Reviewed: March 24, 2008
Reviewed by: Jeff Gedgaud

Publisher
Codemasters

Developer
Spark Unlimited

Released: February 26, 2008
Genre: FPS
Players: 1
Online: 8

4
6
6
3
4.8

Supported Features:

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty takes this concept of alternate realities to the first person shooter by setting the stage of Mr. Churchill dying in 1938 and not being there for England and the world. England falls to the Axis regime and soon America is invaded so you get to jump in and win the war single handedly.

Here we get our jump in and the introduction to our own hero as we play the part of Dan Carson, a high rise steel worker who is actually on top of his job when the opening scene starts. The first stage of the game sets the tone and then drops it drastically after that with some lousy gameplay and very linear levels.

You have this neat scene of racing amongst falling bombs down from the steel girders of the construction project you were working on to make it to safety as the Germans invade. You even get a taste of grappling to get your first weapon by fighting it out with a single German paratrooper who makes a landing right in front of you.

The scene shows so much potential for the game and you can get a good idea of what could have been until just before the scene ends on the ground floor. Turning point almost looks like they lost their zeal and quite trying after that first scene as the game looses all aspect of a good first person shooter. Stuttering and frame rate drops through the floor from start to finish just after the opening scene.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is a very linear first person shooter that just drops the ball when it comes to holding your attention or adding anything new to the genre other than a great story idea. The game has a lousy AI to fight against and does nothing right other than introduce a great reason to fight, invasion.

Once you get past the first soldier whom you either beat unconscious or toss off the building you make it down to the ground floor and start the real fighting. The Germans are either hopelessly tied to one or two spots or lousy shots. It also takes a sometimes ridiculous amount of bullets to knock you down only to start you back at a previous load point.

The games AI is bad and does nothing but stand and shoot or sometimes move from one point to the next shooting at you. Sometimes they have the over the top shooting from a blind spot that adds a sense of realism but they do so in such a wild way they hit nothing and don’t keep you down behind cover.

Many times the enemies will run to one spot and back while shooting at you that makes them look too scripted and very predictable. Taking out many of the enemies is a matter of aiming at the spot you know they will be in soon. The very linear levels adds nothing to the gameplay and sometimes adds a few questions. In one spot I had three loads and no fighting in between or even platform movement so it was a weird section of the game.

The PlayStation 3 version of this has better graphics than the PC and XBox 360 version but they are all the same game as far as the problems as well as everything else. Fall of Liberty has some serious stuttering and clipping as well as problems with too much on the scene at one time. When you change difficulty you simply add more enemies and this brings the frame rates down as you get more in the same area.

The gameplay is about the major issues of the game as they did nothing to make the first person shooter different or even all that challenging. Turning Point could have been a great game even with some of the issues but with a lack of even interesting gameplay and no challenge from the AI there just is nothing here that stands out for a game.

The games textures and various graphics are pretty good but they did something to some of the animations and effects that make it almost cartoonish instead of realistic. Some of the explosions look terrible and very anime styled that make for a very mixed game.

The textures of weapons look great for the most part but they just failed to put that extra touch to make the game overall a good one. The graphics are a very mixed bag and it is just another reason to bypass this game.

Clipping was another major issue as guys would fall through objects or stick in and out of them whether alive or dead. Often a dropped weapon was impossible to pick up as it was stuck in a wall or object when dropped. The death throes of enemies often looked like a puppet with its strings cut so the animations were pretty bad as well. Graphics for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty was another area that did not add to the games overall appeal.

That great sound of the M1 clip ejecting from the rifle is one of the standby’s of a WWII game and they did a terrible job of it here, it doesn’t even sound close to the real thing. Other weapons sound effects are just missing their appropriate audio or like the larger weapons missing that hefty sounding effect so you miss out on a lot of the little things that make up a complete and well made game.

The audio is just not well done and missing in many of the parts of Turning Point so it again is a very mixed bag here. The developer could have done much better and just let it fall through the cracks with so much of Fall of Liberty.

I tried several times to play multiplayer and could only join a few games with one to four people on all three versions. There just is not much to Turning Point: Fall of Liberty and the people know it.