Liquid Swords has been open about the development difficulties it has encountered with Samson, its newly released open-world crime game that adds a roguelike spin to Grand Theft Auto’s loop of driving and fighting. The studio led by Just Cause creator Christofer Sundberg “laid off half the team” last year, forcing them to rework Samson from a more ambitious design into a leaner, meaner run-based experience.
Yet while these compromises may have helped Samson to the finish line, it doesn’t appear to have resulted in a more polished product. The game currently sits at a 53% Mixed rating on Steam, with the vast majority of negative opinions revolving around bugs and technical issues.
Article continues below
Watch On
The first patch arrived a day after launch, with Liquid Swords releasing a hotfix that addressed numerous issues with performance and crashes. It also added several systemic tweaks, such as adding fall damage to NPCs as a “failsafe”, though it’s not entirely clear what this is a failsafe for.
On Friday, Liquid Swords released a performance guide to help players get the most out of the game in its current state, and also issued a roadmap charting updates coming in the near future. This week will bring a second patch that focuses on “stability, gameplay, polish and continuous player feedback,” while another, as-yet unspecified patch will arrive on April 22.
For all the problems, Samson seems to have enjoyed a moderately successful launch, if the number of reviews it has are anything to go by. Players are clearly hankering for that open-city experience largely absent from gaming since the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, and the cut-down price of Samson probably helped too. Whether or not that will be enough to support the game long term remains to be seen, but Sundberg is adamant that “Samson is here to stay and we are not going anywhere.”
Read the full article here
