Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Windows, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One (reviewed)
If you’ve ever wanted to go on a road trip that involved stealing all manner of items from unsuspecting victims, while also dripping in an almost disgusting amount of 90’s aesthetic, then boy do I have a game for you. The Big Con ticks all of those boxes. Unfortunately, even if that sounds like the kind of game you’re looking for, you might still be left wanting more.
The Big Con tells the story of Ali, a 17 year old that works at her mom’s video store at some point in the 1990’s. While closing up the store one night, Ali overhears her mom, Linda, having a conversation with a shady character. It turns out that Linda is in serious debt to some loan sharks and the video store is in jeopardy of being shut down if she can’t pay them $97,000. This is obviously distressing for Ali to hear, so she tries to come up with a way to help her mom make the money. Unfortunately, Ali is supposed to be leaving for band camp the following day, and her mom is adamant that she make that a priority so she can get into a prestigious music school.
Ali ends up sneaking out of her room to explore the town and eventually runs into a stranger named Ted. It turns out that Ted is a con artist. When he hears Ali’s story, he offers to take her on a road trip to help him do a con job and then split the profits with her. So, you know, with him being someone she’s just met and clearly shady as hell, she agrees to go with him. The next morning, she sets off with him on a bus, all the while her mom believes she’s actually heading to band camp.
That’s the set up for The Big Con. Overall the story was okay enough, but I personally didn’t find it as interesting or as funny as the game seemed to want me to. Most of the jokes fell flat and even though I grew up in the 90’s, a majority of the writing that relied on nostalgia for that time period (which was honestly used way less than I expected) didn’t land for me. Of course that’s all subjective, so your mileage may vary. I will say I did appreciate the relationship between Ali and her mom. I really got the sense that they loved and cared for one another, which I was a big fan of.
As far as gameplay goes, at its core, The Big Con is an adventure game that will have you exploring a variety of areas and solving simple puzzles. The goal is to make a certain amount of money in each area so you can move on to the next, all the while trying to save up the $97,000 you need to help your mom. While you’ll have to collect a certain amount of money in each area, there is way more cash available to find than what is actually needed, so this allows for a lot of side things to do if you want to. There are also ample ways to get help and hints if you happen to get stuck and don’t know what to do next, so the game is very forgiving in that way.
There are a few ways to make the money you need, and they all involve conning or swindling people out of cash. Things you’ll be doing to get money include distracting cashiers while they count out your change so they mess up the count and give you extra money, eavesdropping on people to see how you might be able to use their situations to your advantage, completing quests that usually involve a lot of deception to solve simple puzzles, or just outright pick pocketing unsuspecting victims.
The side quests and puzzles are where you’ll earn the biggest chunks of money, but pick pocketing is the most consistent way to fill your pockets as Ali can steal from nearly every NPC in the game. Pick pocketing involves a mini game where you’ll hold down a button and when a marker is in the designated “steal zone” you’ll release the button to grab whatever that person has on them. It is possible to fail any pick pocket attempt and if you get caught three times you’ll be thrown into a mini game that will have Ali rewinding videotapes. This isn’t too bad as it only takes a little bit of time and you’re back in the game with pretty much no penalty. This gameplay, much like the story, was fine enough. It kept me just engaged enough that I never got too bored.
If I’m being honest, if I wasn’t planning on reviewing the game I might have given up on it after the first couple of areas because it just wasn’t clicking with me. Most of that feeling stemmed from the fact that I just felt like an asshole when I was playing it. I know it’s just a video game, and I’ve done far worse things in games, but going around stealing and deceiving people wasn’t the most uplifting experience. The game seemed to try and make up for that by sometimes mentioning things about how Ali was stealing from the rich and even addressed the morality of it all at the end. That’s all fine, but that doesn’t change the fact that there were times when Ali was literally stealing from children and no matter how you spin it, that’s just a dick move.
There are a couple of other things I wanted to mention before wrapping this up, with the first being the length of the game. I was able to get through The Big Con in around five hours, and that was with me exploring each area pretty extensively. I personally felt like the length was just about right because by the end I was starting to get a little bored with the predictable gameplay loop. That could be a little on the short side for some though, as this game also has little to no replay value unless you’re looking to mop up achievements. It’s also worth mentioning that if you are into achievements, as far as I could tell, there’s no chapter or area select, so you’ll have to play through the entire game again if you miss anything.
Finally, there are quite a few accessibility options available to the player. You can adjust font and dialogue effects to make reading dialogue easier. You can turn off the pick pocketing mini game or any other action that involves the player holding down a button. So instead of holding the button, these actions will be completed with a single button press. There’s also an option to toggle how easy it is to find areas to eavesdrop on people in order to make exploration a little less aimless. It’s always nice to see developers implement these kinds of options so that everyone can experience a game if they want to, so that’s certainly a big thumbs up from me.
The Big Con wasn’t a terrible experience, but unfortunately it also wasn’t anything special. If you’re really into the whole 90’s aesthetic and the game’s humor lands with you, then it might be one worth trying. For me though, I just felt like everything about it, from the writing to the gameplay, was average at best. If you can play it through Game Pass, I’d say give it a go if it sounds interesting. Otherwise I really can’t recommend it to most people.
