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.

Regardless of the result you're looking for, you'll have to make the fight convincing.

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.

Customizable combos really help to make your characters feel unique.

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.