It’s the 1990’s. The biggest thing happening in your life is that your dear ole’ mom is sending you to band camp. On the eve of your departure however, you come to find that mom has gotten in too deep with loan shark and is in the hole for a whopping $97K. So what do you do? Why, what any concerned child would do: partner up with the local sketchy stranger and steal the money you need from your friends and neighbors, of course. This is the set-up to The Big Con, a cheeky adventure game developed by Mighty Yell Studios and published by Skybound Games. After releasing last year on PC and Microsoft consoles to positive reviews, the charming and cheeky title has finally landed on the Nintendo Switch in the form of the Gift of the Year Edition. Is the semi-handheld console a suitable home for the game? Short answer: almost. Long answer is also almost, albeit more detailed.
The first thing that hits you upon booting up The Big Con is its presentation. Logos are presented as cards in a stolen wallet with a soothing guitar melody that conjures images of a southern Californian beach. This is interrupted by the sound of a cassette getting slapped into a tape deck and you’re met with the title screen and theme song. The 90’s aesthetic is in full effect from here on out. From the technology available to the characters in the game to the soundtrack, this game tends to stay very loyal to the theme of that decade. The visuals are very retro inspired. On the surface it looks like a game that could have been installed on a PC in your local high school in the late 90’s. The environments are isometric with a very bright and simple color scheme. All the characters are 2D models with very basic frames of animation. Activating dialogues will bring up a screen with a colored background adorned with the spirals, zigzags, lines, and dots of varying colors that were the style of the time. It’s here when the characters are closer to the camera that you can start to see subtle features that are, in fact, high definition. This is more apparent in the storyline characters in how their eyes and hair move, not so much the average NPC. The soundtrack goes in a punk/alt rock direction with the occasional splice of hip hop influence. In other words a lot of turntables and power chords.
You play as Ali Barlow, a teenage girl growing up in Lisbon, USA. She and her mom, Linda, run the local rental store together. It takes a lot to keep the rental shop afloat, and it’s why Linda got mixed up with Ricky – a loan shark that’s threatening to take it if he doesn’t get what’s owed to him in ten days. While on a walk to clear her head, Ali runs into a shifty dude named Ted who offers her a way out of her problem. This sets her on a cross country grift-spree as she pick-pockets and cons her way to her goal of $97,000. Ali doesn’t only have Ted to aid in her criminal career. She’s also joined by by Rad Ghost, a hallucination based on a former VJ and arcade game protagonist. For our younger readers, a VJ was what we called the hired personalities on MTV who would introduce the music videos. Rad Ghost serves as your hint box, providing vague advice. Clever writing and genuine humor carry the narrative through the five locales. Funny tidbit about this game: there’s a laugh track feature that can be activated in the options menu. You’ll hear it go off in the dialogues on queue with the punchlines, no matter how delightfully cheesy.
That 90’s PC adventure game feel is more than just an aesthetic choice. Anyone who grew up playing those kinds of games will feel right at home here. Challenge-wise it doesn’t go near as hard as some of those classic titles would. The basic gameplay loop involves you walking around the different environments, talking to the NPC’s, and finding solutions to the problems presented to you – those problems mainly being separating people from their money. Your means of grifting are slow-dripped to you by your sussy sidekick Ted. As you approach someone to make them an unwilling donor to your cause, it activates a mini-game. A bar appears with a typical ‘stop the moving arrow on the shrinking colored portion’ affair. The size of the sweet spot is determined by how much money is in the person’s pocket. The more money, the smaller the area. If you mess up and miss the colored area, you get one of three strikes against you and that person is now wary of your presence.
There are also silly disguises that are unique to each locale that you can don if you mess up the first time which will allow you a second go at a mark. As you progress from one locale to the next you’ll be provided with new ways to swindle and deceive. There will be a lot of spying on people and using the learned information for monetary gain. You’ll distract naive cashiers into giving you extra money. Dishonesty will always have the highest payout, and you will be presented with plenty of chances to be a real piece of crap. The quirky and ridiculous humor helps lighten the tone of the overall experience, making this more of a comedic, light hearted romp than anything.
The Big Con on excels at nearly everything it does. From the art direction and the sound design to the snarky writing and satisfying gameplay loop, it is definitely a title worthy of your time. However, there are a handful of issues that plagued the pre-release version I played on the Switch. The game had a tendency to crash on a fairly consistent basis, with it happening with more frequency as I progressed in the game. I also noticed that it happened a LOT when I played the game in docked mode, making handheld mode the way to play the game with some measure of stability. While these issues shouldn’t be overlooked, it ‘s also fair to point out that they will be largely ironed out by the time the game releases – which happens to be today!
Crashing issues aside, The Big Con is a great example of a perfect ‘pick-up and play game’. It can be completely in a manner of hours or so. It’s a 90’s throwback developed with a lot of love that despite it’s technical shortcomings, is a welcome addition to any Switch owners library.
