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The bartending mini-game consisted of simply moving between three positions at the bar and hitting the button that appears over each patron's head. Not very deep, but it tested our reflexes when new customers started appearing as fast as we could keep up with them. The dancing mini-game had a little more depth to it, since each button corresponds to different dance moves and you can string these moves into specific preset dance routines. The game seems to have a good amount of referential humor here and there. We pulled off one dance combo per a Midway representative's instructions and realized at the end that the routine was taken straight from Michael Jackson's "Beat It" video. All of these club-based mini-games contribute to the number of people you're drawing into the club, and if you hit the goal within the time limit, you'll get to spray water on a few young women in tight white t-shirts, which we're sure will be titillating if polygonal breasts are your thing.

The game's designers seem intent on letting players sample every aspect of the true Vegas party lifestyle in gameplay terms. So of course, you'll be able to approach the bar yourself and grab a drink when you feel like it. Drinking in moderation will increase your swagger by filling the "buzz" meter, which will let you pull off some slick moves when you fill it. But drinking too much will make you stumble around like an idiot, blowing your chance to be the life of the party and maybe even making you vomit on a few unlucky patrons' shoes. Talk about realism. Of course you can always go to the restroom and urinate to alleviate that problem, and the Midway rep told us not to rule out the possibility of some kind of manual mini-game control being added to the urination in the final game. We're not sure there's anything else we can even say about that.

Midway says the final game will offer more variety than our limited demo, with numerous casino games (slots and a story-related poker tournament being two more that will be available in the final), the driving missions that we didn't get to see yet, and a colorful cast of characters that will populate the numerous fictional casinos. We only got to hear a few snippets of dialogue during the demo, but they were surprisingly funny and reasonably intelligent, without resorting to the level of lazy, crass toilet jokes. Like most of Midway's upcoming lineup, This Is Vegas is being built on Unreal Engine 3, so it's no slouch in the looks department, either. The gameplay looks fairly entertaining and certainly varied enough here, but we'll reserve judgment until we get a better idea about how the game's writing, specifically the humor, comes through in the final version.

This preview was based on publisher-driven and hands-on demos of the game. This Is Vegas is due out later this year.