The Con Preview

Currently scheduled for release on October 18, The Con is an innovative 3D fighting game in which winning doesn't always mean being the last fighter standing. What could possibly be more important than beating your opponent before he or she beats you? Money, of course. The game's title refers to the fact that you can bet on your fights, and by controlling those fights, you can con the crowd into betting in way that improves the odds on your own wager. It's an intriguing gameplay mechanic for sure, and one that we've recently had the opportunity to spend some time checking out in a near-finished version of the game.

When you start playing The Con for the first time you'll be presented with story, quick play, and multiplayer options--the latter of which includes some limited game-sharing functionality. The most interesting of these options is undoubtedly the story mode, which casts you in the role of a fighter in the employ of one Momma Reina, who is a powerful woman that makes her money by organizing--and more often than not, rigging--illegal street fights. Your first few fights for Momma serve as a tutorial of sorts, which not only familiarizes you with the controls you'll need to pummel your opponents and defend yourself, but also familiarizes you with the concept of working a con to maximize your earnings from each and every fight, even if that means taking the occasional dive.

The first thing you'll need to do, though, is to choose or create a fighter for yourself. You'll have a roster of 10 fighters to choose from initially, spanning all five of The Con's fighting styles (street boxing, wrestling, Jeet Kune Do, kickboxing, and Tae Kwon Do), though you'll most likely want to take advantage of the game's "basic" or "advanced" editing tools to create your own. The basic editing option lets you create your character simply by choosing your gender, stance, and fighting style, and then customizing your appearance by choosing from different face shapes, skin tones, eyes, noses, mouths, hairstyles, and such. The advanced editing mode makes all of the options from the basic mode far more customizable, and also lets you tinker with the sizes and shapes of your fighter's cheeks, neck, shoulders, eyes, chin, and just about every other body part you can think of. Beyond that you'll be able to dress your fighter in all manner of clothing and accessories, which is purely an aesthetic thing at the start of the game, but which becomes increasingly important as you progress and unlock items that improve your character's attributes when they're worn.

Another customization option that really comes into its own as you progress through The Con's story mode is the ability to create combos for your character that include up to five different attacks. Creating combos really couldn't be simpler, since it requires you to do nothing more than select the moves you'd like from a list of those that are eligible. Although, it's worth noting that pulling off said combos in the middle of a fight can be difficult. As you progress through the story mode, each of your fighters (you end up controlling more than one) will level up as they would in a role-playing game, adding extra moves to their style-specific arsenals as they do so. If there are enough weeks between the fights that you schedule for your characters, you'll also have the option to train them so that their power, speed, skill, toughness, or health attributes increase. The training isn't interactive in any way, unfortunately, but it at least lets you control the development of your fighters to some extent.

The only times that you won't get to train your fighters in between contests are when they're too fatigued after their last match, or are injured--which frequently happens when you bet on their opponents and throw a fight. By the time you start to arrange your own fights you'll be controlling your original character and two teammates, and beating another team will require you to win two of the three matchups. This makes for some strategic gameplay in itself, because although your instinct will undoubtedly be to destroy your opponents in the first two matches so that your third character doesn't even need to fight, there's often a lot of money to be made by deliberately losing one of the early fights.

Playing Punch Bag

Throwing a fight in The Con doesn't just mean standing still and letting your opponent beat the crap out of you, of course. And if you try that you'll invariably end up getting jumped by the crowd after the event and losing both your winnings and your original wager. Instead, after deciding at which point during a fight your bet will be placed (0 to 60 seconds, in 10-second increments), you'll then have to spend that amount of time convincing the crowd that the fight isn't going to go your way. A thumbs-up or thumbs-down icon on the screen lets you know if the crowd is finding the fight believable at all times, which makes many encounters feel like some kind of balancing act as you attempt to look like you're getting pummeled without actually losing too much health. Or, if you're betting on your opponent, you need to make it look like he hasn't got a chance before you let him back into the match.

Although The Con's five fighting styles are all very different, the controls are basically the same for all of them. You'll have two high attacks, two low attacks, a block-and-parry button, a throw, and a powerful but risky "burning move." In addition, the left shoulder button will be used to deliberately lean into your opponent's attacks or to throw weak punches when you're attempting to work a con. You don't have any control over your fighter's movement around the arena, so the D pad is used primarily for evading attacks with duck, sway, and dodge moves. You'll view the action from a camera positioned behind and slightly to one side of your fighter for the most part, which is unconventional but quickly becomes intuitive.

At the end of each fight you'll be graded on certain areas of your performance, including the duration of the match, the amount of health you had left at the end of it, and your skill at performing combos. These grades generally don't count for a whole lot, but it's worth noting that certain items will only become available to buy when you defeat certain opponents or achieve certain grades. These rare items are not only worth buying because of the bonuses they afford your fighters, but also because you're less likely to come up against friends' characters wearing the same gear when you take advantage of The Con's wireless multiplayer options. Both of you will need your own copy of The Con if you want to pit custom characters against each other, of course, while a game-sharing option will let you fight against friends without a copy of the game, but will limit you both to using the same character.

The Con, then, is a fighting game that boasts an unusual amount of depth when played solo, and which also lets you test your mettle against friends. The game isn't without its problems, however, and although the occasional very strange-looking character models are easy to forgive, the excessive load times in our version of the game aren't. Waiting a minimum of 45 seconds before every fight might not sound like much, but in practice it can feel like an eternity, particularly since those 45 seconds will be spent watching the same footage of a camera scrolling around your next arena over and over again. Make the mistake of not pushing the start button quickly enough after loading The Con and you'll also discover that the attract mode's fights take just as long to get started, and you won't be able to skip it until the combatants have started doing their thing. These are relatively minor gripes in the grand scheme of things, but we're nevertheless hopeful that things might improve before The Con arrives in stores next month.