Samson Review: The Poor Man's GTA 6 That Misses the Mark
With Grand Theft Auto 6 still months away from release, a new indie studio formed by veterans of the Just Cause franchise has attempted to present a lower budget alternative. The question of why there are no GTA clones anymore remains puzzling. Few publishers have the financial resources to compete directly with Rockstar Games, but not only are there now very few open world games set in the real world, there are also bafflingly few of any kind with a criminal setting.
You do not have to be a gigantic open world, live service juggernaut to copy GTA; just a simple, smaller scale crime thriller would suffice. Samson is exactly the sort of game we would have expected to see in droves in the lead-up to GTA 6's release. It is an obviously lower budget indie game that still has the same mix of fighting, driving, and general gangster activities as Rockstar's titles.
A Promising Setup That Quickly Unravels
Samson is set in the peculiarly named city of Tyndalston and revolves around the titular protagonist, who has just been released from prison and is trying to raise $100,000 to pay the ransom for his kidnapped sister. Naturally, this does not involve any bank loans, or at least not any voluntary ones, as you are forced to put your old criminal gang back together and commit enough crimes to earn the money.
That is not a bad setup for a video game, since it gives you a great deal of freedom in what exactly you try to do and where. As long as you get the money, it does not matter from where, although every job you take uses up a certain amount of time before your deadline, and your sister, expires. Also, if you fail a mission, you either lose the majority of the money you have earned that day or you have to give up more time to restart the mission.
Repetitive Gameplay and Limited Mechanics
At this point, you might imagine an enjoyably varied range of criminal activities, of which GTA itself provides plentiful examples. Unfortunately, that is not the case. All missions involve just two activities: car racing and street fighting, since there is essentially no ranged combat. The small number of variables constantly repeat, with each job blurring into the next, as most of them do not have any story elements or distinguishing features.
If there is a break for some storytelling, like talking to your sister on the phone, it is always very brief and never in an orchestrated cut scene – you just watch Samson walk and interact as normal while a few lines of cliched dialogue play out. To be fair, the car racing is okay. It is not the sort of thing you would build an entire game around but it is not much worse than GTA in that respect.
The game does not do anything interesting with the mechanics though, with racing missions boiling down to nothing more than time trials, driving to a specific spot on the map, or ramming an opponent off the road, Chase H.Q. style. This represents the best action in the game but the fact that your car breaks down very easily, and has to then undergo costly repairs, is a chore. Especially as you cannot carjack passing cars, like you would in GTA.
Technical Issues and Poor Execution
There are far less to distinguish the different types of fighting missions and while you might sometimes have to collect an item or two, they are all just mass brawls that we suspect the developer intended to work like Yakuza but are far too simplistic and unsatisfying for that. There are a dozen or so predetermined story missions but weirdly these have nothing to do with your sister and instead revolve around the collection of one-dimensional thugs that make up your gang.
Needless to say, Rockstar's writers and designers have nothing to fear. Given all these problems, it almost feels like kicking someone when they are down to point out just how badly the game runs at launch. Samson is filled with graphical glitches and hiccups, including getting stuck in scenery and levitating above the ground – which happens to both you and other characters.
On top of that, the game is prone to a hard crash back to the desktop where, to be honest, you are better off remaining. Although this is the first game from developer Liquid Swords, the studio was formed by many of the same people behind the Just Cause series, but that does not show at all. A low budget and a rush to meet the release date are probably the main causes of the problems, and exactly the opposite ones facing GTA 6.
Final Verdict and Summary
As much as you might have sympathy for the developer, this is a terrible game and fixing the technical complaints is not going to change that. In short, Samson is a failed attempt to make a lower budget GTA clone that squanders a promising setup with repetitive, poorly orchestrated action and an embarrassing script.
Pros: The graphics are not bad and the car racing is okay. Good music.
Cons: Tiny open world with horribly repetitive missions. The melee combat is awful and so is the script, with not a single interesting character. Filled with bugs and glitches and the punishments for failing a mission are far too harsh.
Score: 2/10
Formats: PC
Price: £20.99
Publisher: Liquid Swords
Developer: Liquid Swords
Release Date: 8th April 2026
Age Rating: N/A
