Hit or Miss
Samson is something else. When it was first revealed the internet immediately compared it to GTA6, because the internet as a whole is known for its kneejerk reactions to things and being wrong. As it was with Samson: A Tyndalston Story, the similarities really stop at the fact that the city of Tyndalston could very well be a stand-in for a dirty and gritty 90’s Liberty City. Samson has a solid team of developers at Liquid Swords, which I gotta say is probably one of the hardest developer names I have heard. Being led by Christofer Sundberg, the founder of Avalanche Studios and creator of the Just Cause series is some serious gaming cred. But Samson is something else, it’s a mid-budget, AA game that I can confirm is not GTA6, not in scale, polish or quality.
Samson: A Tyndalston Story puts players in the greasy hair and leather jacket of one, Samson McCray; who as earned a rep as a driver around town. He is given a shot at a job in St. Louis, but like most criminal enterprises the job goes south and Samson ends up doing time in jail. Samson’s sister ends up cutting a deal to save him from being shanked in jail for the failure. Now that Samson is free, he owes them the money that they missed out on in St. Louis, and thus begins the tale.
MSRP: $24.99
Platforms: PC
Price I’d Pay: $24.99
Samson will have to become a fixer for the city’s criminals by performing any odd-jobs that he can. Each of these reward the player with experience points and cash, just about all the cash will have to go back to the St. Louis bosses and the amount they demand changes every day. And just to ratchet up the stakes if players miss a few payments, they will get a visit from the debt collectors who are basically hired ‘leg breakers’ who are here to beat the snot out of Samson for not hitting the daily quota.
Each day Samson will get action points, six to start and more unlocking later on. Players will then have to decide which jobs to undertake from a small variety of them; Takedown jobs pay out well but require players to take a car down which will damage your own car. This becomes an issue because players will have to balance paying their debt and managing their car repairs. They can steal and use other cars around the city but none of them function like Samson’s own whip. But there are other job types, beatdowns are self-explanatory as they will task Samson with going to whoop some ass, but that’s about the time the game starts to fall apart.
Combat in Samson is notable for two reasons, the first is its solely melee focused. Players will use their fists, bats, bottles, bricks and more to pummel their foes. The other reason combat is notable is because it isn’t very good. Throwing fists feels more like button mashing and the repetitive and odd animations don’t help that feeling any. There is no sense of combos even though there is a light and heavy attack button, in fact the wind-up for the heavy attack makes it feel all but useless unless under perfect circumstances. Even using weapons felt like I was just waving around a pool noodle, as the enemies just weaved and brushed or parried my attacks. Samson also has a parry ability for all the good it does, we are a long way from Gotham City. At times the parry will work and interrupt a combo and allow for a follow-up attack but most of the time it just felt like I was wasting a button press.
The car combat felt much better in comparison which isn’t any surprise as these are some of the team members who made the highly underrated Mad Max game. Similarly for some reason Samson also calls his car the ‘Magnum Opus’, I’m guessing it’s just a nod to the Mad Max game as there isn’t really any connectivity tissue between the two games otherwise. The cars in Samson are not meant for leaning back and being seen, these are steel battering rams with better controls. Players can smash the sides of their cars into opponents, utilize NOS to gain high speed and slam into enemy cars all in hopes of demolishing their car before yours. I know I said the car combat was better and I meant it, but it is just as buggy. There were jobs that I was on were the car I had to takedown would not take any damage, another where the car just disappeared after a turn, just straight up ‘Houdini’ type magic, one minute it was there and the next it was gone.
The good news is that a lot of these bugs and issues have been patched, but that doesn’t mean Samson is out of the woods yet. The melee combat still feels awkward, there is still graphical pop-in and jagged edges but the team at Liquid Swords have stated they are in it for the long haul. Samson is built with some excellent bones; its gameplay loop is fun and engaging and its gritty story is good and can be knocked out in 10-12 hours. And it should be stated that Samson is a $25 game which in this economic nightmare is quite the steal even with the game being a bit rough around the edges. Yes, the game has issues, but with the team’s proven dedication in fixing these issues Samson continues to improve but players will have to endure some bumps on the road to ultimate success.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
