Dance Game Review: Feet of Fury

This review was originally published on May 22, 2004, in the first issue of Dream On Magazine.

In 2003, Cryptic Allusion Games made history by releasing the first commercial independent Dreamcast game written with free development libraries.

Feet of Fury is a dancing game that borrows many elements from Konami’s Dance Dance Revolution games. You have a set of arrows that you must follow while keeping your steps to the music. The main difference in Feet of Fury is that the game is focused more on strategy and beating your opponent.

There are power-ups and power-downs on the board. Hitting an arrow that contains an icon may cause the speed of the arrows to slow down or speed up, or it might cause the arrows to reverse direction. Because of this element, the multiplayer mode in Feet of Fury is awesome. Another addition is the health bar. At the end of the round, the person with the most health is the winner. It adds a lot more to this type of game when you have to worry about your opponent hitting you with power-downs, and throwing your feet around on the dance mat like an idiot, all while trying to keep your health bar full.

The single-player mode is no slouch either. There are a good number of songs to play and unlock. Each song has a good tempo to it and fits this type of game really well. There are a number of hidden characters and features to be unlocked, so the game will entertain for hours. When you get sick of all that dancing, you can let your fingers do the dancing with what is in my opinion, the coolest thing to happen to dance games since their invention: The Typing of Fury mode. In this mode, letters fly up onscreen instead of arrows, and you use your Dreamcast keyboard to match the letters to the beat while spelling out words. This mode is very challenging, and surprisingly, very fun.

When you add multiple keyboards to the action for some multiplayer mayhem, you’ll see the pure hilarity that ensues. This is a top-notch addition and is a lot less of a gimmick than you might think. Take your underused keyboards from the attic, and set them up for some furious typing. You won’t regret it.

Good songs, multiplayer battle elements, unlockables, and Typing of Fury make this game a good investment, and an example for future independent developers to follow.

Final Verdict:
4 out of 5