Conscript Review

Making itself in the image of 90s survival horror, Conscript seeks to abstract the savage, mundane cruelty of war into a top-down, pixel-perfect imitation of a genre typically reserved for ghouls of a far more fantastical leaning. It liberally lifts and plucks from conventions and mainstays, the game’s solo developer Jordan Mochi unapologetic in his adoring pastiche, but Conscript is as much a game about what it doesn’t emulate from its forebearers as what it does– the good sense to know how to differentiate elevating it beyond simple homage.

Drafted into the idealised depictions of war propagated by the state, two French brothers have been separated by the devastating realities of World War 1. As the infamous Battle of Verdun crawls toward its guttural death rattle, André sets out to find his lost brother amid a snaking map of trenches, towns, and decimated countryside. In these compacted landscapes and play spaces, Conscript effortlessly transplants core genre loops from mansions and Midwest towns to war zones without sacrificing what makes either compelling, engaging, or horrifying.

Conscript’s art direction and tone work wonders for its war setting

It can do this because Mochi demonstrates a deep understanding of the clockwork precision required for a survival horror to tick, making Conscript a miserable slog (complimentary). With a sharp eye for history, the game’s depiction of WW1 is appropriately bleak, forgoing nationalistic revisionism for a relentless sense of dread and desperation. In a gorgeous bit of mechanical and thematic synchronicity, the limited inventory slots and esoteric pathing collide with the trench setting to form a game that moves with a familiar cadence but in a wholly new way.

So you find lighter fluid before the lighter and you know immediately the domino effect that will lead to burning those oil-soaked ropes that block the way to the east trench. A stray memo is pinned to a wall with a list of keys and who last had them (naturally there’s one with a unique crest to match its lock). A dying German is left to choke to death as you take his mask, unlocking new pathways previously inaccessible due to chemical weapon deployment. A new pistol is found in the fetid pile of corpses left to rot in a forgotten dump.

These more explicit systems almost always find an accord with Conscript’s overarching depiction of war, and the few that don’t feel earned by sheer force of genre sincerity. Resident Evil 4’s merchant has a new home in stray bunkers and safehouses here, our soldier can barter with spare cigarettes and gun parts for upgrades and items in an economy that feels just slightly too tight for its own good. But I’ll be damned if his jovial “Poilu” greeting and the game’s S-Tier save room music didn’t fill me with the kind of joy I typically reserve for Capcom’s finest.

In a different lifetime this was pushed to find a map in a statue

There’s a world in which Conscript plays to the cheap seats, pivoting its depictions of violence in war times into heightened abstractions or clumsy metaphors. Instead, it sinks further into the muck and mire, its escalating enemy types all simply…men, and the things they do. You’ll face down armoured brutes with spiked clubs, marksmen whose eyes track your awkward stamina-based rolls and sprints for cover, and so many fucking rats. Echoing the Crimson Heads of Resident Evil, if you don’t dispose of the bodies left in your wake, you’ll return to areas to find hordes of disease-carrying rats ready to make your life more of a Hell than it already was.

These rodents are one of Conscript’s few pain spots, pushing the game’s commitment to thematically appropriate mechanics beyond the point of compelling and into frustration. The rats themselves are weak and can be dispatched with a quick whack of your trusty trench shovel but given combat’s deliberate, glacial wind-ups and executions, the time between action and impact allows rats to run amok on your health bar, often inflicting an infection that halves your overall health. It’s unnecessarily punishing, but not in the considered way the rest of Conscript’s screw-turning feels.

Conscript’s combat is often tense, deliberate, and satisfying

Combat at a baseline is satisfyingly foul, full of sickening melee crunches and the *kthunk* of manually loaded shots slammed into a small arsenal of era-appropriate firearms. At its best, Conscript asks focus and cunning of the player, carefully scurrying between hiding spots or using tight corners to gain a fraction of a second on an enemy soldier, the difference between their head being bludgeoned or yours. There are instances though where the game overplays its hand, plunging you into lengthy gauntlets with waves of foes and the balanced tension of combat slips into stilted kiting sessions.   

These instances typically punctuate the game’s half-dozen chapters, times also reserved for playable memory sequences that spin an expected but satisfying tale of family and loss. Given the sombre subject matter, it’s remarkable how affecting the game can be through its stylised pixels, a technical art direction that lands somewhere between the PS1 and DS port of Resident Evil. It’s crunchy and polished in the right quantities to achieve a holistic aesthetic, dotted with full-screen, higher-resolution depictions of key items and significant moments. Interplayed is the game’s excellent use of light, which often illuminates corridors in otherwise black and claustraophic spaces. All the while the game’s score whines in subtle, infectious ways, making itself known when it wants to before slinking back into your subconscious, an everpresent and crucial component of the game’s tapestry.   

Final Thoughts

Pulled through muddy trenches and lands laced with scars, you’ll not emerge from Conscript’s surprisingly dense offering unmarked. Infusing the genre with the visual and thematic trappings of war stories gives the game an earned gravitas and perspective while allowing it to extrapolate and explore what survival-horror systems can accomplish with a little push. Its frustrations are rarely unintentional and its commitment to authenticity, mechanically and otherwise, is medal-worthy.

Conscript will drag you into the mud, but the exhausting fight out is worth it.

Reviewed on PlayStation 5 // Review code supplied by publisher

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