I stumbled across Cocktail Paradise last Friday while looking for some good Indie games.  A game about mixing drinks?  Sounds right up my ally. After about two minutes of playing around with the free trial, I decided to buy it.  I hope that if you play it, you will be as delightfully surprised as I was.

Cocktail Paradise is less of a game and more of a book with some pictures that you can flip through on your TV.  However, for the price of one dollar (80 MS points), it is a very nice book.  The bulk of the game are the recipes for various cocktails, divided up into the categories of popular, pre-dinner, post dinner, and long drinks. You can simply scroll through the drinks until you see something that looks particularly good and then view the recipe.

The detailed page of each drink is where the game shines.  Large, high definition pictures make each drink look delicious and wish I could afford to make them.  The ingredients are clearly displayed on one side, while the directions on how to make the drink are on the other.  And if metric isn’t your thing, there is even an option in the menu to convert cl to oz.  In all, there are over 100 drinks that you can gawk at or learn how to create.

For the poor, cheap, or college students, there is an mode where you can enter in what ingredients you already have, and it will tell you what drinks include said ingredients.  Many of the drinks include top dollar alcohol or mixes, which I don’t always have the luxury of having, so this works out nicely.

The Drinking Games mode includes instructions for 20 drinking games, most of which seem fun and interesting.  While some I had heard of (Risk, I Have Never, a few others) many were new.  Indian Wrestling seemed by far the most fun/sadistic.  It includes pouring five shots of vodka and five shots of water, and having someone mix them up when the players are turned around.  Sounds like a fun time to me.

Cocktail Paradise is a great little Xbox 360 “Application.”  It has gorgeous pictures and gets me excited to start mixing drinks that myself and others can enjoy.  The recipes are accurate and the drinking games looks interesting.  For $1.00, you can’t go wrong with this one.

9/10