You can't turn around without hearing someone telling you how bad sodas are for your health. If only you could get the sensation of enjoying a cold cola without all the harmful side effects. Thank goodness for Soda Drinker Pro, a soda-drinking simulator for Mac and PC that is one of the most bizarre gaming creations in recent memory.
The experience of actually downloading Soda Drinker Pro feels a bit sketchy. You have to send in a contact form and cough up your e-mail to get the link. Then, you have to sit through a mysterious download that Google can't scan for viruses because it's too big. This goes against everything you were ever taught about downloading from the Internet. I threw caution to the wind and did it anyway.
I install Soda Drinker Pro and hit "play." I'm greeted with music that sounds like it was created on a 1985 Casio keyboard. I scramble to turn down the volume. Level 1 takes place on a beach, at least that's what it's supposed to be. The virtual environment looks like it came out of a Max Headroom fever dream.
There isn't much to this. You wander around. You slurp. You tip the soda and take sips from a straw. You pick up bonus sodas that are scattered around. A voice talks about how much it loves soda and says things like, "I wish I could eat soda." For a moment, I wonder what the story behind this is. I quickly realize I don't want to know.
As you finish your soda, you move up to the next level. You start at the beach and work your way up to a park. Eventually, if you keep chugging, you can even try a soda in space. As you play Soda Drinker Pro, you go from thinking "WTF?" to a gradual acceptance of this unnatural world you've stepped into. I half expect to bump into David Lynch inside this terribly-rendered graphics hell.
The maker has promised to put Soda Drinker Pro on Steam Greenlight, with 100 levels of non-stop soda-drinking action. It boggles the mind to even conceive of such a thing. Is the world ready for this? I think the answer is a resounding "No."
