I always wanted to be a bartender.

Bartenders are modern-day alchemists, employing arcane knowledge to make new and delicious things out of common ingredients. Also like alchemists, they might be called on for a bit of philosophy if you’re in a pinch. Everyone loves a bartender!

Maybe that’s why I like Drunken Masters so much.

In Drunken Masters, you take the role of a newbie bartender. Immediately, you’re faced with a dizzying array of liquors, ingredients and glasses, kind of like being a real bartender. Fortunately, the game starts you slow, and your boss walks you through it. You can always click on a customer’s drink order to see the recipe or the ingredients to hightlight the bottle or bin, but your ultimate goal is to be able to have someone order a “Three Wise Men” and know they want 1.5 oz of whiskey, bourbon and scotch each in an old-fashioned glass.

You get better tips for getting the drinks out faster and getting the mix more accurate to the recipe and get worse tips for things like forgetting the ice or garnish. You can pour with “both hands” as you get more advanced, leaving one bottle suspended in the air as you pick up and pour another one.

You’ll always have multiple customers at the bar to take care of at once, but you can keep their attention with tricks. These range from the simple, like throwing a bottle up in the air and catching it, to the incredibly difficult, like throwing ice in the air, bouncing a glass off the wall and having all three ice cubes land in the glass in midair.

The tricks are highly effective at keeping tips up, and actually puts a crimp in the multitasking aspect of the game. Dropping everything on your to-do list to perform some stunts is much more effective than trying to prepare multiple drinks at once.

For me, however, the real draw was the simulated expertise, kind of like pretending to be a rock star in Rock Band. As you play, you get a feel for the dozens and dozens of bottles of alcohol, and you’ll start to pour drinks in perfect quantities without even needing to consult the recipes. Also like Rock Band, Drunken Masters could concievably let you practice a little for the real thing.

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