Turning Point: Fall of Liberty kicks off with an intriguing historical "what if": how would World War II have turned out if Winston Churchill hadn't survived his run-in with a New York city taxicab in 1931?

The answer, per the game's historical flight of fancy: German forces would have conquered much of Europe, eventually mounting an invasion of the U.S. mainland in the 1950s. In this scenario, the Nazi Luftwaffe developed zeppelins capable of transatlantic flights, and Thomas E. Dewey had the misfortune of occupying the office of President of the United States. With the east coast under siege and the installation of a puppet president imminent, it seems like the country will soon share Europe's fate.

But amidst the panzer patrols and parachuting storm troopers vies the human embodiment of America's indomitable spirit: Dan Carson, hard hat turned freedom fighter. He was at the right place at the right time, namely, atop the skeleton of a skyscraper when the first blitz touched ground, and not too long after brutalizing his first Nazi on the girders, he finds himself fully and irreversibly embroiled in this decidedly rough patch of our nation's alternate history.


It's a tantalizing high concept, but one that is squandered by a shaky execution. There really isn't anything remarkable about Turning Point one way or the other; it's wholly by-the-numbers in conception, and what few liberties it takes with the Call of Duty formula feel tacked-on and gimmicky. It also runs poorly, replete with graphical glitches and technical hiccups that make the game feel shoddy and unfinished. At a moment when so many excellent shooters are on the market and thriving in the multiplayer scene, there's very little incentive to endure something like this.

Most of the time, Turning Point is a strictly linear shooting gallery punctuated by a few interesting set pieces. Enemies are never particularly smart, and at times they'll even gaze in your general direction for few long seconds before opening fire. The level designs don't fare any better; they may or may not be intuitive, depending on how many jarring traversal sequences have been built into them. Factor in the often-unforgiving checkpoint system -- which will frequently force you to repeatedly replay some of the game's more tedious sections -- and you have a game that can get downright disheartening

Every now and then, you'll encounter a Nazi officer who is both unaware of your presence and adjacent to an environmental hazard, be it an incinerator, a toilet (!), or a high ledge. This is how Turning Point rewards you for enduring its tedium: by allowing you to dispatch a few individuals in grisly ways by means of rudimentary grapple mechanics, be it by smashing their heads into TV sets (tuned into the propaganda network, of course) or by inflicting fatal swirlies. It's ultimately pretty unimaginative as far as fatalities go, which is sort of baffling given how rich our industry's body of work is when it comes to gruesome interactive tidbits.