Samson: A Botched Launch, a Redemptive Patch — Full Review

A Small-Time Criminal with Big Ambitions

Liquid Swords is the studio founded by Christofer Sundberg, the mind behind the Just Cause franchise at Avalanche. Needless to say, the hype surrounding Samson was significant. We expected an open-world action game rooted in the gritty realism of street crime, far removed from superheroes and fantasy worlds. The pitch: play a small-time hood climbing the ranks of the underworld, no safety net and no superpowers. A game about risk management, social survival, personal ambition. On paper, it's exactly the kind of concept PC's library has been missing.

So when Samson finally launched, we jumped in. And we were let down — not because of the ideas, but because of the game's catastrophic technical state on day one. Progression bugs, corrupted saves, scripts refusing to trigger. Sundberg himself called the launch state "unacceptable." That's rare, and it deserves acknowledgment — but it doesn't change the fact that a huge portion of day-one players suffered a crippled experience. This review is based on the launch version, with mention of announced fixes.

Technical Specifications and Configuration

Samson runs on PC exclusively at the time of this review. Liquid Swords' proprietary engine handles dense urban environments with advanced object physics and an ambitious NPC simulation system. On a mid-range setup (RTX 3070, Ryzen 5 5600X, 16GB RAM), the game runs around 55-65 fps at 1080p on high settings. A few occasional dips in heavily populated areas, but nothing deal-breaking on pure performance. The real problem isn't the framerate — it's the code.

First Impressions: When the Concept Works

Let's get the good part out of the way: when Samson works, it's captivating. You play a character at the bottom of the criminal ladder in a fictional industrial city, and must navigate a multilayered reputation system. Every action leaves a mark: assault someone in a busy alley and you risk being recognized by witnesses who could rat you out to cops or rival gangs. Botch a job for a local boss and you're locked out of opportunities for weeks in-game.

The progression feels like a blend of the early hours of GTA San Andreas mixed with the social tension of a grounded Disco Elysium with more action. The dialogue is written with real care — characters talk like people who grew up on the streets, not like gangster movie archetypes. Side missions reveal endearing or downright repugnant profiles, and the game never judges outright. It's up to you to decide how far you'll go to climb.

The hand-to-hand combat system deserves special mention. Inspired by old-school beat-em-ups, it relies on timing your blocks and counters rather than button-mashing. Think Sleeping Dogs, less fluid but more vicious. Every brawl has weight, every mistake costs you. It's satisfying when it works. And that's where the bugs come in.

The Bugs: From Cosmetic to Game-Breaking

It would be dishonest to gloss over this. Samson at launch is a minefield. We personally documented four distinct types of malfunctions over our thirty-hour test session.

First tier: cosmetic bugs. NPCs whose walk animations desynchronize, textures popping visibly, shadows flickering in certain interiors. Annoying, not catastrophic.

Second tier: gameplay bugs. Doors that won't open after triggering a script, enemies freezing mid-fight, mission objectives not updating even after completing the required action. We had to restart three entire sequences because of these glitches.

Third tier, the worst: save file corruption. Samson offers, at launch, only a single automatic save slot. Which means if a bug corrupts that one file, you start from scratch. Several players lost between six and fifteen hours of progress. The promised patch will add multiple saves — something that should've been there from day one, full stop.

Fourth tier: hard crashes. Rare, but present. Two desktop crashes in thirty hours, always under the same conditions (large crowds plus simultaneous scripted events). Liquid Swords confirmed they've identified the causes.

Art Direction and Sound Design

Where Samson redeems itself is art direction. The city — never explicitly named, somewhere between the Balkans and an industrial Eastern European metropolis — is visually cohesive and oppressive. Poor neighborhoods reek of wet concrete through the screen: decaying postwar apartment blocks, dingy covered markets, neon-lit streets hawking cheap Chinese goods. The aesthetic deliberately sidesteps Hollywood gangster fantasy to land on something banal, plausible, quotidian.

The color palette leans into cold tones, blue-grays, with flashes of yellow and orange signaling danger zones or opportunity. This isn't a game trying to be beautiful — it's trying to be true. And it succeeds on that front.

The soundtrack backs this approach with intelligence. No heroic fanfare. Dense urban soundscapes, radio chatter in the background, diegetic music spilling from bars and cars. The combat sound design is particularly meticulous: punches hurt to hear, broken bottles have precise acoustics, gravel footsteps sound different from asphalt ones. These details create the kind of immersion the bugs then shatter.

Content and Playtime

Samson's main campaign runs twelve to fifteen hours depending on your approach. That's short for the asking price — but side quests, if you treat them seriously, can easily double it. The problem is some of those side quests are precisely the ones suffering most from launch script bugs.

The open world is medium-sized, deliberately compact. No continent to cross: three distinct neighborhoods, each with factions, codes, and opportunities. This tightness is a deliberate choice favoring density over sprawl. You'll find varied side activities: goods trafficking, illegal betting, legitimate gigs as cover, recruiting contacts. The game encourages replays via an alternate-ending system based on your alliances.

A New Game+ mode is planned in a later update. As it stands, replay value is limited but real for those wanting to explore narrative branches. The real obstacle to good longevity is trusting the game won't sabotage your progress — a problem the patch should significantly ease.

Strengths

• + A strong, coherent concept, rare in the open-world action landscape
• + Art direction that's genuine, avoiding every gangster-flick cliché
• + Character writing and dialogue above genre standard
• + Multilayered reputation system that gives weight to every action
• + Brutal, satisfying hand-to-hand combat when it works
• + Immersive, carefully crafted sound design
• + Transparent studio, responsive post-launch

Weaknesses

• − Launched in an unacceptable technical state, as the studio itself admits
• − Single save slot on day one — an unforgivable fail in 2025
• − Progression bugs that break entire sequences with no workaround
• − Main campaign too short for the asking price
• − Some framerate dips in dense areas
• − Uneven side content, some secondary quests feel rushed

Verdict: Potential Wasted by a Careless Launch

Samson is a game that deserved better than what it received at launch. Liquid Swords clearly has ideas, a world, a vision. The concept of a small-time hood navigating a hostile environment without superpowers or easy morality is well-executed when the code cooperates. And Christofer Sundberg's public acknowledgment of the unacceptable launch state shows a studio not hiding behind marketing spin.

But a game is judged — above all — on what players get when they pay for it. And on that day, Samson served up corrupted saves, broken missions, and lost progress. That's a betrayal of trust, regardless of how good the patch that follows turns out to be.

The score below reflects the game as it exists at review time, with real upside if announced fixes deliver. If you have the patience to wait a few weeks for the studio to stabilize things, Samson could well become one of the year's PC surprises. As it stands, it's a rough diamond cut too fast.