Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story – Review

We’ve always loved a good indie game and when that’s mixed with one of the most retro genres in gaming, the shoot em-up, we have high hopes for some nostalgic entertainment.

Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story continues the story of Sausage Bomber release don PC and mobile back in 2013.

Ten years after winning the Sausage War of the first game, a new threat emerges called the Vega nation, it’s up to general Haggis to assemble a crew of skilled pilots to fight off the incoming threats.

If you’ve played any standard side-scrolling Shmup, you’ll know what to expect as you venture left-to-right shooting everything in sight, and collecting dropped medals and power-ups to increase your score and firepower.
Each of the 9 missions lasts about 4 minutes and concludes with a boss-battle at the end, with a few tougher levels towards the end throwing a mini-boss at the halfway point.

There’s the family friendly touch of shot down craft ejecting their pilot who runs without injury off-screen, so don’t expect any blood and guts.

One reason for this family touch is because Dogfight is primarily designed to be enjoyed with those close to you (more specifically, close enough to be enjoying local play for up to 4 players on the same console).
With 4 players on screen, things can get pretty crazy, but there’s plenty of options to fill the screen with even more projectiles.
Firstly, there’s a wide range of weapons with 24 in total, starting off with a basic straight firing gatling gun and a sausage bomb to easier target ground targets, but after a few levels you’re likely to unlock weapons that have a wider bullet spread like the impressive Wave gun, or a more short-range power-shot such as the rock-salt shotgun or the flamethrower.

With each weapon combination it does help to keep things fresh which is much needed as the entire playthrough is likely to take around 35-40 minutes.
to add a little challenge you can increase the speed-run multiplier, which increases the speed of the game when you kill enemies, and slows things down again when you take damage.
There are also 4 difficulty levels starting off with the default “Mild”, an easier “Sweet” difficulty followed by a harder “Hot” option with the final “Atomic” difficulty giving enemies far more firepower as well as one-shot death if you get hit.
Running through the game on the maximum 1.6 multiplier (with a few better weapons than my initial playthrough), I was able to complete the entire game in 21 minutes and while there’s a slight lean on the idea of repeated playthroughs in a speed-run challenge, there’s not going to be a massive difference in time unless you take too long with the boss battles.

Graphically it’s all bright and as child-friendly as shooting down hundreds of aircraft could possibly be, sound is average with a rock-like soundtrack that I wasn’t particularly keen on, but there’s enough blasts and bangs to keep your ears occupied.
Graphically there’s a few instances where things look familiar but there’s mostly a decent range of enemies and fresh locations and backgrounds for each level.
My only real complaint about Dogfight: A Sausage Bomber Story is it’s length, less than an hour for two complete playthroughs just isn’t enough, and at close to the £15 mark, I just don’t feel it represents great value, even those wanting to chase the two achievements they’re unlikely to have within an hour, would struggle to find more than 2-3 hours play.

This means Dogfight relies heavily on the co-op nature and having friends (or family) who won’t mind replaying the same story and missions time and time again.

As around £15/$18, Dogfight: A Sausage bomber Story is an adequate shooter, that’s a little too short to recommend highly.

With a decent range of missions, bosses, weapons and options to tweak the difficulty the developers have done as much as possible to elongate a short game, but twice as many levels might have been a better direction.

If you do pick up Dogfight, there’s some enjoyable side-scrolling shoot em-up action, but just don’t expect it to last beyond an evening.

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