"I'm going to go do things the Conway......in Smackdown vs RAW that is"

Between the PSP launch and until recently it seemed that new software for the PSP was a rare find. Not that many new or compelling titles were being released. Now all of a sudden in this past month it seems that just as many titles were released for the PSP than the entire eight months that preceded it. One of these titles is a rare new property for the PSP; a fighter from Sony dubbed The Con. Regrettably Sony didn't seem to put too much work into this one and it will probably get lost amidst all the other titles that flooded the PSP recently.

The Con is a 3D fighter, that doesn't grant true 3D movement. Instead, a fighter's movement is controlled comparably in the same vein as some older boxing games where each direction of the d-pad only yields a variation of dodging an attack. If a fighter gets knocked down in the midst of the fight, the character will automatically move closer to them. There is no upside to this, while it is something different than the ordinary fighting game it just doesn't work and severely limits the gameplay.

Once I got past the limited movement scheme, I did discover a certain amount of depth to the fighting system. Each character has one of the five following fighting styles: Wrestling, Boxing, Tae Kwon Do, Kick Boxing and Jeet Kune Do. Besides doing regular jabs and kicks, and combinations of both there is also a decent amount of throw moves and specialty throws that deal out a minuscule extra amount of damage. Successfully dodging attacks actually takes some skill, but as I said above, it just isn't as fun as true 3D movement. Players can parry attacks also with the R button and if successfully timed can perform a powerful counterattack to get their foe looking at the lights.

There is another layer to the fighting engine that obviously derives from the whole theme of the game where players can con fights to their advantage. Money can be betted on fights, and if your heart so desires you can bet against yourself and throw a fight and net a nice sum of money for you. To make sure players don't take advantage of this by doing nothing throughout a fight, the developers added a meter to gameplay to see how well the crowd is buying into the defense you are putting up. If you don't try to put up a fight the meter will lower and eventually the crowd will not believe your loss and you'll end up out of that cash that was waiting for you. Again, I appreciate Sony trying something different, but I found it a ton easier just to get that betted money by betting that I would win a fight and found it more frustrating to keep that damn con meter up. The only time I was forced to use it was in The Con's story mode.

The story has some really well produced CG cut scenes to set everything up. A thug chick named Reina brings you into an underground fighting circuit to show you the ropes, however you quickly turn against her and now the whole circuit is out to get you. From there, you get to hire two other fighters to join your crew as you move your way up the ranks from the D class, then to the C and finally the S class. In between fighting each crew, fighters can train and gain slight stat bonuses to certain attribute areas like toughness, health, etc. If a fighter gets the crap pounded out of them a certain week, they'll have injuries that will require them to take a few weeks off from touring to rest up in the hospital.

The whole set up is kind of similar to the story mode in DefJam: Fight for New York, but unlike that this one is ruined by many long load times in between fights and transitioning from all the menus. I struggled to play on as I made my way through the un-captivating story. It felt more like punishment as I grew rapidly tired of playing week to week, no matter how many new parts I unlocked for use in the fighter creation mode. Yes, there is a surprisingly decent create-a-fighter option included that has a solid amount of parts to deck your own creation with, plus a wealthy amount more that are unlocked by completing the story mode. It is one of the few highlights of The Con.

The graphics and audio are not one of those highlights and leave rather mixed results. For the visuals, most of the stages and character models have a pretty clean look to them with no fancy motion blur or jagged edges rearing their ugly mugs. However, a lot of the character model designs are downright horrid. So bad that I couldn't make out that some of the female fighters on the roster were actually female. No, the fighters do not have the distinctive traits where games like Dead or Alive clearly lets you know who's who. The sound seems quite haphazard. Urban inspired beats make up most of the generic background music in one of the few games that probably could have benefited from a licensed hip hop soundtrack. The sound effects are also of your expected fare from the genre and do nothing to add to the gameplay experience.

As corny as this pun sounds, Sony is trying to con us all into buying their subpar fighter. I'm not falling for their tricks at all. They can throw in as many create-a-fighter options and flashy cut-scenes as they want, I just couldn't buy into what they were selling. And neither should you. The Con is boring, repetitive and not even close to being fun whatsoever. Your best bet is to avoid The Con at all costs as you know better fighting games are in the works and within a year we'll probably be playing Tekken and/or DefJam on the PSP.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 12/06/05