The Con Hands-On

We recently had the opportunity to take a good close look at an upcoming fighting game being developed exclusively for the PSP, which will not only take advantage of the system's impressive 3D capabilities, but also sport a unique twist on the genre. Titled The Con, the game's got a gritty vibe to it that's reminiscent of movies like Snatch and Fight Club. As for the twist: In addition to letting you beat your opponents senseless using hard-hitting strikes and grappling moves, The Con will let you fix your fights so you can greedily profit from all the carnage. And if that's not a great concept for a game, we don't know what is.

From the concept alone, it's evident that The Con isn't your typical 3D fighting game. It doesn't look like one, either, since it features an angled behind-the-character perspective, sort of like in the classic Punch-Out!! arcade games. Your character turns semitransparent as the situation warrants it, letting you clearly see your opponent at all times. The game focuses on up-close-and-personal confrontations and toe-to-toe brawling, so don't expect much in the way of defensive play or Street Fighter-style fireball fights. In fact, the PSP's D pad and the analog stick are mostly used to make your character dodge and sway, rather than quickly maneuver around the arena. As a result, The Con feels as much like a boxing game as a typical fighting game. Then again, the Tekken-style button configuration, which maps one of the PSP's face buttons to each of your character's limbs, should make The Con easy to get into for just about anyone who's played a 3D fighting game before.

The game will include five different fighting styles, including wrestling, boxing, jeet kune do, kickboxing, and tae kwon do. Twenty different characters will be available, but in another nod to boxing games (and wrestling games), The Con will feature a create-a-fighter mode, letting you edit your own combos and customize your appearance--right on down to planting your own face onto your in-game fighter by using technology much like that featured in Tony Hawk for the PSP. Fast, balanced, and heavy fighters will all be represented, bringing their own strengths and weaknesses to bear. Grabs, unblockables, and guard-crushing moves will also let you mix up your technique, and you'll gain experience and skill points as you compete over time.

But you want to know about the shady stuff. While it'll be possible to play The Con "straight," without the conning features to interfere with the combat, much of the appeal of the game might very well lie in this unique system. Basically, you'll go into each fight with certain odds for and against the respective fighters. The betting window remains open in the early stages of the fight, so what you might want to do is let yourself take a real whooping for the first minute or so...and then, once the bets are locked, it's time to turn the fight around by coming through with a surprise win. So the game challenges you to take some risks to turn a tidy profit. There are some other nuances to it, specifically involving the left shoulder button, which sort of serves as your "con" button. Normally if you press L, you can lead with your chin, causing any damage you incur to really mess you up badly, causing spectators to think you're doomed to lose. Alternatively, by holding L as you attack, you can throw fakes, making it look like you're beating up on your foe without actually causing him or her much harm. All this is to help sway the odds in your favor.

You need to be careful, though, because the spectators can smell BS if you're being just a little too predictable. If you're making your "strategy" a little too transparent, an onscreen indicator will show that the audience isn't buying what you're doing. So you'll quickly have to start acting real to get them to believe what's going on.

If you're a longtime fan of arcade fighting games, all this may sound eerily familiar to you. After all, back in the good old days, when you couldn't just cuss out your opponent over Xbox Live and then disconnect on him, you needed to be careful. We remember Street Fighter II matches in which we carefully contrived the outcome, just to make sure that six-foot-tall bruiser we were playing wasn't going to take the fight from the game to the back alley. The Con's conning system reminded us of all this, which was actually pretty cool. That is, having the "metagame" of trying to fix the fight to look close, on top of the actual fighting itself, seems like it could add some real depth to the action.

We got our hands on The Con and were able to try some versus-CPU matches, as well as some ad hoc multiplayer. The game already controls well and runs smoothly, though on first impression, we didn't necessarily get a good sense of the complexity of the action. Most of the combos we used were pretty simple strings of punches and kicks, and we observed that the faster characters really seemed to have an edge on the bigger, slower ones, who couldn't really get a move in edgewise. Still, the game won't be out for months to come, so we're hopeful that the solid foundation we experienced will turn into a sophisticated game that serious fighting game aficionados will appreciate.

The Con will feature special three-versus-three battles that play out similarly to the classic King of Fighters games, as well as a story mode and other gameplay options. The presentation already seems impressive, though the build we played was missing speech and had just one music track (albeit, a catchy, jazzy number). And the gameplay looks decidedly interesting and is already fast and responsive. The PSP has no 3D fighting games available for it as yet, so The Con seems like it could definitely fill a niche, in addition to providing a distinctive spin on the fighting genre. Check out our screens, movies, and developer interview for additional information, and stay tuned for more!