The Con

Written by Matt Swider  on January 16, 2006

Review: Finally, losing is an art form!

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Since the dawn of Pong, gamers have often repeated the phrase УOh, I let you win!Ф and more times than not, it's a lame excuse. In The Con, however, losing is part of fun because it incorporates gambling into the fighting gameplay. Sometimes you'll actually want to lose in the last seconds of a fight depending on the odds and who you bet on. Simply betting against yourself and having your opponent beat you to a bloody pulp won't fool the gambling crowd, so you'll need to put on a show of harmless punches and kicks first. Drive up the bets they place on you before taking a dive and clean up. It works the same way when betting on yourself. If you look like a real loser in a brawl, everyone's going to bet on the other fighter. Come back in the last seconds and score some major cash from those that underestimated you.

The unique concept of pulling off a con adds another layer to the fighting genre, which has become a one-trick pony compared to other advancing game types in recent years. On top of gambling, the game allows you to customize fighters from head to toe. Pre-configured models can be chosen if you want to jump right into the action, but adjusting everything from nose size to sneakers is much more interesting in my opinion. Less cosmetic and more to do with the core gameplay, assembling and training a three-prong team of street brawlers can also be a fun diversion from the fighting. A schedule gives your fighters a chance to bulk up various categories like toughness and health and gives the game some RPG flavor in addition to fighting and gambling gameplay. No actual training mini-games, though. It's all done by upping statistics.

Although gambling, character customization and RPG elements are all strong points in The Con, the actual fighting engine is more of a mixed bag. The controls are laid out nicely with the four face buttons acting as right and left punches and kicks, the right shoulder button setting up a block, and the left shoulder button enabling УThe Con.Ф When this special button is pressed, you become an easy target in order to blow (or act like you're blowing) the fight or, when combined with one of the face buttons, you lay harmless attacks on your opponent. Combining the face buttons with the D-pad or analog stick helps string together a variety of combos, a fighting game norm, and more in-depth customization comes in the form of signature moves that can be created for each character.

Everything may be set up well, but when it comes to executing moves, the engine is very sluggish, giving the game a tired boxing feel as opposed to a fluid arcade style. In fact, the only thing more sluggish than the slow-paced fighting is the game's load times, but that's another problem altogether. The source of the problem here is that the control scheme fails to include the ability to move around. While I was impressed with the ability to sway backward, duck or dodge left or right, those movements shouldn't have been applied to both the D-Pad and the analog stick. One of the two could have been used to give players the freedom to move about the environments. Environments aren't cluttered with interesting or destructible objects that you often see in 3D fighting games, so moving around the bare-bones arenas would be less of a benefit even if the ability was included. There's nothing striking about character models, either, and the entire game seems to use a depressing color palette.

Even though the concept of betting against your own fighter is novel, it becomes too easy to bet on yourself and win towards the end. There's less risk that you'll pretend to lose the fight to raise the stakes only to not be able to come back in time before your health runs out. When your stats are increase, it's easier to ditch Уthe conФ and come out swinging in the final seconds. Button mashing and combos are also too easy. I must've hit my opponent seven times with the same kick before he did anything to me. I was actually hoping for some sort of slick move in which he grabbed my leg and swung me around like it was a wrestling game. But, this brawler can be more basic than even a mindless WWE game.

Luckily, you can't get away with performing repetitive moves against actual human opponents without getting that other often repeated gamer phrase: УQuit it already!Ф You do lose Уthe conФ element, though. It's just not plausible that you're going to be able to fool your friend in ad hoc multiplayer. However, what you gain instead is Game Sharing, another novel concept introduced onto PSP. If you're the only one that has a copy of the game, you can still play it with another PSP owner (with extremely limited options) just like the multi-boot technique used on the Game Boy Advance.