We are sticking with World War II, but instead of helping to liberate France during the Nazi occupation, we are trying to survive the Nazi invasion of New York. What Nazi invasion of New York, I hear you ask? Well, for this week’s Retro Respawn, we are diving into an alternate history where the Nazi conquest of Europe was not stopped, and they invade the East Coast of the United States in the 1950s. I am, of course, talking about Turning Point: Fall of Liberty.
Development and History
Developed by Spark Unlimited and published by Codemasters, Turning Point was released in February/March 2008. This was Spark Unlimited’s second game after they developed the first Call of Duty game to land on home consoles, Call of Duty: Finest Hour. The team were not brand new to the video game world, though, as prior to founding the studio in 2002, they had worked on the Medal of Honor series. In an interview (January 2008) with Game Developer, Spark Unlimited CEO Craig Allen speaks about the experience the studio has with games set during WWII but wanting to not be tied down to the genre:
I think it’s certainly a stepping stone for the team. I mean, I think every passionate, creative group wants to learn new things. And if all you’re doing is kind of recreating the worlds you’ve done before, you’re not really growing as an artist.
It was a natural step for the studio’s trajectory in story-telling. Medal of Honor let you play as a lone soldier deep in enemy territory. Call of Duty shifted the narrative from a lone soldier to a valuable member of a team. Turning Point: Fall of Liberty puts you in the shoes of a normal citizen choosing to fight against an invading enemy. Spark Unlimited also shifted the setting from World War II to an alternate history where the war didn’t really happen as the Nazi war machine swept across Europe unopposed. This timeline is based on an essay by Stephen R. Pastore where he asked the question: “What if Winston Churchill died prior to World War II?”.
Story
In the world of Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, Winston Churchill died in 1931, in New York when he was hit by a taxi. This did actually happen, but of course, the future UK Prime Minister survived the accident. This butterfly effect led to Nazi Germany conquering Europe, Africa and Asia, with Italy and Japan, collectively called the Axis Powers. With large parts of the world transformed into the Greater German Reich, Nazi scientists continued to work on “Wunderwaffe” or wonder weapons. In our time, these largely remained as prototypes and were used mainly for propaganda, but in Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, this programme gave the Nazi war machine fighter jets, super tanks, and most importantly to the story, the atomic bomb.
You play as Dan Carson, a construction worker in New York. On the 22nd September 1953, whilst working high up on a construction site, the Nazis invade the Eastern United States. Carson survives the initial attack and links up with the National Guard attempting to repel the invading force. It doesn’t take the Nazis long to capture Washington D.C., and a puppet president is installed and orders the U.S. armed forces to stand down. Not all of the armed forces are that happy in becoming part of the Third Reich, so they form various resistance cells. Carson becomes part of one, and his story takes him to various locations in Nazi-controlled America and a quick trip to the UK.
Gameplay
Much like Spark Unlimited’s previous games, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is a first-person shooter. Carson can use a multitude of weapons, including some real-life ones, such as the good ol’ Thompson submachine gun, and (my personal favourite WWII weapon) the M1 Garand. You can also pick up the Nazi weapons, which are all updated versions of the Wehrmacht’s weapons used in World War II, such as the MP50.
Outside of the shooting, throwing grenades, and all the usual FPS stuff, Carson can also grapple with the Nazi soldiers. You can sneak up behind an unsuspecting soldier and either kill him instantly or use him as a human shield. This mechanic seems to lean into the fact that Carson isn’t a trained soldier, so he can’t rely on his talent with weapons all the time. You can even do a few environmental kills if the aforementioned soldier is in the right place. You can shove them into a furnace, push them off a ledge, or my personal favourite, drown them…in a toilet.
Right at the beginning of the game, there is a relatively challenging platforming section where Carson has to navigate the unfinished skyscraper he was working on. This, unfortunately, is the only real time this is implemented in Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. There are some other minor platforming bits sprinkled throughout, and these are less trying to get down from a skyscraper with bombs dropping around you and rather just standard environmental traversal. There are also numerous quick-time events throughout Carson’s journey too, but this is a title from 2008, so you know, standard.
The Good
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty’s story is an interesting take on alternate history; well, perhaps more at the time. There had been numerous alternative history stories (Robert Harris’ Fatherland being one) where the Axis powers came out victorious. Nowadays, this is a more common setting, with 2014’s Wolfenstein: The New Order set in a world where the Allies lost the war. There was also the incredible TV adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle. Turning Point’s story does keep you invested throughout, even if it isn’t as original as it was at release.
The environmental kills are another highlight, but please don’t think you can pull these off as often as you like. You can’t stealth your way through a whole level as there are only one, maybe two stealth segments in a level. Shooting is the core gameplay, and it very much sits in the functional side of shooting mechanics. The different weapons you can use are mostly fun to use, and it is interesting to pick up the advanced Nazi weapons and see how they changed from the standard Wehrmacht weapons you usually find in a WWII shooter.
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty’s campaign is inspired by the Nazi’s tactics in war: Get it done quickly. The campaign will take you around 5 hours to complete, and you might be asking why this is a positive. At the time of release, this was definitely a negative point in many reviews. From a retrospective view, however, sometimes you don’t want to keep plugging away at a game that can take upwards of 200 hours to complete, and you just want to spend an afternoon bog washing Nazis. This is the fun side of retro gaming. Titles that were generally loathed when they released get a new lease of life because of a change of habits.
The Bad
Even with a renewed enthusiasm, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty still has many, many flaws. The shooting compared with other FPS games released around the same time, like Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, put Turning Point’s combat to shame. Even with the benefit of looking back now, it still feels incredibly dated, whereas the combat in Halo 3 still, to this day, plays incredibly well. There is noticeable input lag, which doesn’t completely ruin the experience, but it is frustrating. The weapons themselves feel weightless. Fire a M1 Garand in an older Call of Duty title, and you can feel the punch of that weapon. Firing any weapon in Turning Point feels like you are using toys rather than weapons.
The enemy AI is also questionable. Most of the time, the soldiers of the Greater German Reich will just stand in the open, ready for you to mow them down. There are times (few and far between) where they will act like soldiers and fire from behind cover, but they seemingly get a bit bored of hiding and will soon just jump out in the open. They probably feel like they could just stand out in the open as they all seemed to be equipped with some Nazi-engineered shield. It takes a long time to finally drop them, and even a well-placed shot to the head will be ignored. The big set pieces in Turning Point have no real theatre to them thanks to the lack of intelligence in the AI.
The environments themselves look…okay, but all the levels are extremely linear. Turning Point gives you the feel of fighting in a whole area of a city, but you are funneled through corridors by streets covered in rubble or barricades. This means there is zero exploration, with no alternative ways to try and win a fight. A big selling point for Turning Point was that you play as an everyday man. That is true for the opening level, where you make your way down the skyscraper and shove Nazis off the side, but as soon as you’re on the ground, Carson just becomes a standard super solider who can mow down many enemies. Last week, we covered the incredible game The Saboteur, where a big part of the gameplay was, well, sabotage, and that would have worked well here, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Worth It Today?
I paid the grand sum of £2.99 for Turning Point: Fall of Liberty. Considering just after I paid nearly £4 for a coffee, I would definitely say it is worth the modern price. This isn’t a hidden gem by any means. The flaws are numerous, and even in 2008, it felt dated compared to other shooters. However, if you just want an afternoon of some mindless shooting, shoving Nazis’ heads into toilets and seeing how a world would look if the Allies didn’t win, Turning Point will scratch that itch. Your coffee might still be warm when you finish the campaign, but for £2.99, it is definitely worth picking up.
