Bet on your own ass
So now you’re ready to fight and here’s where the story mode kicks in as you start out being released from prison into the care of Reina who is something of a player in the world of underground street fighting. She lines you up with your fights and gives you some advice as you work your way through the story. To be honest, the story itself is hardly worth bothering with, all you need to know is that you’ll be facing off against other fighters, placing bets on the outcomes of the fights and assembling a crew of fighters as you rise up through the ranks.Now the betting system is where the hidden depth of The Con really starts to come through as this is where you can win and lose pots of cash. The idea is simple, you bet on the outcome of the fight you’re about to take part in. Where it gets more complicated is that you can bet against yourself and throw the fight. Where it gets even more complicated is that you might want to lose several fights in a row to increase the odds on you winning a big fight, which then lets you clean up at the bookies when you win.
But it’s not as simple as walking into the ring and letting your opponent knock the snot out of you... If the crowd think you’re throwing the fight you’ll wind up not only taking a pummelling to lose the match, you’ll get a damn good kicking afterwards and lose your stake money on the bet you placed on yourself. So the trick here is to lose convincingly, put up a bit of fight, perhaps knock your opponent down a few times and then lose by a believable margin. Tricky, huh?
And, to further complicate matters, when you bet is placed plays a factor in the odds you’ll get, too. Before each match you can not only select who you’re going to bet on but how far into the fight the bet will be placed. So you could bet on yourself to win and then take a pounding before coming back at the end and trouncing your opponent when the odds on you to win are better... or start off strong, make mince out of the guy and then, when the odds on him winning are long, your bet goes in against you and you take a dive to clean up... providing you’re convincing...
The actually mechanic for this in the game is to hold down the L shoulder button as you either take a hit or deliver one. If you’re getting thumped, tapping the L button as you get walloped let’s you take maximum damage as your guard is dropped. Holding L and belting your opponent sees them take no damage from your blows. The tricky part is to do this at the right time to have the fight looking as if it’s going in the direction you want. To help you gauge how well your acting is going there’s a con meter at the top of the screen and ideally you want to see a big ‘thumbs up’ at the end of the match which means you’ve conned the crowd and can walk off pocketing a hefty prize pot... if the fight ended the way you wanted.
