Liquid Swords continue to chip away at the biggest issues Samson, their bitesize tale of a small-time crim pulling jobs to gradually remove the debt albatross from his neck, has faced since it launched the other week in a state the ranged from harmlessly quirky to frustratingly broken. The second of these patches picks up the first‘s problem-eliminating baton, but also sees the devs start to make some more in-depth tweaks to mechanics that work fine, but leave a bit to be desired.
For example, patch two makes street trials – a type of job which tasks you with racing your motor around loops of city streets against the clock – cost one less action point. Previously, most of them cost two, meaning they took up a whole afternoon, evening, or night of in-game time, as all but the highest paying of Samson’s minor gigs do. That means, in addition to making them less punishing in an effort to more players not to shirk them in favour of other ways of making money, street trials are now an option if you find yourself with a single action point left at the end of the day.
I found myself in that situation a fair amount during my time with the game, due to the fact most of the game’s missions consume three of your six daily action points and a single action point’s also expended every time you need to restart any job you’re on. So, it’s fairly easy to end up with a pesky single point left over and nothing to use it on, since two points was the lowest entry point to gigs up until now.
I’m also glad to see Samson now starts up cars with a bit more urgency, rather than getting going in a leisurely fashion that can be very frustrating when you’re up against a time limit. That’s far from the end to the car tweaks, which include the removal of “damage taken on undercarriage impacts on your vehicle while driving”, which the devs wrote is “a first step toward improving overall vehicle gameplay balance”. Meanwhile, escaping from the pursuits which end up with the both police and gangs on your tail over the same crime now have a reduced escape time for remaining groups if you manage to start the ball rolling by losing one.
Beyond that, some extra tutorials have been added for hand-to-hand fights and side-swiping on the road. In terms of fixes, one which has “fixed a serious issue in the Volkov mission where the mission could fail if Volkov became aggressive before the dialogue could start” initially had me optimistic that my most recent playthrough might no longer be softlocked on such a mission. I’ve not had a chance to properly check, but on just loading up my latest save to see where I’m at, I found Samson trapped in a shipping container he can’t get out of. Reloading the save again freed him from this prison, but I still fear I may be best off starting a new playthrough rather than praying this previously busted one’s now been unbusted by the patch.
