Xbox 360 Review: Turning Point: Fall of Liberty (2008)

Boy, I sure love Freedom Fighters for PS2 (it was, after all, winner of the coveted Thrasher's Choice prize at the first Code Redd Net Awards). That game, let me tell you, has atmosphere and style for days. Problem is, it's way too short, so while I light the candles and hope for a sequel, someday, I continue to search for other alternative history action shooters to keep me entertained. It's a niche market, to be sure, and Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is certainly one of its worst entries. Problems arise immediately in terms of the actual alternative history proposed. Though pointing out the logical inconsistencies of such stories is relatively pointless and sometimes quite dubious, I expect, at the very least, that some effort is put into their narrative presentation. Turning Point begins with a quote from Winston Churchill, then asks, literally, what might have happened if Churchill had died prior to the end of WWII. The answer, of course, becomes obvious when the game proper begins and we witness the Nazi invasion of NYC. So Churchill kicks and suddenly the Nazi army has the nerve, not to mention the sheer military might, to invade and occupy America? Not bloody likely. And what about the rest of the Axis? What are they up to? Even putting this ridiculous premise aside, there is little effort made, in subsequent levels, not only to show the Nazi occupation and its effects, but the movements and membership of the Resistance are also vague. And you play as a member of that Resistance! Good luck figuring out your character's name sometime in that first hour of play. Worse, you often find yourself moving through missions, completing seemingly arbitrary tasks, while remaining totally unsure of their significance in the grand scheme of things. It's just busy work, in other words, and that should never be a part of simplistic entertainment like games. Further still, movement through these random assignments is hindered by some slippery controls and guns that rarely fire the way you want them to. True, the levels look pretty nice, and they find cool ways of incorporating famous landmarks into the destruction, but when your path is so limited and your missions so mundane, who cares? I recommend you take the money that would be required to rent this and spend it on a used copy of my beloved Freedom Fighters instead.