The Big Con (2021) is a game with some charming 90's aesthetics and clearly had a lot of passion put into it. so,, what even is it?

(story premise spoilers ahead)

essentially, you're a teenager named Alison (goes by Ali) who plays the trombone and lives alone with her mom in a "mom-and-daught" video store. every year, Ali goes to band camp to work towards her mom's dream of her getting into a prestigious arts university. however, the eve before she leaves, she learns her mom is being extorted by a gangster of sorts for approximately $97k, and if they can't pay it off, they're completely fucked and will be bought out by a chain video store. taking it upon herself to gather the funds, she takes to the streets and quickly meets a con artist named Ted, who claims he has the solution to her money problems and becomes a mentor of sorts teaching her how to pickpocket and get extra change out of cashiers and such. they set off on a cross country journey together to pull off a Big Con (holy shit !!!! title reference !!!) and go from locale to locale stealing and grifting their way into riches.

this is where we get into the gameplay. generally speaking, you'll enter a new area and be given a blanket goal, usually in the form of some money threshold to reach. achieve it, and you can talk to your partner and move on. essentially every npc can be pickpocketed, performed by holding down a button until the oscillating arrow lands in the shrinking zone on a pop-up UI. it's a simple, timing-based minigame that scales proportionally to the amount of money on the mark, but it gets old quickly thanks to how frequently you'll need to steal shit. to the game's credit, there is an accessibility option to completely disable the pickpocket minigame, though i never used it. you walk around, talk, and eavesdrop on people to gain information that is automatically added to your journal kept in your fanny pack. it tracks your goals, as well as exploitable characteristics of people that you can use to your advantage in conversation to con people out of their money. overheard someone's anniversary date and learn that their bags are sitting unattended in the lobby of the hotel? hop on over there and use the date as the combo for the luggage! shit like that, basically.

a lot of this sounds like it could be pretty cool and as though it may have a lot of depth, but in practice, i don't really think it does. after a while, the gameplay feels pretty one-note and almost pointless. it got to the point that it felt like i was wasting my time every time i actually engaged in the core mechanics, which isn't a good sign to me. although i felt it eventually devolved into chore territory, it's still a goofy little time. conversations take place on a very 90's background and Ali frequently makes jokes about literally everything that happens. is it hit or miss? yeah! is the game extremely camp? yeah! there's a fucking option in the settings to enable a laugh track. Ali frequently hallucinates a talking bedsheet-ghost (Rad Ghost) who constantly reminds her not to do drugs and functions as a hint system of sorts. that's a silly little concept! the story is predictable, yet it's strangely comforting with how dedicated it is to pulling off the vibe of a 90's teen adventure flick. it hits so many common narrative beats of the genre. there's a little bit of minorly gay content (wahoo!), and it's extremely casual and normalized, which makes me happy.

overall, this game is pretty silly and lighthearted. it's nothing too special, but if you're looking for a silly little 90's con movie-like experience without a deep plot, this could be a good fit. maybe i woulda enjoyed it a little more if i was actually alive and conscious during the 90's, but that's just like my fucking bad i guess. oops!

this game is very chill, and pretty cute! the characters are sweet, and there's some intersecting storylines that satisfied me reasonably with their resolutions. there's some pretty good worldbuilding from the dialogue of the customers and the newspaper at the start of each day that help fill out information about the world. yeah, you can know "vampires drink blood" from experiences with other media, but for different specifics about how werewolves work in this world and the interracial politics, it's a nice touch and i thought it was done well. it's a pretty relaxing experience overall, but it does get into some more 'gritty(?)' topics such as fantasy racism and minorly sexual discussions. the characters are expressive and the art looks decently nice, but the music is pretty lackluster and sometimes distracting. it's just a shuffle playlist of a bunch of chill tunes, so the vibes will sometimes be a little disjointed, such as when characters are having an argument. it's a little silly to have characters effectively yelling at each other while the music is going: mmmm yeahh im so chill im a chill non-memorable instrumental track,,

the drink making is nothing special at all. the drinks that you make based on requests do actually end up affecting the story (mostly just near the end of the game), but i felt like there were some times when there was no way i could reasonably figure out what drink someone wanted me to make. most of the time someone will flat out tell you the three ingredients involved, but there are also some times where someone will ask for a specific drink by name, and if you don't know how to make that, then you're basically shit outta luck. in some cases, not figuring out the correct drink will completely fuck over the storyline for that character, which i can totally get, but it also just feels kinda bad. there's also an endless mode where you just make drinks to people's specifications, but i played about two minutes of it before saying "nope, this is really boring and pointless" and stopping.

i did two playthroughs. for the first, i was just going along blind and trying to figure out all the drinks. for the second, i followed a guide to make sure i got everything right, and ended up with some better results plot-wise for some characters. although i have yet to play it (someday soon, i hope), i would feel remiss to not mention VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action (2016). i have no idea how the two compare, and i recognize that this game probably took a lot of inspiration from the former. i personally liked this game, but i can't say whether or not this game holds a candle to VA-11 Hall-A.

i have never really consumed any mikudia (miku media) or really any vocaloid music in general, but when i saw this get announced, i was so hype. this was essentially my reaction.

she's really funnnn!! she's got a very unique playstyle and it's really quite enjoyable to have another character on the roster that doesn't make my blood pressure way too high. this shit make me feel like im playin checkers! for a long time i would play this game with the sole purpose of doing the next most difficult thing i could. once i beat all the other characters and aria, i was like okay, now i guess i have to start practicing for an all characters run. but then, of course, the character i would need to practice the most would be aria, so then i'd just keep practicing aria forever and become really really sad.

miku is the cure!!! i haven't played this game in a good while (probably since around the time synchrony came out in EA) but it's so refreshing to play something new and fresh again in this game i love dearly. she's a little difficult to get used to, but essentially plays like an even more chaotic version of suzu, which is really fun. she's got her little leek and her outfits are so damn cute!!! i pick up leather armor and normally id be like oh wow,, yay,, 0.5 defense,,, but now im like yayy cute miku outfit!! the sounds she makes when you get hurt or die make me feel like i am the worst person on earth and i am so sorry miku,, im sorry i couldn't play better for you,,,

the music is really fun and fits the game pretty well! there's not really parity with what zones they're in, but i don't think it really matters. i have a minor gripe with some of the songs from a gameplay perspective, but it's just that: minor. a couple of the songs start without a solid downbeat rhythm and are semi quiet, so i feel a little frantic for the first bar or so, but you can totally still find the beat and leek the fuck outta skeletons and ghouls and shit. maybe this dlc made me into a miku fan?? idk. pretty fun stuff.

for just TWO (two) American MikuBucks™, Crypt of the NecroDancer: Hatsune Miku (2024) is a slammer jammer, and you should play it if you like CotN and are at least just a little partial to vocaloid tunes.