The Con is a fun but incredibly simple game… a bit too simple.
This game has a story but we are going to ignore it for purposes of this review. Not only is it fairly silly but the cutscenes are pretty boring and the voice acting is just bad. Instead we are going to push past the bland story and focus on the main draws of this game, the create-a-character mode and fighting modes. These are the only real reason to pick up this game and even these aren't the greatest.
The fighting system is pretty basic and reminiscent of an older type of fighting game. This is primitive combo-based gameplay at finest. Depending on what character you are controlling they will have different fighting styles. Each fighting style has a specific number of moves that they can use, unique special move and a power move. These fighting styles also have unique combos that can be put together by chaining together their basic moves. Each of the pre-made characters will have their own combos due to this and you can make your own combos by going into the creator a fighter modes.
However this really does boil down to button mashing in the end. Each button corresponds to a different hand or foot and depending on what your style is and what moves you have taken you will have a different range of being able to hit people. So a boxer who uses his right hand might do a right to left uppercut that can hit standing enemies but you can dodge to the left of this. Since you can only side step a bit or lean back to evade attacks you must learn to recognize moves and dodge them quickly. The blocking system is pretty useless since your block can be broken by enough hits increasing your reliance on the dodging. You can also injure specific body parts with repeated strikes causing knock downs but this only really encourages button mashing since spamming one move can floor your opponent. If the game allowed for a bit more strategy this would be more interesting but as it stands the game really is a simple button masher.
Its sad to say it, but making characters is more fun than actually using them. There are a lot of options to use to customize your character and you can find over a hundred different items to customize yourself with, different hairstyles, tattoos and body type options. Even more impressive is the fact that you can change the color of anything you put on, customizing your appearance even further.
Not only is the appearance part of your character fully customizable but you can pick what fighting style your character uses, these range from wrestling to street fighting to martial arts. Once you choose your fighting style you can create two custom combos by stringing together basic moves to form a bone shattering combo. However, for the most part you really are still button mashing as the timing to actually string together the combo moves is really fidgety. Its hard to execute these even when your combo consists of two buttons pressed over and over. As you play through career mode you will unlock the ability to make more custom combos but this really changes little due to the spastic timing of the combos themselves.
This game has little to really speak of beyond the create-a-character and fighting modes. The graphics are okay, nothing all that spectacular to speak of but they aren't bad either. Basically they get the job done and for this sort of game that's all that really matters. What is kind of nice is that you can see the characters show signs of damage as the fights progress. They slump and act winded as they get more injured, even favoring limbs when they get too hurt.
Audio is pretty painful so you might want to mute the game while playing. The hip-hop / funk soundtrack is ungodly repetitive and bland while the voice acting is just plain horrible. The best times I have had with this game is playing it while muted and just button mashing away on some computer opponents.
Probably the most interesting part of this game is the betting or “Con” aspect of the game. For each fight in career mode you will get betting odds that modify how much money you put down. So before the fight you can put down $100 and if the odds are 3 to 1 against you, you would get $300 as a victory pot. The real trick comes in how you place the bets because of the timing and con aspects. If the odds are in your opponents favor you can just place a bet at the beginning of the fight and batter his head in. But if they are in your favor you wont get as much money. So you can hold the L-trigger when you are hit and by timing it right you “sell” the hit, taking max damage from the hit. Enough of this will turn the odds in your opponents favor, giving you more money for when you come back from your faked loss and win the fight. You have to balance how much damage you're willing to take, how long to place the bet into the fight and how much selling you want to do.
This part of the game sounds really awesome and it would be if not for the Con Meter that sinks it. While you are fighting this meter will show how much the crowd is buying into your fight. So if you are letting yourself get beaten down they will start to boo it and if the fight ends like that they will jump you. This can leave your fighter in bad shape and they take some of your money. This is all fine and dandy except for the fact that the crowd will sometimes take you genuinely getting your head handed to you as you trying to fake them out. So you get beaten down in the fight and then the crowd jumps you. This all leaves your guy on the side lines and useless for quite some time. Its frustrating that even when you try to fight and lose badly it gets compounded by another beat down.
All in all The Con is a passable game but the only part of the game that isn't flawed is the character creation system… this is sad. The long and short of it is that this game is good enough for those who can get their hands on the game cheap. So long as you are going to ignore the bad story and repetitive fighting this is a fun fighter creation game. But that really is about all there is to this game.