In some ways, Samson reminds me a little of 2025\u2019s MindsEye. That is, like MindsEye, it\u2019s regularly gorgeous, has some neat vehicles, and is intentionally narrower and far less GTA-adjacent in scope than it may look like at first blush. However, also like MindsEye, Samson is pretty bad. With extremely janky combat, predictable car chases, and a small pool of constantly repeating missions, this open-world driving-brawler hybrid became a dull and annoying slog long before I reached the end of my 12-hour stint with it. Worse, even though I\u2019ve cleared the mammoth $100,000 debt that drives Samson\u2019s daily grind of crime, a game-breaking bug has left me soft-locked out of actually finishing the main missions and rolling credits. It\u2019s as if this game doesn\u2019t want me to finish it properly any more than I do.<\/p>\n
Samson\u2019s setup is simple: you are ex-con Samson McCray, who\u2019s recently returned to his neighbourhood of Tyndalston. It\u2019s the 1990s, but disappointingly the choice of time period has virtually no impact besides forcing McCray to use payphones. There\u2019s certainly no \u201990s music on the car radios. In fact, there\u2019s no car radio at all, so there isn\u2019t even anywhere players could potentially mod or dump their own.<\/p>\n
McCray has a $100,000 debt being held over his head by an out-of-town crew using his sister as leverage, and must make daily payments to keep them both alive in the long-term. Parallel to this, there are 14 story missions involving some criminal rivals of McCray and his Tyndalston pals, of which Samson served me up seven before getting gummed up by some kind of bug that has prevented me from seeing the rest.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a finite amount of jobs you can take on per day, and the sense of urgency and pressure this places on your actions is quite compelling for a brief time. Before I grew weary with the general sloppiness of the brawling, the bugs, and the overall repetitiveness of the missions themselves, chipping away at the huge sum was an admittedly compulsive loop.<\/p>\n
Each day is broken up into three sections \u2013 afternoon, evening, and night \u2013 and you initially have six action points to devote to taking on missions that cost two or three apiece. You must complete jobs to scrape together enough cash to service your debt every single day, and if you come up short you\u2019ll be greeted by hired goons paid to pound it out of you the next morning.<\/p>\n
Allow me to note that I\u2019m well aware Samson is not exactly a big budget game and, on the Venn diagram of open-world action-driving games that operate on the fringe of Grand Theft Auto\u2019s turf, there admittedly isn\u2019t exactly a ton of crossover. At its core, Samson is really a straightforward open-world brawler with a basic driving component, and that\u2019s it. However, its narrow scope isn\u2019t its problem; the problem is how drastically unfinished and unrefined it all is.<\/p>\n
Make no mistake: Samson is regularly very good-looking. From the way the midday sun pierces into McCray\u2019s crumbling apartment, to the wafting steam emanating from manholes on the rain-slick streets, Samson\u2019s visuals have truly been wonderfully realised. Tyndalston itself is also a genuinely fascinating place to inspect, thanks to its remarkable level of detail. The world is better described as more of a single neighbourhood rather than a city on account of its small size, with the main part of town just a few blocks wide and flanked by two waterside industrial zones \u2013 plus there\u2019s a thin strip of freeway across a river accessible via several bridges. However, keeping it small has clearly allowed developer Liquid Swords to dress it with layers upon layers of credible urban grime. From the piles of garbage and stripped-down cars to the splashes of unique graffiti and hastily scrawled slogans, Tyndalston feels lived-in in a way that not all open-world games manage.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Samson\u2019s admirable aesthetics can\u2019t counteract the shonkiness of its combat, the dullness of its driving, or the dreariness of having to do the same missions over and over for no measurable payoff.<\/p>\n
Samson\u2019s strictly hand-to-hand brawling is clunky and graceless \u2013 and there\u2019s no firearm combat at all, which begs the question of whether this whole game might have been better off set in a different country altogether. Cops will occasionally fire on McCray, but they often forget they\u2019re armed. At one point I killed a man surrounded by police in the forecourt of a precinct, and not one of them thought to pull a pistol. Enemies appear to have very little environmental awareness, struggling with tight spaces and doorways, and getting hung up on props and clipping through parts of the world. Sometimes they just ignore your presence altogether.<\/p>\n
With no lock-on available, fights typically devolve into spamming McCray\u2019s light attack button and swinging the camera around as you swipe at the air trying to connect with opponents. There\u2019s also a slow and highly telegraphed heavy attack that lands with a pleasing-enough meaty crunch, but it\u2019s not something you can use much when surrounded by enemies.<\/p>\n
Combat isn\u2019t particularly responsive, either. For instance, staggered opponents will have a prompt appear above them for a finishing move \u2013 but getting this to trigger feels inconsistent. I often found myself simply spamming the button with no result, before subsequently giving up and windmilling another salvo of punches out ahead of McCray until his fists find some face flesh by accident.<\/p>\n
Extracting him from <\/em>combat is even more frustrating. Mashing the dodge button is effective enough, but his ability to actually sprint away is seemingly blocked when being swarmed by thugs \u2013 that means trying to turn and slowly jog in the opposite direction will just get you punched in the back of the head a bunch.<\/p>\n <\/p>\nSamson Screenshots<\/h3>\n