Hotline Miami came out in 2012 and made big waves. The top-down pixel action game has established its own strict rules – the protagonist destroys any enemy with one blow, but he himself dies just as easily. It was played quickly, energetically and extremely cheerfully, which was greatly facilitated by the magnificent synthetic soundtrack, excellent level design and the highest tempo of what was happening.
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Three years later, Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number appeared – in a mediocre sequel, Dennaton Games was unable to not only surpass, but even repeat the success of its bright and fast-paced 2D action game. And now, almost ten years later, Devolver Digital decided that it was time to re-enter this river of colorful ultra-violence, only this time in 3D, from the first person, and give the execution to the multi-players from Free Lives. These guys can do anything: here’s the popular side-scroller Broforce, here’s Genital Jousting (no comments), and here’s the calming eco-strategy Terra Nil. Did they get their own Hotline Miami?
⇡#This city is mired in multiviolence
Anger Foot is a typical inhabitant of Shield City (no, this is not the shield that protects against blows, well, you understand). In an exemplary fetid metropolis, saturated with corruption and street crime, everyone is marginalized, so it is difficult to stand out, but our “hero” was able to. He collects sneakers – because you need to kick down doors and kick in style. In the prologue, we arrive at the address for the next pair of shoes and along the way get acquainted with the game mechanics. It’s simple – a kick knocks out both the doors and the spirit of everyone who tries to interfere, but you shouldn’t expose yourself to retaliation – you’ll die as quickly as you deal out blows. There are relaxations with firearms: the rule “one shot – one corpse” applies to the enemy, but Anger Foot can withstand several hits before the enemy begins to literally dance hardstyle on his cooling corpse.
In general, we get a fresh pair, after which we return home and place it on a pedestal. And then everything goes awry – thoroughly corrupt cops fly in by helicopter and drag away a collection of honestly stolen exclusive sneakers (along with a piece of the wall), and then distribute them to the bosses of four gangs. And instead of watching a movie with her girlfriend, Anger Foote goes to get her charm back. To do this, you just have to fight your way through the territory of “Thugs”, “Svintusov”, “Businessmen” and “Revelers” (the names in the localization, of course, huh), and snatch the box with the treasured shoes from the leader of each group.
Duck the police
Each gang is a dozen and a half levels and a boss battle at the end. The longest level will take you a maximum of two to two and a half minutes. Basically we do it in a minute or a minute and a half. The action is rapid: we rush forward like a whirlwind, we knock down doors and distribute blows left and right, simultaneously snatching weapons from our numb hands and shooting the still living bandits with them. All this is accompanied by a hammering hardstyle, which changes when performing certain actions: killing an enemy, moving to another room, changing weapons, and so on.
From time to time we are given a break and sent to wander through peaceful locations. There is no practical sense in this – we just walk between the extras, press “talk”, read the funny remarks of the local inhabitants, and then go on to crush skulls. The actual crumbling is staged in a deliberately cartoonish style – the blood is purple, the sounds are clown-like, not naturalistic, and in general it all looks as frivolous as possible. There is no oppressive ultra-violence, like in Hotline Miami – it has its own, obscenely carefree atmosphere. It’s as if “Sesame Street” was invented by a teenager who had already picked up the obligatory nasty things for his age, but had not yet been filled with adult cynicism. All the “adultness” here is in jokes about the relationship between employees and management, ecology and other things that are uninteresting to young people.
Today on air – police clownery drama
Structurally, the game is organized well: you go through several levels, then a break in a neutral location, then again several hectic races, a break, another dose of adrenaline, and then the boss. Victory – and the next chapter, where everything is repeated, and so on four times. New opponents appear regularly (by the end there will be about a dozen species in this zoo) and weapons, decorations and color palette change slightly (each gang has its own style). For completing each level and fulfilling two special conditions, they are awarded with stars, which unlock new shoes with unique properties: one reduces gravity, the other increases everyone’s heads (it’s convenient to complete tasks for headshots), the third reduces incoming damage, but requires continuous kills, and so on Further. Moreover, the conditions often contradict each other (like “kill 25 opponents with a headshot” and “pass the level without killing anyone”), which should encourage those who want to knock out the notorious “three stars” everywhere for repeated runs. It should, but it doesn’t stimulate it.
⇡#Not everything is so acidic and rosy
It would seem that everything is sensible and thoughtful, but many questions arise in the details of Anger Foot. For example, the level design rarely throws up interesting surprises, and some non-standard situations are sparingly dosed. Enemies are often positioned in such a way that they simultaneously fire from several directions, and in the end Anger Foot generally fills you with “meat”, bless you. Because of this, all shoes are globally divided into funny, but useless (most of them) and obviously powerful ones, without which it would be noticeably sadder. Fortunately, you don’t need to “farm” good sneakers – even if you pass the levels mostly for one or two stars, by the fourth chapter you will get to the most useful samples.
Indelible – a very mysterious name, quite in the spirit of Dark Souls bosses
The bosses do not shine with variety and complexity – given the simplicity of the main mechanics, it is unlikely that they could have been made different, but you still want some kind of challenge and interesting interactions. This is not Shadow of the Erdtree – the local bad guys can be completed without any problems on the first try, or at most on the second, if you suddenly get bored and gape. But at least they weren’t seen in reruns!
Yes, and the music – in the Anger Foot trailers it’s just a hurricane, but this is because the local hardstyle is just enough for the trailer: literally four or five short beats (for a few seconds), which invariably hammer the entire game. It’s disappointingly little – with the magnificent soundtrack, Hotline Miami cannot stand any comparison. At the same time, the work of Dennaton Games quickly flies by in four hours, and the adventures of Anger Foot are stretched out over six or seven. Because of this monotonous “thump-thump-thump”, you simply don’t want to replay levels many times, learn the location of enemies, knock out three stars and speedrun.
The most profitable business in this city is replacing doors
This, in my opinion, is what let Anger Foot down – the key mechanics are too simple for the chosen duration, and the sound part, which could have become a powerful anchor of the project, turned out to be stingy and monotonous. Three or four hours is normal, but it is proposed to spend twice as much to reach the final, and this is clearly too long.
Advantages:
- Hardstyle cheerfully adapts to the intense action;
- Cool visual style.
Disadvantages:
- Shield City gangsters stole every beat from the dynamic soundtrack – there’s very little music;
- With interesting situations at tension levels;
- The bosses look better than they play – the battles with them are very primitive.
Graphic arts
Cartoon violence in retrowave tones, over characters who look like Sesame Street characters who were hooked on vaping in infancy. In a word – magnificence.
Sound
A strong connection of energetic hardstyle with what is happening on the screen – everything around, from security cameras to lighting, dances to the rhythm of the action, and the beat changes on the fly as various actions are performed. It’s a pity that there are very few of these second-long samples that make up the sound picture of Anger Foot, and by the second or third hour they become boring.
Single player game
We plant the doors to force out the bandits, hooligans and outcasts behind them. Repeat until the hardstyle is completely imprinted into the subcortex.
Estimated time of completion
About 6-7 hours to complete, plus another 3 hours to knock out three stars at all levels – although there is a high probability that by this point the game will already get boring.
Collective game
Not foreseen.
General impression
It’s quite fun to kick down doors and kick the snot of cartoon crime while playing cheerful hardstyle. However, for its (hefty) length, Anger Foot lacks variety in gameplay and dynamic soundtrack.
Rating: 7.0 / 10
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