Ever since I watched it on opening night back in 2011, I’ve always wanted to play a video game that captured the essence of Nicolas Winding Refn’s masterpiece, Drive. The absolute effortless cool of Ryan Gosling’s unnamed getaway driver has yet to be replicated in any game I’ve played. Well, until now, that is, thanks to a… hoodie-wearing, down-on-his-luck, dad-looking dude in his mid-40s named “Samson McCray”.
Yeah, this is going to take some explaining.
Drive’s prologue is not a classic high-intensity getaway sequence. Instead, Gosling’s calm demeanour sees him drive two masked criminals through the streets of LA in such a casual manner that it pretty much distresses his on-edge passengers. Where most Hollywood drivers would be pedal-to-the-metal in an attempt to flee the scene, Gosling goes smooth to blend in with the traffic. By far his coolest move is to park up, cut the lights, and let the searching LAPD mistake his Chevrolet Impala for average Joe’s sedan. In this high-stakes escape situation, the most thrilling moment is when it comes to a complete standstill. And that’s exactly how I evaded the law during my first major escape in Samson, the GTA-ish debut from new developer Liquid Swords.
With a tap of the right bumper button you can cut your engine, hushing its cylinders and extinguishing the lights. When I first noticed this unusual addition to Samson’s otherwise traditional driving control scheme, my mind immediately replayed that moment from Drive. And so, when the blue and red lights lit up the streets of Tyndalston, a fictional New York analogue trapped in the grimy 1990s, I tried to escape Gosling-style. And it worked. I pulled into a side street, applied the brakes, cut the engine, and watched as the cops drove on by, ignoring my parked car in their search for something with squealing tyres. It was absolute magic. And I’ve never been able to properly replicate it since.
You see, Samson is a deeply flawed game – not so much rough around the edges, but rather rocky to its core. It is glitchy and repetitive and janky… so much so that I don’t know if the engine turn-off trick is a genuine feature that’s a little bit broken or simply a bug in the police’s AI routines. Liquid Swords’ founder and creative director, Christofer Sundberg, has admitted that Samson was released in a “flawed” state, and that the most game-breaking problems are “unacceptable”. And while I’m not here to champion games being released to the paying public in a broken state, I can’t deny that in this specific circumstance, a bug – if indeed it is a bug – created a remarkable moment that made me pleased this awkward urban open world made it to the finish line (which it very nearly didn’t).
Not everything that’s interesting about Samson is rooted in what may or may not be technical difficulties, though. After ditching his Impala in a parking garage, Drive’s protagonist gets back behind the wheel of his own car for the rest of the film: a 1973 Chevrolet Chevelle Malibu so gorgeous that Gosling now keeps it as part of his own personal collection. Its sleek lines and primer grey bodywork are as much a part of Gosling’s character as his scorpion jacket. Liquid Swords has taken a similar approach with Samson, who drives a stocky, roaring ‘70s muscle car that conveys McCray’s blunt criminal persona. Its heavy body, aftermarket roll cage, and nitrous oxide system make it the very best choice for chases, escapes, and high-speed takedowns – crime movie staples that form the vast majority of the work that Samson finds himself caught up in. If you need further convincing of its getaway credentials, the control scheme features a dedicated downshift button, immediately dropping the car into a lower gear to redline the revs and gain that sudden boost of torque that’s mandatory in any cinematic chase sequence.
You’re naturally driving Samson’s personal vehicle by default. It makes it your car. Just like Gosling had his Chevy in Drive.“
While Samson is undeniably influenced by GTA and other old-school urban crime hits like Driver, it plays very differently. As my colleague Jim Trinca has already pointed out, Samson uses a modified roguelite approach – each day you’re allocated six action points to spend on unlocking various jobs, and when you’ve spent all six, you head back to bed and wake up to a brand new day and a new batch of action points. Every time you exit your apartment to take on the new day, your car is waiting for you. Such a set-up means you’re naturally driving Samson’s personal vehicle by default. It makes it your car. Just like Gosling had his Chevy in Drive. Like Steve McQueen had his Mustang in Bullitt. Like Mel Gibson had his Falcon GT Coupe in Mad Max.
That last one’s perhaps more important to Samson than you may initially realise. Among Liquid Swords’ team members are several staff who worked on Avalanche’s Mad Max game, including the aforementioned Sundberg, plus designer Alex Williams and programmer Josef Sundberg. In terms of games that truly forge a bond between you and your car, few are better than Mad Max, and so it’s perhaps only natural that Samson is able to give you a genuine sense of ownership over your trusty getaway machine.
