In this new action title from the creators of Just Cause, you play a small-time crook dreaming of striking it rich. Samson’s setting strongly resembles GTA, but it costs just 25 euros. We reveal what this gangster game has to offer.
“It kind of looks like GTA—only with Jaime Lannister.” That’s roughly how the GameStar team reacted to the announcement of the action game Samson in late 2025. The Swedish studio Liquid Swords promises a wonderfully gritty gangster game in which we fight our way through a rundown U.S. metropolis as a small-time crook, clash with gangs and the police, and complete various driving missions in our car.
No wonder that, with such a setting, the game was quickly compared to Rockstar’s major open-world series. But until now, we didn’t quite know what to expect from the debut title of the Swedish studio Liquid Swords, a collective of former Just Cause developers. Because Samson isn’t a classic AAA project, but wasdeveloped by a significantly smaller team.
Naturally, this raised the question for us even before release: can the game actually deliver on its promises? After all, with MindsEye—the last challenger to Rockstar’s genre dominance—information was scarce before launch, yet the ambitions were enormous.
Just in time for the release, we were finally able to play Samson and will tell you whether we’re dealing with a minor GTA competitor or a flop à la MindsEye.
Out of Debt
But before we dive into the GTA comparisons, let’s first clarify what Samson is actually about. In the game, we take on the role of former getaway driver Samson McCray. After a job in St. Louis went horribly wrong, our former employers pinned the blame on us, and we ended up in prison.
To ensure our survival behind bars, our sister Oonagh struck a deal with the gangsters: After our release, she will remain in the villains’ custody as a hostage until we’ve paid off our debts. If we fail to do so, our sister faces a watery grave.
So we’ve returned to our old home of Tyndalston to scrape together the necessary funds for Oonagh’s release. Yes, the story premise can’t hold a candle to the scale of aRed Dead Redemption. But it serves its purpose: It clearly defines debt repayment as the game’s objective. And we’ve got plenty of that:Samson has to come up with a whopping $100,000.
Driving and Fighting
The missions in Samson follow predictable patterns. Sometimes we beat up a few dealers behind the nearest gas station, sometimes we return to our old job as a getaway driver, and sometimes we engage in a daring car chase with the police—we’ve seen this before in other gangster games like Driver and GTA.
The gameplay in Samson takes place either on foot or in a car, but is largely limited to fistfights or driving through the small open world of Tyndalston. With its city-island and several bridges, the map is somewhat reminiscent of New York, but clearly reveals the limited resources available during Samson’s development. After just about an hour, you’ve seen most corners of the map and are essentially driving in circles over and over again.
As a result, Samson offers significantlyless gameplay freedom than a modern GTA.But although the comparison is obvious, Samson doesn’t want to be exactly that at all. Before release, studio head Christofer Sundberg revealed that the team saw its niche in an audience not looking for open-world behemoths requiring 100 hours of playtime, but rather smaller, bite-sized experiences. Accordingly, Samson’s campaign is designed to keep you just over 10 hoursbusy.
Keep your eyes open when choosing missions
Completing missions costs our protagonist action points and creates an interesting unique selling point: Samson adds a sort of turn-based strategy concept to the simple life of a gangster.
We can’t complete more than three missions a day; after that, Samson has to rest—and pay off part of his debts. How we scrape together the money by evening is up to us; however, if we fail a mission, time marches on relentlessly and we lose action points anyway. We should therefore choose our moves with foresight.
There is no safety net or retries. Since Samson offers no way to manually save and load, we have to live with the consequences of our mission choices. If we don’t raise the necessary money, the debt collectors from St. Louis will be at the door the next day, and the mountain of debt to pay off will grow.
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Frustrating Controls
In addition to the friendly thugs from the collection agency, you can fight almost every character in Samson. Time and again, the developers had emphasized beforehand that the fights were meant to feel unfair and dirty. And they do—though mainlybecause of the clunky controls and confusing camera work.
When we get punched in the face for the fifth time because our character simply won’t dodge in the right direction or we don’t see the enemy coming up behind us, the frustration level skyrockets. Especially since our hard-earned cash is gone the moment we hit the ground. It doesn’t help to return to the scene later and take out the remaining thugs.
All too often in the game, we wish we had firearms to avoid the brawls and damage cars more quickly during car chases. But the developers of Samson have deliberately omitted exactly that—allegedly because it would make the game “too detached.”In combat against vehicles, our only option is ramming.
That’s not so easy, though. Because in Samson, the cars handle about as precisely as a brick. While we can usually get around corners with just a few scratches using the controller, with a mouse and keyboard we constantly crash into bridge piers. This often costs us crucial seconds, especially in racing and delivery missions.
AI and Other Pitfalls
Another sticking point that currently dampens the fun of playing Samson isthe erratic AI of police vehicles and other road users. This is because the behavior of law enforcement officers follows no predictable pattern. Either the police are completely oblivious to our traffic violations, or they relentlessly pursue us into even the narrowest side streets.
Or even better: Just when we think we’re safe, a police vehicle suddenly spawns right next to us and the chase begins anew. During chases, other road users do try to swerve realistically, but usually in the exact direction we’re trying to swerve ourselves. A bit more clarity would do the driver AI good.
The minimap would also benefit from more clarity. All too often, we find ourselves in tight dead ends because the map section is too small to show in advance that the road ends here. During races, the map also only displays the next waypoint, not the entire route. Combined with the sluggish controls, this regularly causes us to miss the right exit and end our mission in failure.
On the other hand, the car damage model is cool, as it takes into account the weight and speed of the vehicles involved. If we ram an enemy car in the side with Samson’s two-ton muscle car, the metal gets seriously bent. The cars can even be completely destroyed in the process. Unfortunately, the crashes only sound about as powerful as falling tin cans.
And of course, repairing our car costs money. At least in this regard, Samson is very consistent—after all, in life, you rarely get anything for free.
Back to the 90s
The fictional metropolis of Tyndalston is atmospherically brought to life in the game thanks to Unreal Engine 5. It’s wonderfully grimy everywhere; every street exudes the charm of a run-down mid-90s US East Coast city. Smartphones don’t exist yet; instead, graffiti, junkies, trash, and smashed windows await us everywhere.
However, the faces are a real letdown in terms of visuals. The supporting characters in particular look worse in Samson than they would in many a Madame Tussauds wax museum. And while our main character still has beautiful curly hair, little remains of the symmetrical facial features seen in the trailer in the final game. The resemblance to Jaime Lannister was probably a coincidence, as his actor, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, has nothing to do with Samson.
The Sum of His Problems
The sum of these minor quirks becomes a problem for Samson, as they relentlessly chip away at the game’s fun factor. A solid foundation is certainly present, thanks to the well-crafted mature atmosphere. After all, we constantly feel like we’re fighting a hopeless battle against a mountain of debt and the generally unfair nature of the world.
However, Samson keeps hitting us a bit too hard—and noticeably, not always on purpose.Because the game falters when it comes to basic mechanics: The clunky controls take the fun out of driving and fighting; overall, Samson feels very rough around the edges. The roguelite mechanic of consistently losing money upon death is well-intentioned, but in most cases it simply ends up being demotivating.
Considering Samson’s development history, it’s remarkable that the game made it to completion. After all, developer Liquid Swords had to lay off about half of its staff in early 2025. That makes me all the more happy to see Samson succeed in every way possible. After all, the game knows exactly what it wants to be—and what it doesn’t. However, this gangster adventure would have needed some fine-tuning to truly reach its full potential.
Editor’s Verdict
Samson isn’t the next GTA. Given the circumstances of its development, I didn’t approach Liquid Swords’ debut title with that expectation anyway. The team of former Just Cause developers delivers a clearly defined vision of a gangster game with a gritty 90s aesthetic, bringing interesting original ideas to the established genre through its turn-based strategy elements and the game’s robust vehicle damage model.
However, the controls—which could use some work—the repetitive mission design, and the AI, which is at times implausible and unpredictable, are currently causing frustration. Samson is certainly not a complete disaster on the scale of MindsEye. However, given its many rough edges, the game is likely to struggle to stand out from the crowd of open-world games. But if you’re just looking for an entertaining gangster story again, you can’t go too far wrong here for 25 euros.
