Samson's Review: A small, repetitive sandbox

When Samson: A Tyndalson Story was first revealed, you could tell right away that it wasn't going to compete with the likes Grand Theft Autodespite its premise of urban crime. It was being marketed as a more condensed, focused action adventure (one retailing for just $24.99 at launch) and I was more than ready for it. Like a lot of people, I got burned out on open-world extravaganzas, and a more apt take on the gritty urban crime genre seemed right up my alley.

I want to make it clear that my expectations for Samson they weren't unreasonable – I went in expecting a middling indie romp, hopefully with an engaging story and fun mechanics, but nothing too crazy. Unfortunately, now that I've rolled the credits in the game, I can say that my moderate expectations were not met in the slightest. If you like the games Hollow Knight and Clair Obscuro are inspiring stories about the potential of the independent scene, then we might think Samson as a cautionary tale: a reminder that not all underdogs make it to the top, sad as it may be to admit.

Although not entirely without its merits, Samson is ultimately a frustrating, hollow and unpleasant experience that I cannot recommend to anyone, regardless of personal taste. Its core gameplay loop wears thin almost immediately; his story, while barefoot, ranges from yawn-inducing to laughably bad; and its poor technical condition and confusing design choices only exacerbate these fatal flaws.

Samson is a small, repetitive sandbox

Samson begins with a very rudimentary animated prologue explaining how Samson has just been released from prison and how his sister Oonagh is being held by a rival gang for a $100,000 ransom. Samson must return home to the streets of Tyndalson, hook up with his old gang and engage in various criminal enterprises to earn enough money to free his sister. This informs the game loop: the player can choose from a selection of several tasks on the small map of Tyndalson, each of which will have a monetary reward and consume units of time, similar to Persona. You have to meet a certain dollar threshold each day, and higher paying missions usually take more time.

Here is where Samson runs into the first problems: the individual jobs have no real story or structure, consist of the same three tasks (racing, taking down other cars, and fist fighting), and worst of all, repeat. To be specific, this means that you will play several missions within the main campaign. And no, there are no gameplay differences between the missions, nor is there a scoring or reward system to incentivize better performance. It's hard to fully express how painfully overwhelming and boring it becomes.

It would be a little better if the current gameplay was rock solid, but it isn't. To the game's credit, the driving mechanics are decent and serious, and I probably had the most fun working on the Street Trials, which are basically super-technical time trials. Other car missions involve either racing to specific locations on the map or crashing into other vehicles to disable them. While the driving is fine, the aforementioned lack of variety means that once you've played one category of driving missions, you've effectively played them all.

Missions that don't revolve around driving revolve around fistfights. Technically, there are different types of “pawn” missions, but the ways in which they change the core gameplay of brawls are so small that they're barely worth mentioning. For example, the Jack missions are basically the same as the Battle-only Beatdown missions, but you have to collect various general items after or during the fight. The combat mechanics themselves are shallow and clumsy, often unresponsive, but you get used to them after a few hours. Sadly, it doesn't blossom into a satisfying and robust combat sandbox, just a workable one.

There is a common saying in the gaming community that is often applied to massive AAA open world games from developers like Bethesda and Ubisoft: “wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle”. SamsonThe map is so tiny that you'll remember it before long, but it has no content worth exploring, no secrets, no fun side quests, no gear or collectibles to grind. World Samson it is as wide and deep as a puddle.

The story doesn't come close to saving Samson

There are basically no cutscenes Samson: almost all of the story is conveyed through direct dialogue either in person or over the phone, without any cinematography, editing, or unique animations. If the narrative actually had any substance, it might be acceptable, but SamsonThe story looks like it was written in a single night. There are no stakes – Samson talks to Oonagh regularly on the phone and she never seems under any pressure or duress – and every line of dialogue is so generic that it can be hard to pay attention at times.

SamsonThe marketing suggests that Oonagh's ransom increases with each in-game day, but this is not true. You start with $100,000 in debt and have to make a minimum payment of $3,000 a day, an amount that will eventually increase to $3,400 but never go higher.

In addition to the jobs mentioned above Samson it also features 14 story missions, though these are largely unrelated to Oonagh's plot, making the overall narrative even more disjointed. These story missions focus on Samson's “crew”, a loosely defined organized crime group that's as cliche as you can imagine: they're all rough and no-nonsense, but of course, this is a “good” gang, not like other “bad” gangs that do evil and dishonest things. It all looks like a privileged teenager's idea of what organized crime is like – I can't even say it's a poor imitation of the likes GTA or Sleeping dogsas Samson it makes no attempt at playfulness, humor, or character building. In a game that is barren in terms of gameplay, a good story would go a long way, but SamsonThe writing doesn't even cross the competency bar.

World Samson it is as wide and deep as a puddle.

Samson is a flawed, poorly designed mess

Apart from everything else, Samson it has a myriad of different issues on the optimization and design fronts that further reduce the power the game could otherwise have. I encountered too many glitches to count, ranging from minor or amusing graphical quirks to mission-breaking crashes and bugs. For example, I still haven't been able to finish chapter 13 Samson due to a bug that prevented me from completing chapter 12. Fortunately, a completely unrelated glitch made chapter 14 available from the very beginning of the game, so I still witnessed Samsonpointless and anticlimactic finale.

There are a number of bad design choices Samson as well as if you fail a mission you lose all the money you've earned up until that point in the game day and you have to start the mission all over again to boot. Alternatively, you can spend one extra unit of time and start the mission again without losing money, but both of these outcomes are simply too punishing, especially when mission failures can be caused by glitches or other trivial factors like accidentally stepping outside the battle arena. There are a few other miscellaneous quirks like not being able to heal and hold a weapon at the same time, but I digress.

I'm not happy to criticize the studio's debut, but to belittle it Samsonbasic flaws would be to misrepresent it. I could say that you can enjoy the game if you temper your expectations, or that it will be improved once Liquid Swords fixes its devastating bugs, or even that there's a beating heart of passion beneath its repetitive gameplay and lackluster story, but the reality is that Samson is more than just a decent but flawed game. It's a dispassionate, joyless, derivative chore, and I wouldn't recommend playing it unless you're getting paid to do it.