The open-world criminal action game feels a bit like a thing of the past in 2026.
Games like Grand Theft Auto, Saints Row, Mafia, and Sleeping Dogs routinely used to tell a fun story while allowing you to run roughshod across a fictional city with tight driving and shooting gameplay, but the prevalence of that style of game has died down in recent years. Enter Samson. Kind of.
From the original creator of Just Cause, Samson feels like an attempt to revive the vibe of these digestible crime-driven action games with some pretty cool ideas, but poor execution within makes it feel like not much more than a missed opportunity.
Wipe away the debt
I don't think it's quite accurate to compare Samson to a game like GTA directly, despite its parallels that gamers picked up on from the title's debut. This is a quicker and more condensed open-world action game, or as the devs describe it, one with "no padding and no filler." But unfortunately, that did not result in a better experience for me.
Samson is an ex-con fresh out of prison, a getaway driver who tried to bite off more than he could chew, and it took some big help from his sister to get him free. She's now being held by some bad people as collateral in return, however, and a mountain of debt stands between the siblings after a job gone wrong that landed him in jail in the first place.
Playing as Samson in the hard-knocks city of Tyndalston, the open-world game mostly amounts to an odd-job simulator with some unique time mechanics. Samson operates on a day-night cycle where every day is a race against the clock to earn money to pay off the debts and save your sister. But with $100,000 owed, you'll need to complete a gaggle of minor criminal tasks to make it happen.
Each job requires something called Action Points, and Samson only has so many of those to use on a daily basis. At the end of each day, there's a daily required payment towards your debt, and if it's not paid, then interest begins to accrue. It's a good lesson for life, but in video game form, it's just stressful and doesn’t add to the fun.
Waking up at noon every day, Samson has a number of paid crime jobs around the map to complete and earn money, plus XP to put towards skills and abilities. These jobs range from beating people up, delivering packages on time, being a getaway driver for random crimes, stealing things, or following people until you can beat them up. Other than a minor roguelike mechanic that gives different buffs depending on the time of day you do things, that's really about it. After just a few days in-game, you'll come across the vast majority of what most of the gameplay has to offer.
The second main character in Samson is the lead character's car, which is used as a battering ram and getaway vehicle, and is a general annoyance. For example, some missions require you to chase enemies in their cars and ram them until they're destroyed. But your car takes damage, too, and if it's totaled, you'll need to pay a hefty fee to get it repaired. And that money comes straight from your debt-repayment collection, so it's easy for things to snowball fast.
Outside of a ton of these menial jobs, there are also story missions that advance the plot, which ends up being nothing remarkable, if not sometimes entertaining. But due to the lack of time, Action Points, and money, you're often forced to choose between making cash to continue to make your payments or playing a story mission to keep the narrative moving.
The idea of the debt system and playing against the clock sounds way cooler than it actually is. Overall, I found it to be more of a hassle than anything. Your mileage may vary.
The third main character in the game is Tyndalston, the city Samson hails from. You can add more Action Points by finding points of interest around the city that will allow him to commentate on his surroundings, further fleshing out the downtrodden and crime-ridden town he's returned to. And it's this crimeworld where Samson resides.
When walking around the city, though, some dialogue options present themselves from random NPCs, kicking off side mission-like Stories. These are arguably my favorite parts of the game because they are what most make the city feel alive, but unfortunately, they can be easily missed if you're not actively seeking out people or scenes to interact with. In the end, I felt myself wanting more of this and less of the repetitive crime jobs around town.
Stalled out
While on your journey to pay off the huge amount of owed money, Samson's two main sources of gameplay are driving and hand-to-hand combat. Unfortunately, neither feels great nor much fun, with both liable to cause varying amounts of frustration throughout, including missions bugging out entirely for me on multiple discouraging occasions.
Driving in Samson feels really wonky, with the car handling being a real struggle (especially after it takes some damage), even after hours of practice. Samson's car is kind of a piece of shit, and having to repair it each time it takes too much damage makes certain missions feel like a slog to deal with, especially as it breaks down or stalls out mid-mission and forces you into failure and a waste of Action Points. If you have no money to repair it, it perpetually remains at around 10 percent health, making every high-speed chase or fast corner a total gamble.
The hand-to-hand combat is worse, though. It's buggy, clunky, and sometimes unresponsive, making for some truly annoying moments, especially as enemies surround you. Samson can perform a light attack and a strong attack, and he can also parry enemies, but there's no way to properly focus specific foes, and it just feels sloppy in comparison to the melee combat of better games that it's trying to emulate. It feels like it's trying to be like Batman Arkham's style of combat, but with a serious lack of polish.
Sometimes, while trying to fistfight enemies, they will clip into nearby vehicles or fences and teleport on top of them, leaving them out of range. There's no stickiness or weight to the general combat, and it feels borderline non-functional at times. Samson doesn't use guns at all, either. It's all about melee combat, which is mainly hand-to-hand, but he can sometimes find melee weapons. These don't feel much better than his fists, so there's little variety in combat encounters.
Tyndalston feels like a lot of missing potential, too. The open world is crafted well enough and looks really nice, but there's just not a ton to do in it outside of the game's main storyline that takes about 10 hours to complete, give or take, with some side quests and collectibles to seek out along the way. And it ends up lasting longer than that if you struggle to keep your money up and have to grind to be able to afford playing a story mission.
There's also a constant police presence in the city, and some of the decisions made throughout the story have repercussions in how the world reacts to you at points in the story. Otherwise, the only other enemies you have to fight along the way is the vehicle's unforgiving handling or buggy combat.
Failing a mission for whatever reason often means wasting that day's Action Points and likely missing out on money that you need to keep the payments flowing. It feels a little bit like real life at times if you've ever found yourself struggling to stay on top of bills. I don't really find that too fun on our real world Earth, let alone in Tyndalston.
I really wanted to enjoy Samson, and it's not entirely devoid of entertainment value, but there are just too many negative factors going against it. I could deal with the mounting pressure of the debt as a gameplay mechanic if it didn't mean sometimes sacrificing the plot’s momentum. It'd also be easier to digest if the driving was satisfying or if the hand-to-hand combat felt slick, or even if there was some more variety in the mission types, but the execution of nearly every feature in this game feels like a misfire.
The post Samson review – Highly concentrated yet disappointing criminality appeared first on Destructoid.
