bartending
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Cyberpunk bartending for racist corgis, Waifu in VA-11 HALL-A
VA-11 HALL-A is like Papers, Please, but with alcohol instead of immigration papers. Developers at Sukeban Games lovingly call VA-11 HALL-A a "booze-em-up" game. It's set in a post-dystopian, corporate-controlled society where every citizen is infected with nanobots designed to oppress, and law enforcement agents called White Knights trawl the streets, ensuring no one breaks the law. And of course there are racist corgis with translation devices. As a bartender in a small downtown joint called VA-11 HALL-A – or just "Valhalla" to regulars – players meet and talk to a wide range of people, hearing stories of this brave new world and helping customers through their issues. "While the player can perform different actions besides bartending – changing the tunes in the jukebox on past versions of the game is a good example – the bartending will be the only way the player has to interact with the character," Programmer Fernando Damas tells Joystiq. "This is mainly because that format offers a more seamless experience between gameplay and story. It also offers a more complex yet easy-to-understand approach to the choices menu and dialogue trees these kind of games have."
Harry Potter paves the way for bartending on the Wii
Who would ever think of Hogwarts as a glorified bartending school? Well, Jason Cipriano from MTV Multiplayer, for one. After getting his hands on the Wii's upcoming Harry Potter title, he was impressed with the potion-mixing minigame portion of the demo. The game works as you might imagine; simply enough, you tilt the Wiimote downward as if you were pouring liquids. The key is in applying the right amount of force to the motion, otherwise your potion might explode (making the new Potions teacher, Horace Slughorn, none too happy). There are some other motion-controlled mixing actions you have to perform as well, to keep the minigame from feeling too basic.Harry Potter aside, though, Cipriano points out that this type of liquid mixing gameplay could work well in a title like Cooking Mama, where Mama kicks back with a few G & Ts, or perhaps even an original bartending title. Imagine a game like Order Up!, only instead of pleasing customers in a restaurant, you had to serve your patrons drinks. We think we could dig it, though we're not sure Nintendo would be so keen. Then again, we are seeing a Beer Pong game come to WiiWare sometime in the future, so you never know.
