'Samson' has been released. I was a bit confused about whether to pronounce it 'Samson' or 'Samson' (in Korean), but given that the protagonist is a natural-born brawler who constantly gets into all sorts of trouble, I’ll stick with the biblical 'Samson.'
In any case, Samson was created by the Swedish game developer Liquid Swords. The studio’s slogan is quite unique: 'Zero Nonsense Development.' To put it simply, it’s a form of 'anti-AAA' philosophy—the idea of cutting away all the superfluous elements that only inflate development costs and focusing entirely on distilling and delivering the core essence and experience of the game.
The process is just as compelling. By minimizing unnecessary crunch and over-development, a small team focuses on quality. The founder, Christofer Sundberg, is a co-founder of Avalanche Studios and a veteran who made his name with the Just Cause series and Mad Max.
An open-world action game developed by an 'anti-AAA' studio founded by a veteran who built massive open-world games. A game made with a generous budget from NetEase, excluding crunch and unnecessary processes to focus solely on the 'essential elements.'
Let’s take a look at what kind of game 'Samson' really is.
When You Remove the 'Focus' from 'Selection and Focus'
The setting of Samson is a small slum in the sprawling metropolis of Tindalston. The protagonist, Samson McCray, is a street thug and professional getaway driver who ends up in deep debt to a criminal organization after a heist goes horribly wrong. Just as his life is about to end, his younger sister voluntarily offers herself as a hostage, buying him a stay of execution. The story of Samson begins as he starts a hand-to-mouth existence, working day by day to pay off his debt and save both his sister and himself.
As the narrative start suggests, 'Samson' is an open-world action game driven by pressure. In many open-world games, the moment you finish the tutorial and step into the world, you feel a pleasant sense of bewilderment: 'What should I do now?' There are so many activities scattered across a vast map, usually guided by a main narrative. That is the standard design for open-world games.
Samson, however, starts 'trapped in debt.' The game day is divided into three parts: lunch, dinner, and night. For Samson, a nocturnal creature who rivals any hardcore gamer, there is no morning. Players must fill this three-part timetable with their own criminal plans; otherwise, the loan sharks will come knocking.
And in this process, Samson does only two things: fight and drive.
The game design of 'Samson' is, as the developer’s ambition suggests, extremely compressed. The flow is as follows: wake up, take a call, and accept a survival-based crime job. Then, go to the location during lunch, dinner, or night to commit the crime and earn money. At the end of each day, your criminal earnings are collected—because the protagonist is a debtor.
In this process, there is nothing else besides fighting and driving. There is no content for buying clothes, changing hairstyles, quirky side characters, or side quests. You just wake up, commit crimes three times a day like taking medicine, return to your trash-heap home, and sleep on the couch. That is Samson’s daily routine.
In a way, you could call it extreme selection and focus. The problem is that even that 'focus' wasn't executed properly.
Surprisingly, even though fighting and driving are the core of the game, the quality and feel of the hand-to-hand combat and driving are quite poor. There is no lock-on system, so you have to manually align the direction the character is facing, and the punching animations are clumsy. For some reason, the heavy attack animation length varies; sometimes it takes an eternity to throw a single punch as if you're winding up for a punch machine. Of course, you don't have to worry about the enemies, as they just stand there stupidly watching your fist fly toward them.
'Driving' is the same. As I will mention later, the map in Samson is tiny, filled with winding alleys, dead ends, and dirt roads that seem to serve no purpose. You can't even dream of flooring the gas on a wide, straight road, and since you often have to make turns of 90 degrees or more, you have to be careful with every steering input. Even I, who performed all sorts of stunt driving in GTA 5 and usually take the wheel in open-world multiplayer games, found the driving in this game anything but easy.
The problem with 'Samson' starts here. It’s a game design with extreme selection and focus, but it turns out they only did the selection and failed the focus. So, what is the fun in playing this game now?
An Open-World Smaller Than My Apartment Complex
Fortunately, 'Samson' still has an 'open world.' The reason 'open world' is emphasized in such games is that, depending on how the world is designed, the world itself becomes the fun and the content.
The main stage, the Tyndallston slum, is a high-crime area. Since such streets don't really exist in Korea, you'd have to go abroad to experience this atmosphere. Based on places I've been, it feels roughly like 'Skid Row' in downtown LA or Oakland in the Bay Area.
However, the mayor of Tyndallston in the game must be a truly diligent public servant. The reason is that this 'slum' is incredibly small. The distant view of the city looks like a fairly large metropolis, so if the slum is only this small, most of the city's residents must be enjoying a very peaceful environment with excellent security.
To put it more realistically, the entire open world feels smaller than the apartment complex where my parents live in Guwol-dong, Incheon. Of course, that complex is on the larger side, but still. It takes less than a minute to drive around the map, and the roads connecting everything are all alleys. The kind of small alleys where you follow the navigation, turn in, and instinctively think, 'Did I take a wrong turn?' There is a little bit of terrain outside the main areas, but there’s nothing important there. The slum that serves as the game's stage is just small.
The bigger problem is that there isn't really any content in this small map. The only structures are four or five auto shops where you can repair your car or refill your nitro boost; the rest is just a stage for the daily, survival-based crimes Samson commits three times a day.
As a result, even if you play for only about three game days, you keep visiting the 'places you've already been.' This afternoon, I beat up some thugs in Building 201, tonight I helped a criminal escape from Building 202, and tomorrow afternoon... wait, Building 201 again? Is crime being copied and pasted?
There is another reason why this 'small map' is bothersome. As mentioned earlier, one of the main pieces of content in Samson is 'driving.' I’m not asking for wild racing or road races, but there should at least be the thrill of shaking off the police during a chase. Instead, the chases in Samson are suffocating in a different way. It feels like the pressure of driving a car into the middle of a traditional market on a market day. If you imagine the police chasing you with sirens blaring in that situation, you might understand.
While reviewing open-world games, I think I’ve often used the phrase 'an open world that is just wide and empty' when talking about games that lack polish. I reflect on my past self. Still, being wide is better than being an open world that is narrow and empty.
All That's Left Is Unreal 5 Graphics and Noir Sentiment
Ultimately, there isn't much left in 'Samson.' Just the protagonist 'Samson,' who has a face that looks like he has a story to tell for a career criminal, and the plausible narrative and urban noir atmosphere.
Personally, I had high expectations for 'Samson.' While sword-swinging and gun-shooting action have their own appeal, hand-to-hand action where you fight with fists and knees has its own unique flavor. And, as they say, it is true that the recent trend in games is to start with a 'mixed-bag' approach. When selection and focus are done properly, the charm of that selection and the catharsis provided by the depth of that focus are feelings rarely found in recent games.
However, 'Samson' failed to meet expectations in every way. I think Samson is a stark example of how unsightly a game can become when you make a selection but fail to focus.
On the other hand, it is also a pity. Liquid Swords' slogan was 'to cut out unnecessary procedures and reduce crunch.' The problem of overwork in the game industry is a chronic disease that always stands out like a wart, and discussions on solutions to reduce it are happening even at this very moment.
If 'Samson' had shown a level of quality that everyone could nod at, it would have provided one more piece of evidence for the unnecessary nature of crunch. But now that the game has turned out this way, the future has become uncertain. Much like the future of Samson, who is struggling under a mountain of debt.
- Rough urban noir atmosphere and visuals
- Plausible narrative structure and direction
- Affordable price
- Selected, but failed to focus
- Extremely clumsy finishing touches
- An open world that is too narrow and has nothing to do
Review Platform: PC (Launch Build)
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