Game Review (PC): Turning Point-Fall of Liberty

Let me start out by stating that I have this weird love for fiction involving alternative history. I am especially fond of game and fiction wherein the setting is spun off either of the World Wars. When I first saw a trailer for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty I knew I had to have that game.

Fast forward a bit and there it was on the store shelf. It was a wee bit pricey ($40) but I decided to go ahead and make the purchase. I went home and installed the program and ... promptly rode my home PC to the dreaded "Blue Screen O'Death." Um, yeah. I got the machine going again, added some nice (also expensive) software to help keep it running smoothly, and found the game simply would not run on my system [le sigh]. So though I am hardly worthy of the lofty title of "Techie," I did some research and ordered the necessary parts to upgrade my year old computer to get it to run TP:FoL. I have never, not once upgraded a computer myself. Yet, so badly did I want to play this game, so determined was I that the demi-gods of obsolescence not win, I boldly embarked on the quest to get my pc all up and fully qualified to run the game.

Long story short, I succeeded, quadrupling my RAM and installing a MUCH better graphics card. The game ran and ran oh-so-well!

The game takes place in the 1950s, explaining at the begining that Winston Churchill was killed in a pre-war accident (whereas in real life, he was injured in the same accident). Thus with England in less capable hands, the war did not go well. The U.S. remained isolationist and the world was taken over by the Nazi war machine. You play the part of a construction worker in 1950s New York. You are up walking the iron of an under construction sky-scraper when the Nazi bombers hit the Big Apple. You work your way down from the framing, wrestle down a Nazi paratrooper, take his gun (and any others along the way), fight your way to street level, and join the resistance.

Those familiar with other war-based First Person Shooters will figure out the mechanics almot instantly. The first few times you do something (like, say, use a ladder) the game has a built-in tutorial that shows you what key to hit (E in the case of the ladder). If you like games like Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, etc. you'll like the gameplay here. The weapons are very interesting and well modeled with a lot of detail. They are essentially weapons one might expect to have seen if the ones Germany used in WWII had an additional five or ten years of prosperity to evolve further. The MP-40 of WWII fame has evolved into the MP-50, and so on. American weapons (M1 Garand, Thompson SMG, 1911A1 .45 pistol, 12 gauge shotgun, etc.) are also found througout the game.

The game is mission based and saves automatically at certain points (usually just before anything serious enough to be likley that you'll die a few times). Your characters life level recharges its self so there is no need for frantic hunting for life packs. There's sniping opportunities and missions, all out assaults, room clearing, defending against wave attacks, boss-like zepplin and tank killing sub-missions, etc. There is a fair amount of puzzle solving, too, where you have to figure out just what part of the environment you can manipulate in order to progress (e.g. which dumpster will let you climb over a fence, which pipe or ledge can you shimmie across...). In short, it's a lot of fun and the whole game revolves around a central story and plot. It's quite an exciting and fun game with only a couple of moments of frustration where you might think there's no practical way to get through a mission ... then suddenly you'll make it. It provides some really fun gameplay, but it's not a terribly long game. If you're proficient or just really lucky, you'll get through with it in a couple or three long sittings. Those are long sittings for me, by the way. After I play a game for about four hours, I generally take a break. It's much better for the temper and much less destructive on the ol' PC that way. ;)

******************* Spoiler Alert! **********************

Okay, my gripes about Turning Point: Fall of Liberty are as follows and there's really only two ... okay, maybe three.

The first gripe is really a pretty trivial one, but it got annoying so I'll include it. Unlike, say Medal of Honor Airborne or Call of Duty 4, there really aren't a lot of options as to how you go through this game. You can f0llow the path laid out before you or you can ... well ... okay you can follow the path laid out before you and that's pretty much it. Not a whole lot of options. This is disguised pretty well, though so it's not like this is a glorified side-scroller or any such. But I like options. Call me a rebel, call me a non-conformist, but I sometimes don't want to go from this point directly to that other point, and dammit, maybe I can find a better sniper post on my own, so let me, okay?

I told you that first one was a bit trivial. Now the next two have spoilers in 'em so be thee warned. First, (or, you know, second, if you're counting) there are a couple of points where the hot spots or whatever just don't want to pop up and you'll swear there is just no way past a point. The most infamous of these is toward the end, on your last mission to destroy a nuclear equipped zepplin (which brings up a whole host of questions ... not a lot of means to escape a nuclear blast when one drops an atom bomb form a blimp ... hmmm ... those crazy Nazis, eh?). You have to walk outside, jump up and grap a ledge to shimmie along. Supposedly you'll see the little icon pop up telling you when you can pull up and enter a window to continue the mission. But ... no, not so much. Mind you, when you try and fail, you have to start back a ways, and go through a rather spectacular if not all that difficult fire-fight (hint: shoot the fuel cans) all over again ... and again ... and again ... Get the idea? This is a game bug and hopefully will be patched. In any case the 'net abounds with walkthroughs and hints but I just got on the ledge and kept moving a wee bit, then trying to climb up 'til it worked. Then what to do from there presented the same problem though every now and again, the annoying, cheeky little icon would pop up.

Okay, my final complaint? The ending! It's ... TERRIBLE!!!! I mean, I played this whole game (SPOILER ALERT!) just to freakin' die in the end? Sure, sure, the death has that whole "13 Rue Madaline" dramatic middle-finger-salute tragic yet heroic ending. But it still SUCKS!!! Sheesh, I did not drag this construction-worker turned war hero though all these levels just so he can freakin' die at the end of his last successful mission! Ah, but are there happy endings anymore? Maybe we've had our eyes opened by the reality of war ... maybe some game designers need to get their heads out of the Washington Post and remember this is supposed to be FUN!

************* End of Spoilers (wasn't that FUN?!) *****************

So, in closing, let me say, this game is a lot of fun (grumbles about the three things mentioned above, especially the last one), and I enjoyed it. All in all, though, I'd wait for the price to drop before I shelled out $40 bucks or so for it. Maybe someone will toss out some fun mods for it and punch it up a bit.