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Imagine Churchill died in 1931. World War II still happened but without the gutsy, legendary icon of Churchill behind the British fight back, the United Kingdom fell to the Nazis in 1940 and in 1953 the Third Reich invaded the US. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty places you at the exact point in that alternate future and poses the question of what if the above occurred. Spark Unlimited, the guys behind Call of Duty: Finest Hour return after four years of developer silence with Turning Point and wish to offer an alternate look into the past. The question posed; does Turning Point turn heads or does it surrender to the bargain bin?
On paper, Turning Point sounds like the bees knees. An intricately weaved alternate history with its own characters, events and settings. Unique weapons and warfare vehicles and a harrowing look at a past that could have realistically happened. The game doesn’t hold back and throws the player right into the action, granting control of the lead character, Dan Carson. Carson is the typical everyman, a construction worker in the up-and-coming city of New York. Peering out over the multitudes of people from scaffolding high in the air, your peaceful day is rudely interrupted by the invasion of the US. Following an opening cinematic, you’re thrown into the thick of the invasion, and have to retreat down a collapsing skyscraper along a pre-determined path to safety. Planes fly overhead, explosions rip through buildings and any choice of secondary pathing is cut off by falling girders. As the German Airborne parachute into your lap, you grapple with one, throwing him to his death and pick up the iconic MP40.  Then relax and turn off your console. The opening level is exhilarating and gets your adrenaline seriously pumping. Sadly this is as good as it gets and it’s a shame that there are more levels to Turning Point. The opening experience is of the highest quality and it is where Turning Point is at its graphical best. From then onwards we revert back to 2004 and Spark Unlimited’s last title. A romp through linear, narrow corridors shooting idiotic goon after goon while single handily saving the world from the evils of Germany. It’s not new, but technically neither is Call of Duty 4. Unlike its warfare rival, Turning Point lacks any of the finesse that Call of Duty 4 has. Put simply, it’s a flawed product with good intentions. Take the graphics for example. It’s physically impossible to see how Turning Point is created with the Unreal III engine. This is the same game-creation-tool that gave us the almighty Gears of War and Unreal Tournament III. It boggles the mind that a ‘next-gen’ title can look so bland and lacking life. You trounce through one grey area after another, grimacing at the lucid character models, the bland, fuzzy textures and the clipping problems. There are graphical bugs around every corner and there’re quite laughable (though obviously that’s completely unintentional). How the publishers let this shamble of a game be released is beyond us and if bought new in the shops it’s still the same price as any other decent, well rounded FPS. Turning Point does has the odd explosion effect where you’ll coo and subsequently smile, but trudge forward a couple more minutes and you’ll find a missing texture. The only other thing that Turning Point does relatively right is the audio. 5.1 Dolby Digital is present and thankfully it works. Gun shots are varied in density and effect, with blasts rumbling with deep bass. It’s a shame because that’s all which composes the list of what Turning Point does right. At points, you’ll seriously wonder whether you’re playing a game on the original Xbox or Playstation 2. Next up for criticism is the gameplay and while it isn’t as bad as the graphics department there’s definite room for significant improvement. We do accept that within the FPS genre, it’s one of the hardest forms for experimentation. After all, it’s a First Person Shooter; you shoot things in a first person perspective. You can add RPG elements or increase the size of the environments but unless done well those seem shoddy. While many developers add secondary routes for supposed replayability, we enjoy the inclusion of them because it gives greater interactivity and makes the player feel as though they’re progressing. Turning Point does neither and leads you by the hand, giving you a slap in the face whenever you attempt to go off the beaten track. Locked doors, invisible walls and every other gaming limitation occur in Turning Point; from backtracking to routes being just out of reach thanks to explosions. Objectives involve going to A, while killing every Nazi in your path, disarming a bomb / killing a public figure / blowing something up then escaping to B. There is no deviation from the plan and you’ll do it over and over again. The enemies range from stupid to downright moronic. A bullet to the head isn’t enough and there are various uber enemies within the game that take several shots to the face before dropping to the floor. Sparse checkpoints mean that death is cruel and as if playing a section once isn’t bad enough. There’s one level which has you assaulting the tower of London, then crossing Tower Bridge dodging zeppelin fire and enemies troops. Even on Normal it’s fiendishly difficult and will have you playing it countless times until you give up in anger. No game should punish you like Turning Point does but then it’s surprising that you a title so flawed can be released. From the AI cowering behind cover until you punch them in the face to the unstable amount of hits you can take, everything reeks, not of success but of another word beginning with S. Slight redemption comes from environmental kills (say drowning an enemy in the toilet or throwing him off the side of a bridge) or the option to take someone as a human shield. Again, the list of what it does right, gameplay wise is extremely limited.  The list of problems is near endless and you’ll seriously wonder why you’re playing it. There are better games, cheaper games and around more enjoyable games. We had to play it because we were sent it to review but we’d much rather throw it in the bin and get on with our gaming lives. It gets a 3/10 purely because it doesn’t crash and the back-story is relatively fresh. Aside from that it’s akin to a kick in the balls and it revels in the fact it’s doing it. Get your act together Spark Unlimited and make sure that Legendary makes Turning Point a scar that we can get removed. Score: 3/10 (Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is out on Xbox360 (copy reviewed), PS2 and PC).
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