The Big Con - Two Minute Review!

Free from Epic Games between April 18th and April 25th 2024 Added to Game Pass Jun 2023 Title: The Big Con Summary Hustle through the 90s in THE BIG CON, an adventure game where you're an awkward teen hustling to save her family video store from gangsters. Play as Ali, a high school junior gone AWOL from band camp to seek revenge on the loan sharks that threaten her mom's video store. (Fighting with your mom is YOUR job. No one else gets to do that.) Maybe you'll profit from the latest collectible plushie craze, and make an interesting friend or two along the way. Platforms: PC, Xbox One, Series S/X, PS5, PS4 Initial Release Date: Aug 31, 2021 Developer: Mighty Yell Publisher: Skybound Games ________________________________ "The Big Con" is isometric adventure with a distinctive 90's nickelodeon cartoon style and setting, where a young girl needs to turn to petty crime to raise $97,000 to save her moms video library from loan-sharks. The game plays like a point-and-click adventure where you look for items to interact with, and navigating dialogue trees to find pertinent information or clues. The games core mechanic is a pick-pocketing mini-game that is extremely unchallenging, and needs to be carried out dozens of times. There is however an option to switch it off in the settings. It's also a very text-heavy game, but the writing is decent, and the silly humour hits its marks pretty well. The game itself is very comfortable, with minimal penalty for failure beyond achievements, no time restrictions, and no need to carry out all the quests in an area before you move on. The game however never grows beyond the basic mechanics introduced in the first section, and the puzzles too are not based on logic, but are more about exploring or trial-and-error. The game also lacks polish. Your character clips through scenery, dialogue boxes are badly placed, and items are obscured. The controls too can be very finicky when trying to initiate pick-pocketing. Additionally, there's plenty of technical issues such as events not triggering or NPCs not being accessible that reflect badly on the over-all experience. In summary, it's a pleasant but unchallenging game, with decent writing and characters that can be completed in 4 hours. However, the game-play mechanics are quite weak, and beyond the art style it really fails to do anything to really stand out.