Turning Point: Fall of Liberty (PS3)

By taking a fictional approach to history, this World War II first-person shooter is hoping to change the game.
3/4/2008 6:49 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Speaking as a Jew -- granted, a lapsed one who eats bagels and watches Woody Allen movies more than he prays or goes to temple -- let me just say that I still get a thrill out of shooting Nazis and German soldiers during World War II from the first-person perspective. While some gamers, Jews and goyim alike, may be bored of this genre, it still holds a great deal of appeal for me, especially when it's done well or with some new spin.

Unfortunately, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, developed by Spark Unlimited and published by Codemasters, isn't especially well done, nor does it really have a new spin, despite the developer's best efforts. While it does alter the premise of this genre, the effect is actually minimal, making this just another (albeit fun) WWII FPS.

The idea behind Turning Point is that instead of having you fight historically-accurate battles, you're fighting ones from a "What if?" scenario, one that imagines what would have happened if the United States had stayed out of World War II, only to get sucked into it when Germany launches a sneak attack in 1953.

Thanks to this counterfactual premise, the game doesn't have you fighting in such bombed-out European and Soviet locations as London, Paris and Russia, but in an under-attack Manhattan, an occupied Washington, D.C., and in a version of London that's under German control. But while shooting Axis soldiers on American soil can be visceral -- the battle near the remains of the Chrysler Building was especially jarring for this former Manhattan office worker -- as backgrounds go, war-torn America isn't too different from war-torn Europe.

Similarly, Spark didn't do much with most of the weapons or vehicles, despite the 10-year historical gap. Except for the blimps, which have been given steampunky makeovers, most of the guns and tanks look and work like slightly modified versions of their real WWII counterparts. This may be realistic, but it doesn't do anything to distinguish this from the rest of the genre.

The game also tries to change things up by casting you as a construction worker with no military experience, as opposed to a soldier. The problem is, your character is either a born soldier or watched a lot of war movies when he was a kid, because he's a damn natural. He knows how to operate numerous weapons, including turrets, and even aims down the barrel like a pro. He's also skilled in hand-to-hand combat, since -- with just the flick of a button and a press of a directional pad -- he's able to wrestle guns from his attackers and grapple with them like he's been through basic training. He's a little more sadistic than most soldiers in this genre, since he's as likely to toss a guy into a furnace or shove his head into a toilet as he is to take someone's gun and shoot them with it.

The action is also standard fare for this genre. There are turret levels, sniper missions, times when you'll have to wire an explosive, and lots of running and gunning. There are a couple instances when you'll have to do a bit of climbing, as well as some shimmying on pipes and ledges, but while this isn't cliché for this type of game, it's not unique, either.