Sausage Wars is a 1-4 player arena battle with walking sausages that has been ported from mobile to PC and consoles, and it feels like a lost early PS2 relic. It’s simple, stupid, lacks depth and strategy, and yet I still found myself chuckling away when playing it in short bursts. It’s best served as a quick palate cleanser during local multiplayer game nights as a quick-fire round before getting into something more meaty.
The main premise is that up to 20 sausages are at war, either in a last man standing or a kill streak battle. Up to 4 players can join locally to do battle, with the rest being filled up by bots. Each arena takes on a Micro Machines vibe, as they are parts of a house. You’ll do battle around the kitchen sink and chopping board, or run around wooden panels in the garage. Some arenas are quite tiny and full of traps, like garden shears to kill opponents, and they can catch out clumsy movement or be used to throw opponents into them. When not looking out for yourself in the two main modes, there is a team deathmatch mode, too.
Movement suffers from the general imprecision that mobile ports often have. It’s a bit woolly and floaty. I’ve played a lot worse, though, and the fuzzy movement physics are not quite as frustrating as the attack physics. Attacks seem a bit hit and miss, and also the resulting impact and damage caused is inconsistent. This is especially true when someone collects the big sausage power-up, as they can spin attack with a larger range, and it can take out many people. Sometimes you’ll be blasted off the stage and wonder why. Other times, you’ll be standing perfectly still. There is a comedic jank to it that is funny and slightly rageful, so long as you don’t take the game seriously as a competition. The other problem is that the AI are quite often suicidal. They run off stages, run into traps, and sometimes more than half the competition is dead in the first few seconds. It makes single-player mode a bit of a chore if you want to unlock some cosmetics.
Ultimately, Sausage Wars: Fire Edition is a flawed, silly, lightweight, but inoffensive title that can provide a few laughs but not much more. It was on my games night rotation for a short while, but there are so many brawlers out there that combine silly humour with competent gameplay that Sausage Wars struggles to compete. I enjoy it for what it is, and it’s something of a guilty pleasure, but I must admit, it’s not good enough to be a cult classic or a true recommendation.
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