Customer Reviews

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

It is said that the road to hell is paved with the best intentions. That maybe explains why the road to gaming mediocrity is littered with the relics of games with high ambitions and low production success. Unfortunately, TP:FoL is the latest addition...

I am a sucker for alternative history games (such as the exceptional WARFRONT and IRON STORM) so I really wanted to like TP:FoL. The story explores the repercussions of Winston Churchill actually getting killed when hit by a NY cab in 1931 (instead of surviving with a life-long limp). Consequently, England never prepares for the Nazi invasion and succumbs seven years later. But the Nazi are insatiable. After consolidating their European conquests, in 1953 they (together with their Japanese allies) invade the US. And this is our hero's moment to shine.

You fill the shoes of a blue collar worker who has fate drop on his head in the form of a German paratrooper. He kills him and grabs his weapon. The rest is up to you. From NYC to Washington, DC and from there on to London his place in history awaits him.

The weapons (from machine guns to tanks) are a mix of old and new. The new are reconstructions of late WWII prototypes that never had the chance to actually be developed. And that (together with the interesting background story) concludes this game's good points.

Controlling the above mentioned weapons is not an easy task, and the learning curve never seems to leave the ground. Every weapon handles differently - but not in any realistic (or even logical) way! Heavier weapons should be harder to aim, but exactly the opposite seems to be true.

Graphically, the game is still in...early beta. I am being overly generous! This is a First Person shooter - and yet every time your character uses a ladder, a Third Person perspective creeps in - ruining any immersion achieved. Your character can carry up to two guns - which, nevertheless, mysteriously disappear when the Third person perspective appears. Bad design, pure and simple.
Both the backgrounds and the environments as well as the explosions are well bellow par. And gore fans, be warned: no matter how many new holes you tore on the Nazi bodies, no blood will ever come out (no, there is no gore-toggle option, I checked). As to the bodies, they disappear a-la 1995 fashion...
And do not get me started on clipping and stuttering.

All in all, another overhyped game that fails to meet expectations.

I really had high hopes for this game. The plot looked good and the graphics looked good to. But after buying the game at least the idea is good. The graphics for the pc version are nothing to get excited about, there are no tweaking options except high, medium and low. Clearly this is a console port and thd PC version looks as if it needs patch out of the box. Some animations are just buggy and weird looking and it does not play smoothly at times. All in all its just a average shooter.

First off, I would like to say to all the people who gave this game 1 or 2 stars just because it doesn't have the best graphics, or perfect voice sync, or *gasp* blood and gore, you bloody well should have known better due to the fact that this game is rated T and does not mention gore, and the X1300/GeForce 6600 graphics card means no DX10.

Now then, about the game. It is your standard genre "go there and complete this objective" war game, which is what you would expect from a war game, having it to where you could go anywhere and do anything would make this more like Doom 3. You can only have 2 weapons at a time, and like in Halo, there are American weapons as well as German (Vampir!) varieties, each with their own pros and cons, such as the machine guns being great at close range but not so at long, which does help add in a bit of realism. Of course, you actually have 3 if you include the ability to turn a live enemy into a meat shield and use his pistol.

Controls are the standard WSAD + mouse arrangement you find in most FPSs now days, and they are remappable if you wish, or you can use the Xbox 360 Controller For Windows if you have it.

Graphics are not top of the line, but for those of us who know what a game really is, its story and not graphics (remember the classics Pac Man, Defender and Final Fantasy I all did it with 8-bits or less, and new classics such as Doom did it in DOS). However, the weapons you wield are surprisingly detailed. Also, you have to remember these original console games MUST meet certain requirements, and the Xbox 360 and PS3 are NOT the best in the graphics department, our computers can have 4-way SLI or Crossfire and a Creative X-Fi and 16gb of DDR3, but consoles cannot. Either way, they still do a wonderful job.

Music is wonderful, lets leave it at that. No MP3 folder so we can't listen to it separately.

Now, the other cons...well for one there is the Loading every so often, back from the console version, which can get annoying, but nothing so bad its detrimental. The 1024x728 res limit is more annoying, but not to much so. That's about it.

This is a wonderful game, sure it is not DirectX 10 with 7.1 surround sound, but great graphics and surround sound do not a great game make (Oblivion taught us that), it is the compelling, somewhat ironic story of an average joe defending his country which makes this a game worth playing. And like it says in the manual, "You won't find any body armor or health packs in this game - this is war!"

Awwww, I wanted to like this game soooooo bad! But the game is soooooo bad!

I keep reading about how this game was made with a low budget...but does a low budget require the MOST annoying shake when climbing stairs or ladders? Or the inability for a great pc system to run it without lag or glitches out the wazoooooo? Or perhaps the shortest game I've ever played???
save your money, buy another game, ANY other game...

I play a lot of sub par to bad games. I consider myself very patient and forgiving with most titles when most people tend to write them off and unplayable. As a testament to this I actually finished this game. Now while that may not sound like much of an accomplishment, trust me it was! This game is quite bad all around just shy of being unplayable. My thoughts;

Pros (I struggled with some of these)

+ Interesting alternative history premise (albiet terribly overused). Nazi's win WWII and invade the U.S. Not very original but still an interesting idea nonetheless.

+ Great opening level of descending a skyscraper being constructed while the Germans destroy it.

+ Outstanding musical score composed by the amazingly talented Michael Giacchino (Lost, Medal of Honor, Call of Duty, Cloverfield etc.) Honestly this IS the best part of the game and I still felt bad that his name was tied to the title.

+ Very short (trust me it's a good thing in this case)

Cons

- Awful and unforgivable framerate issues, lag and slowdown throughout the entire game. Firefights with multiple enemies onscreen and various explosions is when it's very evident. The game will literally slow to a crawl. Whenever the action heats up the game slows down. Perfect! (Note: My machine is far beyond the required specs for this title.)

- Extremely lackluster graphics for a 2008 game. Poorly rendered textures on nearly every level. Some wall and ground textures and deplorable.

- Flawed weapon targeting. Many times you'll clearly shoot someone yet the bullet never hits them. Items often obscure shots when they clearly they shouldn't.

- Terrible weapon sounds. Weapons and sound effects were often crackling and overly distorted.

- Little to no effort put in from the X-Box port. The icing on the cake is when they're asking you to perform certain tasks in the game they tell you to press this button and show you a diagram of a 360 controller instead of the appropriate PC key! Laughable, lazy and emabarrassing.


To sum things up, this game is a sad, buggy mess and near impossible to really enjoy. There was potential there but I have absolutely no idea where the developers left it. Clearly it didn't end up in the game. I think I bought this game on clearance at Target for [...] and I still felt ripped off. Avoid this title unless you have absolutely nothing else to play and possess the patience to endure all of the above.

I had seen the game footage online and thought it looked like a good story.
I was right. It's based around if the Germans attacked the USA in WWII and a construction worker took up the fight.
The story has holes that can be overlooked such as a resistance makes you their one hope for breaking into the white house and so on. Yeah right. But it's still pretty cool.

Weapons - You can only have 2 weapons but it's all you'll need. There's plenty of ammo and grenades are pretty useful when you have em.

Graphics - Not bad. Nothing special but done well enough to keep your interest. The opening sequence has you on top of a partially built building and planes are flying by.

Health - There's no real health meter but you know if you've taken too much damage by the screen going grey and you get slower. You heal on your own and pretty quickly.

Controls and camera work - Well done. Not a whole lot of assigning of new keys needed.

The replay value comes from the fact that there's a grapple system. If you get close to an enemy, you can can grab him and either take him as a human shield or instant kill him. This ranges from throwing someone off a building, pushing them into a machine (cut up in huge gears), putting his head thru a tv and more. But, sometimes this doesn't work if you get TOO close. The grab icon vanishes and the enemy unloads a whole clip into you.

It's definatly worth it.

This game looked like it would be very good. It had an intention grabbing storyline - Nazis invade the USA. However although the storyline was good the graphics were very much out of date - more like the games in the nineties. The maximum resolution was 1024x780 and any decent video card could handle a lot more resolution.
The game play was very linear - you could not deviate one bit from the path the maker intended.
I would not recommend it if you want games that graphically are more realistic - like Crysis or Frontlines- Fuel of War.

I should've read gamer reviews so I would've known that the graphics on this game are horrible. Very very choppy. I did everything to adjust the graphics and it still sucked. I played Quake 4 and those graphics were awesome, so I know the system requirements were fine on my computer. I hope I can get my money back. Games are becoming such big money makers that some companies are just jumping on the bandwagon hoping to find some suckers that saw the commercial on tv.

I admit I have relatively high standards for FPS shooters. I play all sorts of them (and have played them for the better part of a decade) including TF2, HL/HL2, Quake (1-4), Unreal (every single one), and all sorts of off shoots (absolutely LOVE COD4 right now...stop reading this and go buy it if you haven't already). My disclaimer is that I didn't play much farther than maybe 30-40 minutes...you'll understand why in a second...

That said, I can't believe this game was even published. I'd seen previews and read about this coming out (granted, some of that came in the form of newsletters from codemasters) so I was hyped a bit. I'd switched from COD2 to COD4 when the latter came out so I hadn't played a WWII-themed shooter in a little bit and I was getting twitchy...

I tossed this in the dvd drive and installed it then ran the puppy to find a standard-issue console port, complete with no mouse support in the menu system (huh? I'm a programmer and it always boggles me how it seems so hard for them to add mouse support to the menu system...the rest of the game supports a friggin mouse!), checkpoint saves, and lousy graphics. Even the control scheme sucked...I felt like I was running (I was running) through molasses.

The graphics were dated...they reminded me of medal of honor...from five years ago.

There is no such thing as a headshot since even with a nicely aimed shot to the head, it took three or four shots to take down an enemy (I know you're trying to make it hard but c'mon...). At least if it was to the chest or leg or something I'd deal with it better but really.

Loads of immovable objects (must have used a lot of superglue or something) and a complete rails experience (no choices...just one way to go through each level).

Put all together, you've got a game that either needed another year of development work or one that should never have been published and written off as a loss. Do yourself a favor and save your money for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare or better yet, get the The Orange Box and get three games and to expansions for the price of an expansion...

But a game? Sure if it was done right.. Horrible port.
Max Res of 1024x768?? what is this, 1998?

This was a great idea for a game and more time and effort should have been put into it. Alt history games are really a blast. Unfortunately, I wish I would have passed this one by.