Turning Point: Fall of Liberty


 * Not to be confused with War Front: Turning Point.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is a 2008 first-person shooter game developed by Spark Unlimited and published by mh:awesomegames:Codemasters for mh:awesomegames:Microsoft Windows, mh:awesomegames:PlayStation 3, and mh:awesomegames:Xbox 360.

Due to the game including a very interesting premise of being in an alternate history timeline, it was a game that was completely ahead of its time, and its ideas were later popularized by the latest entries in the Wolfenstein franchise, that being The New Order, The Old Blood and The New Colossus.

Plot
The game takes place in an alternate version of WWII where Winston Churchill dies after being hit by a taxi, somehow taking the fighting ability of the whole of Europe with him, and the U.S. does not become involved in the war. Great Britain and the rest of Europe soon fall into the hands of Nazi Germany. In the 1950s, they invade the US to lay waste of any resistance in their path to establish a new fascist state. Players assume the role of Dan Carson, a lone construction worker who is forced into the American resistance to fight for his country and drive the Nazis out of the US.

Why It Literally Fell

 * 1) Despite the interesting premise, it is poorly executed with a weak, uninspired, and generic story.
 * 2) Dan Carson's appearance is more like that of a anachronistic skateboarder than a construction worker.
 * 3) The game has an unsatisfactory ending which does not actually conclude the story properly since the game simply ends with Dan Carson sacrificing himself by self-destructing the atomic bomb even near New York. It does not help on Wikipedia that it says "Carson's sacrifice encourages other Americans to drive the Nazi out of the United States and restore democracy".
 * 4) Several plot holes. For instance, after James Edward Stevenson is killed and the White House is blown up, it is never explained who became the new President afterwards.
 * 5) Uninteresting level design, mostly taking place in exciting locations such as alleys, subways, sewers and warehouses.
 * 6) Very boring weapons: the US weapons are just WWII guns, while the Nazis have a giant silly rocket launcher and a bunch of WW2 guns with bits stuck on. The most interesting things they can think of are a rifle with a copied Soviet IR scope and the MP40 SMG which has a flashlight, which is really useless and causes graphical corruptions. There are also weapons that didn't even made it in the game, such as a modified Sten SMG, a Magnetic gas grenade, and an AK redesign of the classic STG-44 assault rifle.
 * 7) The gameplay is basically a poor knockoff of the original Call of Duty. There are multiple sections where all you do is man a mounted machine gun and wait for the lemming AI to trundle out in front of it. As the review by PC Gamer UK pointed out, it's likely the only reason there isn't a section where you man a machine gun on the back of a moving truck is because Spark couldn't figure out how to program that.
 * 8) Low quality graphics despite using Unreal Engine 3, with low-res textures and brown and washed-out colored blocky models, spar animations, chunky gun models and glitchy facial animations.
 * 9) Terrible and weak voice acting for a 2008 game.
 * 10) Drab bomb-setting minigame which appears to have been included for a Wii version that was never made.
 * 11) Unreliable targeting reticle due to the large gun models.
 * 12) Inconsistent collision detection.
 * 13) Awful controls even by 2008 standards. For an example: aiming and shooting are R1 and R2, and running is L1 instead of the usual L3 typically used by shooters.
 * 14) Dumb enemy AI that is only dangerous when it is spamming grenades.
 * 15) Horrible enemy death screams that give the original Killzone's sometimes annoying enemy scream deaths a run for it's money.
 * 16) You could beat the game within two hours.
 * 17) There are pointless "fatality" animations where you press a button to trigger an animation where you hit someone. Despite the 16+/T for teen rating these are oddly G-rated, even an animation where Carson throws a Nazi into the moving gears of Tower Bridge playing out like a cartoon.
 * 18) Many bugs and glitches, with rifles clipping for a example. Even the first-person gun models will glitch out, sometimes not recoiling or ejecting spent casings.
 * 19) Terrible death screen that the camera flies out of nowhere.
 * 20) Poorly placed checkpoints, causing you to be sent back far if you die or if you choose to load the last checkpoint from the pause menu.
 * 21) Bland multiplayer mode that is very laggy, (excluding LAN) with dull maps.
 * 22) Extremely difficult to kill enemies in multiplayer on console versions due to a mixture of a high time to kill with all weapons, instant health regeneration, and the absence of aim assist.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) An stellar soundtrack composed by Michael Giacchino (the composer behind the early Medal of Honor titles.)
 * 2) The premise, even if it isn't well executed, is still very interesting.
 * 3) There is a feature that where you can grab an hostile, and you can actually use it as a human shield, which is great in concept, even it fails in execution.
 * 4) The unlockable concept art is great to look at.

Reception
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty received generally unfavorable reviews on all platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. IGN noted the unique concept for the game's plot, but criticized the quality of the gaming experience as "archaic". Other criticisms included a flat, linear storyline that provided little characterization, a lackluster and unamusing multiplayer mode, and frustratingly uncooperative gameplay actions such as climbing ladders. The musical score was better received, being described as a solid and well-made part of the game.

In response to the poor reception of the game by reviewers, the developers of Turning Point: Fall of Liberty stated that their game was not intended for "hardcore gamers," but rather a more casual audience. Why precisely they thought this would fly when shooters were the most mainstream genre in existence is not clear.