Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

It is said that the road to hell is paved with the best intentions. That maybe explains why the road to gaming mediocrity is littered with the relics of games with high ambitions and low production success. Unfortunately, TP:FoL is the latest addition...

I am a sucker for alternative history games (such as the exceptional WARFRONT and IRON STORM) so I really wanted to like TP:FoL. The story explores the repercussions of Winston Churchill actually getting killed when hit by a NY cab in 1931 (instead of surviving with a life-long limp). Consequently, England never prepares for the Nazi invasion and succumbs seven years later. But the Nazi are insatiable. After consolidating their European conquests, in 1953 they (together with their Japanese allies) invade the US. And this is our hero's moment to shine.

You fill the shoes of a blue collar worker who has fate drop on his head in the form of a German paratrooper. He kills him and grabs his weapon. The rest is up to you. From NYC to Washington, DC and from there on to London his place in history awaits him.

The weapons (from machine guns to tanks) are a mix of old and new. The new are reconstructions of late WWII prototypes that never had the chance to actually be developed. And that (together with the interesting background story) concludes this game's good points.

Controlling the above mentioned weapons is not an easy task, and the learning curve never seems to leave the ground. Every weapon handles differently - but not in any realistic (or even logical) way! Heavier weapons should be harder to aim, but exactly the opposite seems to be true.

Graphically, the game is still in...early beta. I am being overly generous! This is a First Person shooter - and yet every time your character uses a ladder, a Third Person perspective creeps in - ruining any immersion achieved. Your character can carry up to two guns - which, nevertheless, mysteriously disappear when the Third person perspective appears. Bad design, pure and simple.
Both the backgrounds and the environments as well as the explosions are well bellow par. And gore fans, be warned: no matter how many new holes you tore on the Nazi bodies, no blood will ever come out (no, there is no gore-toggle option, I checked). As to the bodies, they disappear a-la 1995 fashion...
And do not get me started on clipping and stuttering.

All in all, another overhyped game that fails to meet expectations.

I really had high hopes for this game. The plot looked good and the graphics looked good to. But after buying the game at least the idea is good. The graphics for the pc version are nothing to get excited about, there are no tweaking options except high, medium and low. Clearly this is a console port and thd PC version looks as if it needs patch out of the box. Some animations are just buggy and weird looking and it does not play smoothly at times. All in all its just a average shooter.

First off, I would like to say to all the people who gave this game 1 or 2 stars just because it doesn't have the best graphics, or perfect voice sync, or *gasp* blood and gore, you bloody well should have known better due to the fact that this game is rated T and does not mention gore, and the X1300/GeForce 6600 graphics card means no DX10.

Now then, about the game. It is your standard genre "go there and complete this objective" war game, which is what you would expect from a war game, having it to where you could go anywhere and do anything would make this more like Doom 3. You can only have 2 weapons at a time, and like in Halo, there are American weapons as well as German (Vampir!) varieties, each with their own pros and cons, such as the machine guns being great at close range but not so at long, which does help add in a bit of realism. Of course, you actually have 3 if you include the ability to turn a live enemy into a meat shield and use his pistol.

Controls are the standard WSAD + mouse arrangement you find in most FPSs now days, and they are remappable if you wish, or you can use the Xbox 360 Controller For Windows if you have it.

Graphics are not top of the line, but for those of us who know what a game really is, its story and not graphics (remember the classics Pac Man, Defender and Final Fantasy I all did it with 8-bits or less, and new classics such as Doom did it in DOS). However, the weapons you wield are surprisingly detailed. Also, you have to remember these original console games MUST meet certain requirements, and the Xbox 360 and PS3 are NOT the best in the graphics department, our computers can have 4-way SLI or Crossfire and a Creative X-Fi and 16gb of DDR3, but consoles cannot. Either way, they still do a wonderful job.

Music is wonderful, lets leave it at that. No MP3 folder so we can't listen to it separately.

Now, the other cons...well for one there is the Loading every so often, back from the console version, which can get annoying, but nothing so bad its detrimental. The 1024x728 res limit is more annoying, but not to much so. That's about it.

This is a wonderful game, sure it is not DirectX 10 with 7.1 surround sound, but great graphics and surround sound do not a great game make (Oblivion taught us that), it is the compelling, somewhat ironic story of an average joe defending his country which makes this a game worth playing. And like it says in the manual, "You won't find any body armor or health packs in this game - this is war!"

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 18 reviews  2.2 out of 5 stars