Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Demo Impressions

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty does a lot of things right, but misses the mark where it counts.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty presents an interesting alternate-history premise. On December 13th, 1931, Winston Churchill was struck by a car while visiting New York City. He was injured, but he survived (Note: this is all true). Fall of Liberty deviates from history when it presents the question: What if Winston Churchill hadn’t survived?

Without the great leader’s help in WWII, the German Army grows stronger than ever. As the game begins, a Nazi fleet descends upon New York City.

You take control almost immediately. Your character is a construction worker and you find yourself up on some scaffolding as chaos reigns all around you. You must make your way down the scaffolding as your co-workers plunge to their deaths. I wish I could’ve helped them, and at times it feels as if you should be able to, but everything is happening so fast that it’s understandable that you would immediately run for safety.

The atmosphere and feeling here is great, but it’s ruined by some pretty terrible graphics. The screenshots for the game didn’t look that bad, but in action everything looks very unimpressive, such as the awful textures. The character animations also look very stiff and unrealistic, for the most part.

However, those previous gripes are small potatoes when compared to the game’s absolutely atrocious shooting. Enemies show no signs of flinching or anything while being shot and it isn’t until you see the death animation that you know you’ve been making any progress. The AI is decent. Some enemies will run at you and make no attempt to hide, but plenty will run for cover and some will even blind fire.

The game has a fun grapple mechanic, where you can instantly kill opponents with the butt of your gun (there was one part where you could throw a guy off a building) or use them as a human shield. The feature works well and unlike Turok, the game is challenging, so charging someone head-on in hopes of grappling them will usually get you killed.

At the end of the demo, you’ll hop in the back of a truck and watch behind you as people struggle to stay alive. A building in the center of the background collapses, sending a shockwave and dust cloud straight at you. Again, if it weren’t for the lackluster graphics, this sequence would be amazing.

There is definite potential here, but it’s completely buried underneath the poor graphics and flawed shooting.