Samson: A Tyndalston Story review

There are some games that just seem to be made with your specific tastes in mind. As someone who loves a good gritty crime game with plenty of punching, Samson: A Tyndalston Story (hereafter referred to as Samson) caught my interest. Here is a game by a new studio with vets from Avalanche (behind Just Cause and Mad Max). This fits me like a glove, but now that I’ve completed Samson, I feel like this game is something I should like, but don’t as much as I should.

Samson puts you in the shoes of… well, Samson, as he makes his return to Tyndalston. Things went wrong on a job out in St. Louis, he ended up in jail, but even more unfortunately, his sister got involved. Now, she’s being held by the group that he screwed over in St. Louis, so it’s up to Samson to pay back his debt (each day at that) to get her back. He’ll have to do that with his old crew, who are having a lot of problems at the moment.

I’m having the hardest time explaining what occurs over the fourteen chapters, but it goes from extremely bland to a bunch of random plot points punching you in the face. The first half has such little world building that these characters don’t make an impact. I don’t even relate to Samson, the protagonist of this story, and his plight of a sister held hostage. The pacing is weird, to the point I’m curious if they pivoted mid-narrative writing or brought in a new writer. It makes me think of a B-tier cop show, but from the perspective of the criminal.

In the second half, I was simply mind-blown, and not in a good way. I’ll keep away from spoilers, but it goes from zero-to-sixty quickly. One second I’m investigating a hit on my crew, and the next a cult is involved. There’s also an ending twist that is both completely predictable yet out of left field. Whatever this story was trying to be, it did a bad job of it. This is compounded by subpar voice acting — Samson is fine, but everyone else is below average.

You’ll spend most of your time doing jobs in Tyndalston to earn cash to pay off your daily debt total, which falls into a few different categories. Getaways, Takedowns, Deliveries, and Street Trials will feature your car, while Shadows, Beatdowns, and Contracts, and Jacks have you exiting to get your hands dirty. These can get monotonous over time, with several of the same mission even repeating the longer you play. Heck, I did one Shadow mission a second time, and the person of interest wasn’t even changed. I don’t think the missions were as repetitive as they could be given the variety of types, but if you don’t blitz through the story like I did, it can easily get there.

Having a limit to what you can do each day does manage to raise the stress of Samson’s situation. You have a certain amount of action points to use each day (think time blocks), which makes you think as you look at how much each job will require. A job may pay well, but is it worth three action points? At first, I wasn’t sure how much I liked this system, but it grew on me as I progressed. Chapter missions are included in this, so the management of “how will I pay my sister’s daily debt but still be able to make headway in the story” keeps you honest.

While the gameplay is certainly better, it’s under-baked. It can be described as a mashup of Mad Max and Max Payne, sans the guns. The setting is wholly Payne-esque, an atmosphere we don’t have enough of in the gaming space. Alongside this, the more plodding, intentional nature of the gameplay gives serious Mad Max vibes, and considering some of Liquid Swords was behind that game, it makes a lot of sense.

As there are no guns in the game, you only have two options in how to approach missions – your car or your fists. Driving your car is the closest I’ve felt to playing Mad Max; this vehicle and the Magnum Opus handle comparably. Depending on the mission, you’ll be either trying to speed away quickly or destroy another vehicle Burnout style, and even though I’m generally not a big fan of driving-first games, here it works. You’ll have to keep an eye on your car’s condition, however, as taking too many hits can wreck it. This will cost you money, which is important for your end of the day debt you’re paying off.

Moving to the hand-to-hand combat, you’ll need a moment to get your head around the controls and the cadence of the fights. As soon as you do, you can take on a decent group, but you’ll still need to be careful. Samson isn’t a glass cannon, but he’s not immortal either. Measuring up a yard of bad guys and trying to engage with them one-on-one is best, as it allows you to track and quickly beat them up. I found my footing rapidly, learning to drop a few punches in fast and then go for the takedown once the prompt arrived. In conjunction with a perk that gave me health if I used a takedown, I often left brawls unscathed, meaning my painkiller health item stayed full.

Part of the problem with the combat is that it’s completely one-dimensional. Personally, I had fun being able to slam a posse of thugs, but it got to a point where it was too simple. Hit a guy three times, use the takedown. Rinse, repeat, if a guy is too big to do that to, throw a melee weapon at him to get a takedown prompt. Melee weapons are mostly useless as well; once you’ve learned the cadence I’ve written, you’re good to go. At least it feels satisfying to smash in an opponent’s face – they’ve captured a bar brawl digitally in fantastic fashion.

Something else they’ve captured well: the open world of Tyndalston. It’s not too large, more similar to a single district of a big game like Grand Theft Auto. That said, I appreciate the more compact nature of it, allowing you to enjoy Tyndalston without feeling overwhelmed by it. It’s a gorgeous city too, with plenty of gritty ambiance you’d expect from a rundown, northern city. I say northern as Tyndalston makes me think of a New Jersey factory town where everyone left as available jobs dropped off. Tyndalston is also struggling with drug trafficking, so it explains the harsh atmosphere.

What’s not as pretty lies on the streets – the NPCs. I’ve seen so many of them repeated, even watching two enemies that look identical approach me to fight. The character models are quite ugly, and while I could blame it on the drugs, I’ll just say some more diversity is needed. Two of your crew, Nate and Tommy, also have some of the most ridiculous bug eyes I’ve ever seen.

An interesting idea Samson brings to the table is its perks system, and it’s more than just a skill tree. The initial mechanic has you spending skill points to unlock extra buffs, alongside specific advantages. These somewhat remind me of Fallout, with perk benefits like doing greater damage with your car’s side swipes or 10% of your carried money being safe if you get knocked out during a mission.

The more intriguing part of the perks is your daily perks, where Samson randomly assigns one to you three times a day. What makes this system fun is how it influences your mission choices during the day – if I’m getting a monetary boost for doing a car job, I’m going to do that over a contract kill. If I get healing every time I defeat an enemy in a fight, it makes sense to choose a beat down over a car take down. It’s a cool feature.

Unfortunately, Samson follows up an uneven story and rough combat with a bunch of technical issues. NPCs would randomly levitate into the air. A main villain in a mission that I chased down and killed was just sitting at the first place I ran into him later on, spouting dialogue even though I couldn’t do anything to him. Prompts for takedowns and health bars on enemies disappeared occasionally.

My PC is top-end, but I still struggled to get the best visual quality and performance, having to settle for the best frame rate with muddy graphics or shiny graphics with choppy frame rate. There were spots where the frame rate still stuttered, usually when the game was loading several NPCs or vehicles. Maybe it’s an asset thing, but as a technical package, Samson is poorly optimized.

I don’t usually discuss price in my reviews, but for $24.99, this isn’t a bad buy. There are some good concepts, but the execution isn’t there yet. Maybe in time, with fixes and DLC, there can be some recovery for this game. I love the setting and the style of gameplay, so here’s hoping Liquid Swords get a chance to do it right.