution Gang has their pollution-maximizing laboratories, the Business Gang's entire specialty is fraudulent business activities, and the Debauchery Gang runs the Pizza Pig pizzeria chain.
• Excuse Plot: Four evil gangs have stolen the main character's prized sneakers and now he's fighting to get them back. That's basically all you really need to know.
• Executive Suite Fight: The CEO is fought in the executive suite of the Business Gang's HQ. The Crime Minister is a subversion, as his "fight" technically happens outside of Shit City's city hall.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The entire game takes place over the course of a single night. The sole exception is the "Nice City" ending, which has a Time Skip of one month.
• Extremity Extremist: Anger Foot's primary melee attack is a quick boot forward that will destroy practically everything in it's way. One recurring type of level challenge is even to complete a level using only the kick.
• Fat Bastard: Pizza Pig, head of the Debauchery Gang, is absolutely massive.
• Flunky Boss: All of the bosses (sans the CEO) will spawn some type of minion to come help them when their health gets low during at least one phase of their fights. Sometimes you'll get lucky and the boss will kill their own minions; other times, you'll die because you didn't spot a minion amongst the confusion.
• Foreshadowing:
  • When the Crime Minister is shown in the intro, his scale model of Nice City is visible briefly.
  • A random citizen during an intermission section with express skepticism towards the Crime Minister, openly wondering if he even has a crime record at all, hinting at the fact that his plans is to completely eliminate all crime.
  • During "The Secret Entrance" intermission, Anger Foot will come across one member from the previous three gangs he just dismantled, all of whom are complaining about "crimate change" and how all the gangs are mysteriously disappearing. The Pollution Gangster is curious about what the Crime Minister's master plan is to fix all this and why he's yet to do anything to help out. This is his plan; he's letting Anger Foot freely destroy the four top gangs to pave way for Nice City.
• Good Is Boring: In the Choose Change ending, crime has been completely eliminated, but now everyone's stuck with dull, menial lives and having to stare at drab, beige surroundings. Justified, since the citizens of the city consider Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad and commit crimes recreationally, so of course they'd hate it.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Choose Change ending, where the Crime Minister plans to build Nice City, goes exactly the way he wants it to. And it's absolutely dull. Now the crime is illegal, everybody is stuck doing menial tasks in the city or forced into a desk job while wearing unoriginal, bland brown clothing—including Anger Foot. It's also subtly implied that Anger Foot's decision has made him a pariah, as the residents in his apartment complex refuse to talk to him and glare at him for his role in eliminating crime.
• The Goomba: The melee crocodile and purple hooded pistol wielding gangster enemies are two of the most common enemies in the game, both of them make up the backbone of each of the four gangs you fight throughout the game and are accordingly the easiest to kill.
• Groin Attack: After the Sludge Baron is dealt with and the Girlfriend interrogates him (or rather his brain, that has a very visible nutsack), he openly declares that he would rather have that than tell her anything about the other preemo sneakers. She obliges and he promptly gives up the info wholesale.
• Guns Akimbo: One of the new enemies in the Debauchery Gang has dual-wielding revolvers that do double damage. They're just as convenient as the regular pistols, but you get double the ammo, plus they do a little more damage.
• Handy Feet: Anger Foot is skilled in using his feet to do a multitude of tasks, such as kicking open barriers, murdering gangsters, driving his car, or even feeding popcorn to his girlfriend.
• Heavily Armored Mook: Teddy bear-like goons with miniguns show up later in the game, needing several shots or kicks to kill. The Shield-Bearing Mooks also count.
• The Hedonist: The theme of the Debauchery Gang, a gang full of proud sinners who love sex and pizza.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • After the Pollution Gang is destroyed, you can come across a gangster in the sewer saying he's giving up pollution forever. So he decides to burn all of his trash instead of recycling it.
  • One NPC in a restroom stall chides you for invading her privacy. As she stands on the toilet peeking over the wall into the adjacent stall. (Also no one had any privacy to invade in the first place because the stalls have no doors.)
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: It doesn't get much more on the nose than Shit City.
• Killer Cop: The Violence Gang, led by Goo Cop, enjoy playing into this motif. They're enforcing the law... by mugging and stabbing Shit City citizens.
• Last Disrespects: Enemies will dance on Anger Foot's recently deceased body (in time with the level music) should he die. If you fall off on the rooftop levels, you'll find yourself dead on the streets below with a group of mooks gathered round just to mock you.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: Either become the Crime Minister's enforcer and help him build Nice City, or kick him to the curb from the top floor and watch Genital Titanic with your girlfriend.
• Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Anger Foot's enemies include anthropomorphic ducks, rats, and crocodillians. And a cat.
• Metaphorgotten: A diagram on a whiteboard explains Fraudcorp's corporate plans as components of a burger labeled "theft", "fraud", "laundering", "evasion"...and "cheese."^note If you examine the drawing closely, the "cheese" appears to actually be the lettuce.
• "Metaphor" Is My Middle Name: The NPC preparing to high-dive into the pool-turned-ball-pit reassures you that Danger is literally one of his middle names. His full name is Trevor Brokenback Danger Divingaccident McGee.
• Mirror Boss: The CEO's first form is arguably her toughest because she operates the same way Anger Foot does. She runs around a wide arena constantly using pillars for cover and taking shots at you whenever she can. And just like Anger Foot, if you get too close to her, she'll smash her foot right into your face and send you flying.
• No Ontological Inertia: Anger Foot kicking the gang leaders into the grave causes the collapse of their gangs, with their activities coming undone fairly quickly. The Pollution Gang has the most extreme case of this, where all the pollution they've been doing starts rapidly disappearing from Shit City's water.
• Nutritional Nightmare: Pizza Pig's pizzerias are wholly dedicated towards serving the cheesiest and greasiest possible pizzas, even treating it as a selling point.
• One-Hit-Point Wonder: With the exception of bosses, most enemies die from a single bullet or a single kick to their body.
• One-Man Army: As is traditional for a shooter game, Anger Foot blasts and kicks ass through hundreds of goons entirely on his lonesome. Hell, it gets to the point that he ends up reducing crime in Shit City a bit just from the sheer amount of criminals he's killed in the span of a night.
• One-Winged Angel: Phases two and three of the Pizza Pig boss fight see him transforming. After throwing him into the molten cheese, he'll drink the cheese to become a disgustingly obese blob called the "Unholy Corpulence". Doing enough damage to the Unholy Corpulence causes him to blow up, but he emerges as "Spider Pig", a half-swine, half-arachnid monstrosity that can climb walls.
• Police Are Useless: Because they're also criminals. To the point where they're literally called the "Shit City Police Gang".
• Power Armor: The final phase of the CEO fight involves this. You cannot damage her without damaging the bombs she throws at you on occasion.
• Punny Name: The names of Goo Cop and his partner Bag Cop are obvious plays on the terms "Good Cop" and "Bad Cop". They also double as Non Indicative Names because Goo Cop is just as evil as Bag Cop is.
• Regenerating Health:
  • Anger Foot has the "Bloody Screen! So Real!" style of regenerating health that recovers after a few seconds of not getting hurt.
  • The Soul Suckers increases Anger Foot's health pool, but turns the health regeneration into health degeneration requiring him to score kills to restore health in a style similar to Post Void.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The gangs of Shit City stole your favorite sneakers, so you'll steal their lives.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: Non-boss enemies are pretty squishy, but so is Anger Foot, who can get wasted very easily.
• Sequential Boss: Every boss fight has three phases, with new health bars, different attack patterns, and titles for each phase. The only exception is the Crime Minister, whose "boss fight" is an interactive cutscene.
• Shield-Bearing Mook: Duck men wearing body armor appear early on in the Violence Gang's turf, wielding pistols in one hand and huge riot shields in the other. Their shields and body armor are impervious to bullets and they can't be stunned by weapon throws, but that's what the kick is for.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: While the shotgun is tied with the grenade launcher for the least ammo available with four shells, it more than makes up for it by being a powerful close ranged weapon that can take out multiple enemies with a single shot due to the spread. The Pumped Kicks shoes takes this to its logical extreme by making all guns shotguns, even the minigun.
• Shout-Out:
  • Two Pollution Gang members trying to figure out a slogan for their THIRSTFUCKER energy drink settle on "THIRSTFUCKER. Is. People."
  • The Crime Minister's ultimate plan is reminiscent of OCP's Delta City project.
  • Pizza's Pig final form is a giant arachnid with his head serving as the spider's skull. This form is aptly referred to as Spider Pig.
  • The bicycle kick and jumping sweep kick are taken directly from First Encounter Assault Recon; both are performed in exactly the same way as in F.E.A.R.
  • The movie that Anger Foot and his girlfriend watch in the "Choose Crime" ending is a Genital Jousting-themed version of Titanic (1997).
  • One of the movie posters in the game is titled Carface.
  • Another movie poster is titled Man of Steal vs. The Good Taker.
  • During one of the Business Gang intermissions, one of the employees will be seen playing (and recommending) the developers' previous game, Terra Nil. Another employee can be seen playing Broforce and wishing the developers would make a sequel.
  • In some levels and intermissions, you'll spot an NPC wearing a familiar jacket and chicken mask. One such appearance being in the "The Secret Entrance" intermission.
  • The Business Gang's offices are full of posters that say "DO IT FOR HER", except in this case "her" is clearly the yacht pictured.
  • In Level 1 - 08, there's a secret room referencing the infamous Fallout 3 "Skeleton with Fan on Crotch".
• Sinister Swine: Pizza Pig is both a pig and leader of the Debauchery gang.
• Speedrun Reward: Many levels offer a star literally called "Speed Run" for completing the level in a short timespan. Some offer another star called "Hyper Hyper" for completing it even faster, which almost always involves exploiting the Chargers and/or finding a shortcut.
• Super Serum: The CEO uses this to become the Super CEO, complete with minigun. It is also the easiest form to whittle her down.
• Take That, Audience!: Video game fandoms in general are lampooned with one NPC who thinks the developers of his favorite game will appreciate his brilliant and original suggestion that they make a sequel.
• Throwing Your Gun at the Enemy: Any guns that Anger Foot picks up can be thrown at enemies—very useful, since they only come with a single clip, and a successful hit stuns the target.
• Toad Licking: Hallucinogenic geckos can be found in some levels. You bite their heads off to get high.
• Toilet Humour: Loads. Gangsters on the toilet, a plethora of filthy bathrooms, a civilian peeing in a pool of slime, a victory pose showing off Anger Foot pissing heavily into a urinal alongside a dog, etc. And then there's the Pollution Gang, a criminal organization whose sole purpose is to be as filthy as possible. Their headquarters is even in the sewers.
• Token Human: While the goons you fight throughout the game consist of various anthropomorphized animals or extremely cartoonish-looking humanoids, the Crime Minister stands out as a fairly normal looking human.
• Top-Heavy Guy: Despite the borderline superhuman feats he could do with his kicks, Anger Foot's legs are surprisingly spindly compared to his upper body.
• Toxic, Inc.: The Pollution Gang have their own laboratories where they research how to maximize pollution and manufacture their own energy drinks.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: During the exploration levels where you come across harmless civilians and gangsters, you can freely kick them as many times as you want or cause as much property damage as you feel like and receive no penalty for doing so. The lack of a penalty is justified, since crime is the law in Shit City.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Unfortunately, the flamethrower is one of the weaker weapons in general, since while it does pierce through enemies, the afterburn damage and direct damage is so poor that you're better off kicking hordes of enemies instead.
• Wall of Text: One Business Gang member has a very long string of incomprehensible management-speak to spew at you if you interact with him. The text in each successive text box is smaller than the last to cram in as many words as possible. He's rehearsing for a presentation he has to give.
• We Can Rule Together: At the end of the game, the Crime Minister offers Anger Foot the chance to side with him to reform Shit City by kicking his prized sneaker collection into the fireplace. Alternatively, Anger Foot can kick him out of a window.
• Womb Level: The final phase of the Sludge Baron boss fight has Anger Foot jumping into one of his mouths and fighting the "Filth Mind" inside the body cavity.
• Would Hurt a Child: Yes, there are children NPCs. Yes, you can kick them.
• Would Hit a Girl: Some of the enemy types and NPCs are female. Anger Foot has no qualms kicking or shooting them either.
• Wretched Hive: Shit City - voted Best Crime In The World - is a city where crime isn't just rampant, it's literally enforced by law.
• You Dirty Rat!: One of the new enemies encountered in the Business Gang's territory is a short, speedy rodent with a knife.
• Zerg Rush: The knife-wielding rat enemies tend to attack in hordes. It's rare to encounter no less than five at a time, and they can easily overwhelm you if you don't spot them in time.
• Zero-Effort Boss: The Crime Minister. If you "Choose Crime", Anger Foot kicks him out the window and subjects him to a completely one-sided No-Holds-Barred Beatdown as the two fall. It's impossible to lose.