Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Review (Xbox 360)

The potential for a wild ride was there, given the alternate-reality storyline at the heart of Codemasters’ Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. It takes a real-life event—an incident where Winston Churchill is hit and injured by a cab in New York City—and turns it into the premise for a big “if one event in the past is different, does it also change the course of history?” scenario.

In actual fact, Churchill recovered from his injuries and went on to become the Prime Minister of United Kingdom, where he allied to turn back Nazi Germany’s push to take over Europe. Turning Point, however, runs out its version of history in which Churchill dies from his injuries, enabling Germany to subsequently succeed in ruling Europe. At the start of the game, which takes place in the mid-’50s, Germany is on to its next conquest by launching an attack on New York.

The main character is a high-rise construction worker named Dan Carson. When the invasion begins, he’s walking the girders of a skyscraper in the works, and to survive he—through your intervention—needs to find a way to fight back…and the adventure begins.

Offensive weapons are somewhat scarce, so Carson’s first encounter is a grapple to toss a German off the building, which leaves his gun behind. This ends up being the basis for the gameplay—the constant search for weapons or opportunities to melee, so you can get past wave after wave of Nazi soldiers. There are a handful of available weapons (which Codemasters and developer Spark Interactive indicate are variations on real-world WWII arms), as well as a few things you can do when you grab an opponent: hold him in front of you as a human shield, instantly kill him or (if the opportunity is right) make an environmental kill, such as throwing him off a roof edge or slamming him into something. You only need to grab him and hit a direction on the D-Pad, and the game shows you the random action’s results.

The levels are mostly tight, linear maps with little question about where to go next. In fact, you’ll often get a blinking objects to indicate you that you need to climb at that location. You can interact with other items, such as doors to open, an elevator to ride or a ladder to climb, and those are accompanied by an onscreen icon that prompt you to hit the B Button, just like when you grapple.



The grapple system is one of the first flaws you’ll notice in what ends up being a long line of glitches. You can have a foe standing right in front of you and when you hit the B Button to grab him, you’ll come up empty—or he’ll slam you with the butt of his gun or just start shooting at you. Going through the exact same motions, you may have the button press result in you having him in your grasp. Use of the B Button (for melee grapples as well as interaction with such objects as ladders, elevators and doors) is erratic and unpredictable, because it seems you have to be just the right distance and facing in relation to the subject of your interaction.

Most of the controls are relatively standard shooter fare: The A Button jumps, the Right Trigger fires your weapon, the Left Trigger zooms in your Iron Sights and the X Button reloads your gun. You can carry two weapons at a time, along a supply of four grenades.

Most of the action is also standard, with a few nice variations that enable you to do something more than looking down the barrel of your currently equipped gun. At one point, for instance, you have to rig dynamite on the underside of a tank, and it requires you to hold the same-colored face button as the next terminal, then rotate the left stick to tighten up the nut that’ll secure the wire lug in place.

The game is built on a modified version of the Unreal Engine, so it has all the tech that’s available to licensees of the software, such as the capable physics system. If you shoot someone, he’ll crumble (or tumble) in typical ragdoll fashion on the ground. If you toss a grenade nearby, he may go sailing away before going through the ragdoll movements on his way to settling with gravity and the terrain. There is extensive use of flames and lighting effects throughout Turning Point.

Platform:
Xbox 360
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Publisher:
Codemasters
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Developer:
Spark Unlimited
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Genre:
First Person Shooter
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Release Date:
2/26/2008
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Game Features:
Offline Players: 1
EDTV 480p Support
HDTV 720p Support
HDTV 1080i Support
Dolby 5.1 In-Game

Ratings :: 1
Average :: 1.0
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