{"id":12381,"date":"2026-02-26T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T19:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/02\/26\/samson-a-tyndalston-story-plays-like-a-brawler-set-in-max-paynes-new-york-ign-fan-fest\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T19:30:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T19:30:00","slug":"samson-a-tyndalston-story-plays-like-a-brawler-set-in-max-paynes-new-york-ign-fan-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/02\/26\/samson-a-tyndalston-story-plays-like-a-brawler-set-in-max-paynes-new-york-ign-fan-fest\/","title":{"rendered":"Samson: A Tyndalston Story Plays Like a Brawler Set in Max Payne\u2019s New York \u2013 IGN Fan Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/section>\n

I first took notice of Samson: A Tyndalston Story when its team of former Just Cause and Mad Max developers posted a blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it teaser<\/u><\/a> of Tyndalston itself. The fictional city reminded me of GTA 3\u2019s Liberty City or Max Payne\u2019s New York. My first look at proper gameplay<\/u><\/a> in a demo with the creative director only upped my interest, and now that I\u2019ve had the chance to actually play Samson \u2013 albeit only for an all-too-brief hour \u2013 I\u2019m officially amped for this gritty, grimy, run-down brawler with pseudo-open world freedom where your heavy punch can drop bad guys in one bloody shot and you pop painkillers to stay in the fight.<\/p>\n

The setup for this 1990\u2019s-set crime story sees you as Samson McCray, fresh out of prison after eating a charge as a result of a robbery in St. Louis gone bad. Your sister, Oonagh, pulled some strings to help keep you safe while you were inside, and she cut a deal upon your release: you\u2019ve got to repay the money lost from the failed heist to people that will absolutely kill you both if you come even one cent short. <\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

What\u2019s important to make clear up front is that Samson is not a AAA game. You\u2019d be forgiven for thinking it was at first glance, because its Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals are quite impressive, both in terms of Samson\u2019s character model and the city of Tyndalston. Lighting has a very fluorescent-tinged yellow tint to it that you really had to live through the \u201890s to understand, vehicles look great, and the city itself looks very, very lived-in. But Samson doesn\u2019t have the scope of a AAA game, and that\u2019s not a complaint \u2013 it\u2019s just important to properly calibrate your expectations. The opening cutscene is not a full-blown cinematic but a voiced-over motion-comic, voice acting is so-so at best, and this isn\u2019t a 40+ hour open-world sandbox. You do plenty of driving around a neighborhood \u2013 perhaps more of Tyndalston unlocks the further into the story you progress \u2013 but this is not a massive playground full of chatty NPCs and side activities. <\/p>\n

I really like the choices that Samson makes within its more limited scope. <\/section>\n

Again, this isn\u2019t a complaint, but it\u2019s important to emphasize because when you first fire up Samson, it seems like it\u2019s following a very GTA-esque playbook. But I really like the choices that Samson makes within its more limited scope. For instance, there are numerous little things around the world to take note of and interact with, from notes and photos in your apartment to sandwich-board signs you can knock over with your car in order to gain small bursts of nitro boost.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

It gets better: there is a progression system. The more bad guys you beat up and the more missions you complete, the more XP you earn that gets redeemed for a point in one of four skills: Instinct (boosts your adrenaline), Tactics (health), Aggression (power), and Cunning (finesse). This allows you to tailor your Samson to your preferred playstyle, whether you\u2019d rather absorb and dish out maximum punishment in each fight or strike quickly and frequently in order to speed up the maxing out of your adrenaline meter, at which point you can click in both thumbsticks and enjoy a brief period of dealing extra damage. <\/p>\n

Gameplay segments are split into days, and within each day are afternoon, evening, and night. Every time the sun rises, you have to pay back a certain amount of your debt. In order to do that, you\u2019ll need to take various small jobs around Tyndalston. Fortunately, you\u2019ve got choices each day; it\u2019s not a linear mission structure. My first job involved finding the manager of a club called Chubb\u2019s and, well, beating the crap out of him. Naturally, it wasn\u2019t quite so simple. I had to worm my way through the bowels of the club first, fighting my way through his goons in the process. This mission functioned as a bit of a tutorial, allowing me to practice parries, dodges, light punches, heavy punches, and triggering my adrenaline meter after I\u2019d built up enough adrenaline during fights. <\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

It didn\u2019t hurt Samson\u2019s chances of me loving this game when the very first dude <\/em>I threw a heavy punch at dropped immediately, his face covered in his own blood. Most of the time in a game like this, guys can take an unrealistic number of hits. But not in Samson. Not everyone will hit the floor after a single punch, but the fact that it can happen not only made me feel like a badass, but it added to the underworld grittiness that is clearly oozing out of every square inch of Tyndalston.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back to the missions: as I was saying, you\u2019ve got choices at each segment of the day, but each choice takes a certain amount of time. Meaning, you can\u2019t just do a dozen jobs in a single day in order to quickly pay down your debt and break the game. Every job, realistically, takes time, so when I was, for example, shadowing Dave the Bookie, that took all afternoon of in-game time. First I had to drive to where Dave had last been seen. Then, once I\u2019d clocked him, I had to follow him from a safe distance (lest he recognize the tail and get spooked, triggering a mission failure) so that he\u2019d lead me to evidence of what he was suspected of by the people that I took the job from: that Dave was playing both sides. Sure enough, I caught Dave red-handed, and then I had to square up against Dave and his associates. By the time it was done and I got paid, the day moved to evening.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

Some jobs can only be taken at certain times of day. And some jobs will cost you money. Like when I had to take out the cars of two guys who were avoiding my temporary employer. First I drove to where they\u2019d last been seen, and then both cars came flying around the corner in front of me and the chase was on. The problem was, my car was already pretty beat up from the erratic driving I\u2019d been doing in previous jobs. So the first time I tried the mission, my pursuit led us to a freeway onramp, where I was able to get behind the closest of the two target cars, and then nitro-boost directly into his rear bumper, slamming his car into the curving wall of the onramp and taking it out. Problem was, the bumper boost also took my pre-battered car out, and by the time I\u2019d grabbed another car, the second of the two cars I was pursuing \u2013 who was already in front of me \u2013 had gotten away. <\/p>\n

The melee combat system feels heavy in a really good way.<\/section>\n

On the retry, I stopped at a gas station repair shop first, spent some of my hard-earned cash (which, I remind you, I needed every cent of to try and make my daily debt payment), and was then able to keep my car intact while taking out both of my four-wheeled targets. I got paid, and headed home for the evening. But who was waiting for me? Two debt collectors, and so before I could crash on my own couch for the night, I had to bloody my knuckles one more time.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Both combat and driving were a lot of fun in my one-hour hands-on. I have no idea if Samson will ever introduce guns into the mix, but I kinda hope it doesn\u2019t. The melee combat system feels heavy in a really good way, meaning that Samson takes shots just as hard as he dishes them out. I like the mix of punches, parries, and dodging. Sure, the Batman: Arkham combat arguably remains the brawler standard, but Samson\u2019s fisticuffs are slower and more deliberate in a way I quite enjoy. <\/p>\n

Driving, meanwhile, also has a welcome weight to it. All of the (fictional) cars in Samson are \u201890s era at the newest, given the \u201890s setting. Samson\u2019s own car is a \u201870s Chevelle-like two-door muscle car, and as such it\u2019s no light Lotus. Are these simulation-style driving physics? Absolutely not. You have the aforementioned nitro boosts and there\u2019s a side-slam button \u2013 and of course, the B button lets you pull off sick handbrake turns once you\u2019ve got some practice under your belt. By the end of my hour I had really started to get the hang of the driving and was eager to zip my way around Tyndalston some more. <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

As you can probably tell by now, I had a fantastic time in Tyndalston. If Samson can keep its mission variety fresh \u2013 which is no small thing, I recognize \u2013 it\u2019ll go a long way towards making its campaign enjoyable over the long haul, versus the extremely fun hour I had with it. I\u2019m curious to see if the city opens up more as the story unfolds, and I hope the story itself is engaging enough to keep me motivated to continue playing and isn\u2019t just \u201ckeep doing jobs to pay down your debt until a big climactic mission happens at the end.\u201d Samson is due out on April 8 for PC, so it won\u2019t be too long before we find out if it can keep up the good stuff it\u2019s got going for it.<\/p>\n

<\/section>\n

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, <\/em>Podcast Unlocked<\/a>, as well as our semi-retired interview show, <\/em>IGN Unfiltered<\/a>. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at <\/em>@DMC_Ryan<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I first took notice of Samson: A Tyndalston Story when its team of former Just Cause and Mad Max developers posted a blink-and-you\u2019ll-miss-it teaser of Tyndalston itself. The fictional city reminded me of GTA 3\u2019s Liberty City or Max Payne\u2019s New York. My first look at proper gameplay in a demo with the creative director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12382,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSamson: A Tyndalston Story Plays Like a Brawler Set in Max Payne\u2019s New York \u2013 IGN Fan Fest - Next Level News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Stay on top of the gaming world with Next Level News. 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