Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

Review from Starks - Tuesday, 10 June 2008 @ 6:40pm

This video basically sums up what I feel Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is:


It's terrible.

Seriously, I feel bad that Yug spent money sending it down to Sydney in the post for me.

Let me put it to you this way. Spark Unlimited tried to do something different. Alternate realities tend to work if done correctly. Take a look at Resistance - Fall of Man. It's not bad, eh? Different, and has a good story to it. World in Conflict was the same; Different, yet good.

So when Turning Point - Fall of Liberty came along, I thought 'Cool, so this could be good. Nazis overrun the U.S. of A! Nice!!'

How unbelievably wrong I was.

As I sit here trying to review this game, I try to suck down a few glasses of wine to help me do so. Maybe something creative juices will flow the higher my alcohol intake is?!



Nope. Sadly it doesn't help at all and only means that I'll have to spend more time in spell check as a result.

So what do I think of the Turning Point? Well, I've always wanted to maintain journalistic integrity so here goes with the bitter honesty pill:

The game sucks. It sucks balls. In fact, it would have been better suited as a porno because it sucks so much and that's about the best quality this game possesses.

*Deep breath* Well, now I've got that out of my system, I'll go into a little more depth.

The game plays like an FPS from about 6 years ago. Now, I think I've played enough FPSs to know the good from the bad. And let me tell you, this is shocking. I often go on about how particular controls feel. Frankly I do so because on a console it's so vital that the player feels like the controller is a natural extension into the game itself. Feeling like you're 'in the game' is almost as important as the game itself. I believe they call it 'immersion' but I'm not technical enough so I'm just going to say that playing the game with the control settings provided is about as enjoyable as chewing glass.

'But Starks! Surely you could change the settings!!'

You'd think that. In fact, after the amount of options provided by such games as Gears of War, Rainbow Six: Vegas and Halo 3, most FPSs would have come with a decent assortment of control settings. Apparently Spark Unlimited missed the memo.

The graphics are my next point of contention. They're terrible. I think I've seen Play Station 2 and original Xbox games with better graphics than what TP coughs up. In fact, I think I've coughed up substances that had better textures and detail than TP, but that's another story. The NPCs all looked the same, the buildings were blocky, squared off things with little to no character to them and the detail just seemed non-existent. Graphics don't necessarily make the game, but they do separate the good from the great, and in the case of this, it might have made it crap instead of freaking horrible.



The guns sound like paintball guns too. Seriously, I was shooting the M4 Carbine, a gun that has been done in so many WWII games that I've almost become used to its sound. Suffice to say that they should have ripped the Carbine sound off Treyarch or Infinity Ward, paid them royalties and used their sound instead of using the 'pop gun' excuse for a firearm effect they created.

Finally, the enemy AI is woeful. I played the game on hard and found that a deer in headlights I ran over last week did a better job of taking cover than the Nazi's in this game. Seriously, they had no self preservation and almost looked to jump out in an attempt to catch the bullets being fired at them.

Don't even get me started on the multiplayer. Four maps. FOUR FRICKEN MAPS!! That's all they offered. And no objective games; Just Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch. I really don't want to delve too much, except to say that the game is a shocking multiplayer experience. I won't speak more of it because it's just that bad.

*sigh* I feel sad ragging on a game I was looking forward to, but then my disappointment is that great for a game that could have offered a great deal more. Suffice to say I didn't finish the game, and I don't think much would have convinced me to complete it either.

Summary

Don’t buy, rent, or play this game at a mate’s house. It’s crap. Be warned.

Pros

Music is the only highlight, makes a good Frisbee,I’m going to trade it in to buy GTA IV when I get a chance.

Cons

Sucky graphics, sucky controls, sucky AI