Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

At the start of the 1998 film, Sliding Doors, Gwyneth Paltrow is fired from her job at a PR company. As she dashes for the tube home a girl drops her doll in Paltrow’s path, delaying her for a few seconds so that she misses the train. Time then rewinds and we watch how her life would have been different had fate and circumstance shifted a few millimetres allowing her to make it through the closing doors.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty shares a similar premise. On December 13th 1931 British Prime Minister to be, Winston Churchill, was knocked down by a New York Taxi driver. The game is an examination of what might have happened had this accident proved fatal, and Churchill had not been around to deliver inspirational speeches, broker international allied deals and lead his country through war to victory. It is a game about how the tiniest shift in history can have the greatest implication for humanity, an idea struck hard home as the game opens with the Nazi invasion of New York.

It’s a good idea and getting to explore this alternate 1940’s history certainly makes for a pleasant diversion from the usual ubiquitous WWII first person shooter. However, the arresting set-piece that starts the game – as you descend from the scaffolding of a New York skyscraper while the Luftwaffe wheel and dive-bomb all around – is not matched by the game that follows it.

You know very little about your character other than that his name is Carson and he’s a construction worker now turned soldier. There’s no character progression and very little story to get involved in beyond the idea that Nazi’s are taking over America (and latterly London). This lack of ongoing narrative investment is at odds with the strength of the initial premise and hurts all the more for it.

Gameplay-wise this is a straightforward Call of Duty clone. You follow linear paths through linear levels switching between two weapons and bringing up the iron sights to take down the endless rows of Nazi’s that stand between you and your next checkpoint. However, the game lacks the assuredness of Infinity Ward’s WWII games thanks to a combination of an inaccurate aiming system and, worse, imprecise hit detection on enemies. On the rare occasions you take an enemy by surprise you can perform an environmental-based melee attack (such as forcing his head down a toilet) but these brief moments of comedy do little to add character to the game.

A poor framerate, weak enemy animations and a harsh checkpoint system undermine the few excellent set-pieces that are scattered through the game to the point of collapse. These are offset somewhat by some confident presentation and an excellent orchestral score, but the short campaign and under-featured multiplayer mode (8 player only) leaves one wishing that, much like the event in its backstory, Turning Point had turned out another way altogether.

2 out of 5