Worth a Look
A charming start and clever premise, but a one trick pony
I’ll preface this by saying that this is one of my more neutral reviews. I wouldn’t stop anyone from buying it, but I’m also not actively recommending anyone rush out and start it either.
The Big Con has a solid theme and a story that pulls you in early. The 90s throwback setting is fun, the characters have personality, and the premise of running cons across the country gives it a nice hook to start with. The music fits the vibe well too, upbeat and fitting for the road trip energy of the game, though nothing from the soundtrack really stuck with me after I put the controller down.
Where things start to slip is the gameplay itself. It’s enjoyable for the first stretch, but the loop wears thin fast, and by the halfway point you can feel the repetition setting in and it doesn’t let up. Clocking in around four and a half hours, the game leans pretty heavily on that same simple gameplay loop to carry a story that isn’t doing quite enough to justify asking players to stick with it that long. It’s not a bad story, it just doesn’t have the weight or originality to make the repetition feel worth it.
It’s worth mentioning that I encountered some minor bugs with the game as well or at the very least some odd event transitions or triggers such as a couple of pen pals finally meeting after you lead them to one another but then just before they meet, they just blip off the screen. I also felt the occasional confusion by the achievement descriptions in relation to what actions I took that actually triggered the achievements which didn’t sit with me right. It felt like there may have been multiple ways to trigger an achievement but only one very pointed description so if you didn’t achieve it that way, you have to do some puzzling out in your head how you got the achievement (if that matters to you, but I feel the description should reflect how you achieved something and reflect that accurately).
I had a decent enough time with The Big Con overall, but it’s not one I’m rushing back to for the achievements I missed the first time through. It’s worth a look if the premise interests you, just don’t go in expecting the gameplay to evolve much past what you see in the opening hour.