Turning Point: Fall of Liberty - Xbox360

   Good day, folks! Here we have, an interesting offering into the WWII shooter genre, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. When I picked it off the shelf, I was quite intrigued. A what-if scenario, where Winston Churchill dies prior to the onset of WWII, which prevents him from asking for America's help in fighting the brunt of the Nazi's might from Great Britain. America decides to remain neutral, and the Nazis launch a surprise invasion of America.

     This scenario should have made for an interesting game... but Codebreakers missed the bull's eye by a barn's length. Your character is a run-of-the-mill construction worker, who just happens to get caught up in the initial invasion of New York City. He's just an average civillian, yet he seems to know how to operate any piece of weaponry that happens to fall into his hands, with no prior military training. After picking up your MP50 (a weapon unique to this timeline), you proceed on to slaughter some of the most dim-witted AI ever conceived.

      Bearing in mind that most of the gameplay takes place in smallish sized rooms, alleyways, and narrow streets, you think the AI would make more informed decisions on when to throw grenades. Many times I have seen an enemy toss a grenade, only to have it get caught somewhere between him and myself. Which, more often than not, winds up killing the thrower of the grenade, and leaving our protagonist with greyed out vision and muffled hearing.

       Speaking of our antagonist and grenades, he can somehow withstand a hailstorm of bullets and grenade blasts... The last time I checked, health doesn't regenerate after all of that. I personally believe that implementing the "Halo" style of health regeneration just doesn't seem right for a WWII shooter. I miss the medpacks. :P Also... where's the health bar? I've no way of knowing how close I am to death, untill my vision turns grey. And by that time, it's usually too late. I miss the medpacks. :P

      Moving onto the graphics department... The opening attack sequence is well done, if a little over the top. (Rocket powered blimps, oh my!) The sheer number of aircraft in the sky had an impressive effect. However, anything after the opening sequence is quite a ways downhill. The textures just seem kind of flat to me, and just overall drab. You'll also see yourself looking at the same civilian/soldier/Nazi that you just saw lying dead in the street mere moments ago. C'mon, people, we're in the "next-gen" of gaming, we should have left the repetitive character models back with the last generation. More variation is a must.

       Something else I found a little odd about the graphics were the framerates. This review is coming from someone who played the PC version of the game. I had recently built a new, top of the line gaming system, and oftentimes, the frames would drop into the single digit range! This is an unacceptable flaw. The game itself wasn't unplayable, but it made it quite a tedious experience.

      And that, is my take on Turning Point: Fall of Liberty.

                        + Interesting premise, Impressive opening sequence, Interesting alternate timeline weapons...

                         - Protagonist unconvincing, Stupid AI, unimpressive health system, unimpressive graphics, wonky framerates.