Samson

I came into Samson genuinely excited, and I want to be straight with you: that excitement took some hits. Liquid Swords, the Swedish studio founded by ex-Just Cause and Mad Max developers, built something with a real identity here. A compact, 90s-set open-world where you play as Samson McCray, a man fresh out of prison, up to his neck in debt, with his sister Oonagh held as collateral. The hook that pulled me in is the day structure: each day divides into noon, evening, and night, and you get a limited pool of action points per period to spend on jobs. Miss your daily debt payment and collectors come for you the next day, racking up strikes. Three strikes and it is game over. That loop has genuine tension and is more thoughtful than most open-world mission structures. The jobs themselves cover the two pillars the game leans on: brawling and driving. On the fist-fighting side, Samson uses light attacks, heavy attacks, parries, and environmental weapons, with the world reacting dynamically to scraps. Fences crack, crates scatter, and you can hurl improvised weapons at enemies. When the animations are behaving, punches land with satisfying weight. There is also a four-path skill tree split across Instinct, Tactics, Aggression, and Cunning, and your choices matter in practical ways. Some skills earn you bonus action points for over-paying your debt; others soften the cash penalty when you get knocked out and lose everything in your pockets. Getting careless is punished in multiple directions at once, which keeps the loop from feeling passive. The driving side is where my racing brain perked up, and also where my patience took the most damage. The team's Mad Max pedigree shows in the vehicle physics ambition: each car handles differently, damage is calculated by weight and speed of impact, punctured tyres reduce grip, and broken wheels pull your steering. Car chases and takedown missions where you ram rivals off the road have a scrappy, cinematic feel that genuinely works when the AI cooperates. The problem is that it frequently does not. Pursuit cars loop endlessly around the city, freeze on nothing, or trap themselves against walls. Your own default vehicle, the fastest and easiest to control, breaks down quickly, and the repair mechanic sends you hunting for a mechanic in a far corner of the map. On top of that, the carjacking system is oddly restrictive: you cannot force a driver out, so if an area of the city has no empty parked cars nearby, you are essentially reloading. For a game that pitches driving as a core pillar, these friction points sting. Tyndalston itself is the quiet star. The 90s colour palette of greys and browns, the graffiti-tagged storefronts, the NPCs in heavy winter coats, the lack of any "nice" district in the city: it all hangs together into something with more atmosphere than games twice its scope. The story is leaner than the world deserves. Characters talk in crime-drama shorthand, and the side missions cycle through a narrow set of verbs. The studio did go through a significant restructure mid-development, which saw roughly half the team depart and ranged combat removed from an earlier design. The seams of that show. At launch, Steam user reviews sat at roughly 56% positive across over 1,500 reviews, and critics landed mostly in mixed territory, with a minority finding more to praise. The developer has been patching actively since day one, and things have improved, but technical roughness including stutters, enemy AI glitches, and graphical pop-in are still present as of writing. For the racing and driving crowd specifically: this is not a sim, not even a soft arcade racer. It is a brawler that uses cars as blunt instruments for chases, takedowns, and getaways. Wheel and pedal support is not a consideration here; a gamepad is the right tool and controller support is confirmed. Steam Deck owners should know the game runs poorly on Valve's handheld, well below playable frame rates even on lowest settings. Wait for more patches before attempting it there. If you have the patience to play through a game that has clear mechanical ambition but uneven execution, and you enjoy the idea of a tightly scoped, pressure-cooker crime story over a sprawling open world, there is something worth finding in Tyndalston. Just go in with both eyes open. Riley, Scout Team

Valve rates this game Steam Deck Unsupported. Playable on Linux with some workarounds. Based on 15 ProtonDB community reports.

Be the first to comment on Samson.