Turning Point: Fall of..

[DroopyA]

I knew this game was going to be kind of clunky when I rented it (it has a user score of a 4 out of 10) but I just couldn't help myself.... I'm big on experiancing the story of a game and this one seemed unique.

The idea is that Winston Churchill dies before WWII starts altering the history of the events that got America into the war... so America stays out of the fight, until Nazi Germany invades New York.

The game starts off with you as a New York construction working building a skyscraper when the german planes start flying overhead. You have to climb down the steel beams, get yourself a gun, and start fighting back... it's WWII, but on American soil.

It's a FPS... but a pretty bad one. The game is clunky and slow, the enemy AI is terrible, hit detection is questionable, and the game is riddled with bugs. None of these are show-stoppingly bad, but it makes for a sub-par game. The fact that the game is only about 4 or 5 hours long, doesn't help either (or does it?)

My biggest complaints come from the games lack of overall polish. For a game that's all about fighting WWII in America, they don't do a very good job of reminding you that you're in America. Most of the game takes place in ally ways or empty streets that look like the could be anywhere... there's a distinct lack of American culture in the game. There's a few minor scenes featuring the Sears Tower and the White house, but that's about it... I'm 3 stages away from finishing the game and I think I've come across one American flag the entire time. With most of the buildings being generic shells and almost zero reffrence to American pop culture (music, movies, scenery, etc..) I often forget that I'm in America at all when playing.

The stages are also annoying to navigate. They're pretty striaght forward for the most part, but it's often times confusing to figure out just where the map is trying to lead you. Sometimes you'll come across a hole in the floor that the game expects you to jump into... but other times, a real similar looking hole will be an instant death trap. It's the same with rubble... sometimes rubble will turn into ramps or will be a crossable byproduct of a newly created hole in the wall... other times it's use as an unpassable stage boundry, but it can get confusing to figure out which is which. Many times I've almost gotten my character stuck by trying to jump over rubble that's suppose to be an invisable wall. To make matters worse, the developers tried to add in a bit of platforming so on occassion you'll come across a stack of boxes or a wall you can climb, or edges/ropes you can hang from to reach new areas... but there's never any clear indication of when this is possible. Once you do it, it seems so obvious, but durring your inital playthrough it's hard to figure out what wall is there as a boundy, and which one is there to be climbed.

None of this would be that bad if it wasn't for the terrible checkpoint system. Checkpoints are far and few between and dying means going back to the start of the last checkpoint. It's annoying to have to kill the same 4 rooms of enemies multiple times just because you mistakenly jumped in the wrong hole. There was a particular fight I kept losing not because I wasn't good enough to win, but because I didn't know what to do. It turns out, in this scenario, that my enemy is immune to bullets and must be punched to death. I sure wish the game would have told me that before my 10th try... it doesn't help that there is no punch button either. Instead, when you approach an enemy a fist icon appears on the screen allowing you to trigger a close combat fight. This would be ok, but like all interactive objects in the game, the icon is hard to trigger and often times doesn't display when you think it should. Often times I can't trigger the fight simply because I'm too close.

Too close for close combat?

The stages are littered with your typical trash... abandoned suitcases or building rubble. But unlike modern games where these are free floating objects that get kicked out of the way when you walk... these peices of trash are actually parts of the map. I can't tell you how many times I've gotten backed up into what feels like a corner durring a gunfight just to find after the carnage is over, that I'm being blocked by a suitcase on the floor... backing into objects is an unavoidable aspect of FPS games, but I find it happens far to often in Turning Point. Constantly I'm struggling to back out of doorways and I somehow always manage to get stuck on the stupidest of things. Annoying... especially when you have to reaload at a checkpoint after getting unfairly killed by a doorknob.

Durring the game, you're given objecives that tell you where you need to go and what you need to do next. Unfortunitly, the game does this poorly. Durring the game, all you get is a message that says "Objective added", and it's up to you to pause the game and read what that objective is. These objectives are small and vauge making me wonder why they don't just appear on the screen... there's plenty of room for the words "Destroy the tank" on screen... why do I have to pause the action?

There's a small variety of guns but nothing to brag about and story wise, the game is hit or miss. There's not a whole lot of 'story' going on outside a few one or two minute cut scenes between stages. Most of these are generic bullshit though... you meet some guys in the army, ride in a truck, watch a new story about the Nazi attack on TV. It's enough to keep you interested, but not enough to make up for the shortfalls of the actual gameplay. There's a few scenes that you can tell are suppose to be 'epic' but fall short due to the general bland gameplay... blowing stuff up is only satifsying if it was satisfying to reach the point where you set off the bomb. Sadly, this game lacks that thrill.

Loading times are bad and you'll experiance a fair amount of lag durring the single player experiance while the game tries to load new parts of the stage or the next scripted event. Planes crashes just aren't that great when you miss most of the crash due to single player lag. It does little but make an already clunky game come off as that much more clunky and unresponsive.

That's not to say that it's all bad though. There are some cool experiances to be had and although the story in generally bland and uneventful, it is interesting to hear the story of WWII through a diffrent path in history. Regardless of how average the gameplay is, fighting in a Nazi controlled white house does have it fair amount of joy... the graphics are decent and the music, although nothing that reminds you of being in america, is solid and fits well with the game. There's a few scenes where you run into American refugees that are cool, and it is cool to walk onto a scene of Nazis searching apartment buildings or fighting with random citizens trying to protect their families.

If you got nothing else to do and you like FPS games, rent it. It's not terrible, it's just not great... it has a ton of flaws that drag it down but none of these make the game difficult to play or too overly frustrating. They'll be the occasional "I'm lost" moments and you'll probably have to replay a few sections of a stage... but I've played games that where better made and far more aggrivating to play. I'd consider it a casual shooter... it's a bit short (4 hours) and the enemy AI is stupid and slow, so I wouldn't suggest buying it. I'd say it's worth a rent if you're really really bored but just don't go into it with high hopes.

[rsslee43]

sounds fun.

[Fezz]

Great idea, it just wasn't finished.

[Greenfrost]

Yeah, I got this game a while back. It would be way better if they fixed 2 things; The amount of bugs and the lag. The storyline is original(i think?) which was fun to play from a different angle in WW2.

[iMini]

There's a review thread around here somewhere, try copy and pasting it here, it's always good to know about less mainstream games.

[DroopyA]

At 5/15/09 02:01 PM, rsslee43 wrote: sounds fun.

After beating it, I may have been a bit hard on it... but everything I said is true. It's not absolutly terrible, it's just not that great either. I found it far less annoying to play when some friends came over to keep me company while I played it. But alone, it seemed long, tedius, and boring.

At 5/15/09 03:00 PM, XxTheWorldIsYoursxX wrote: Great idea, it just wasn't finished.

Yeah... this game is one that would have greatly benefited from a six month delay.

It's a decent game, but it's just missing so many obvious details... like enemies don't show any sign of being hit so I'm never sure if the hit detection is off, I missed, or it was a hit.

It probably doesn't help that FPS games aren't my favorite. Don't get me wrong, I like FPS games, but FPS isn't at the top of my favorites Genres... I tend to go hard on FPS games because of that. I'm willing to overlook some basic shortfalls in a sandbox game cause I love 'em. FPS fans might be able to do the same here.

[TB1ZZL3]

Concept looked brilliant on paper, but they had the wrong people developing it.

[Jack]

The developers also made Call of Duty: Finest Hour...which was great!

However, yes, it's horrible. It has a bunch of easy achievements though.