What if Winston Churchill had been killed by that car that hit him in New York in 1931? Apparently, Hitler would have done an awful lot better, and invaded America.
All German soldiers' brains would turn to mush, all worldly objects would become magically sticky, jumping would become nearly impossible, and people would gain super-strength and the ability to absorb dozens of bullets.
As if the phrase 'Games For Windows' wasn't ridiculous enough, Turning Point makes further mockery of any meaning it might contain. No mouse cursor for the menus, no video controls, no ability to task-switch, and a controller setup based on a diagram of an Xbox 360 controller. This is not a game for Windows by any stretch - it's a crummy port of a crummy 360 game.
Its worst crime is an astonishing lack of ambition. The opening scene tells you all you need to know: you're high up on the scaffolding of a New York skyscraper when squadrons of zeppelins and planes appear on the horizon, and begin laying waste to the city.
Your involvement? To find the prescribed route down from the maze of girders and onto the roof. WOW! From then on the game's five or so hours involve little more than running into a room, shooting everyone, and running into the next room. There is, of course, a sequence where you must man a turret and defend a barrier, and another where you must snipe some men from the rooftops. And that's it.
It's a miracle that there's not a sequence where you shoot jeeps from the back of a moving truck, but that would have required the game to have vehicles.
The story, such as it is, is told with overwhelming incompetence. You get a better understanding of its alternative history from the blurb in the manual than the opening cutscene, or indeed any cutscenes following, and the ending is atrocious.
As you unwittingly perform the final task, rather than cut to a dramatic cutscene, the game freezes as if it's crashed and tells you that you've unlocked bonus content. After this awkward pause the unemotional nonsense plays out a conclusion that it clearly thought contained gravitas, but succeeds only in ass.
It's first-person... apart from when you're jumping. Indeed, climb up a box, or a ladder, or try and jump near one of the game's nine million invisible barriers, and it cuts to a third-person view and a laborious animation.
There's an attempt at including climbing sections (read: dangling from window ledges or wires), but these are so contrary to the rest of the game that they have to be indicated by incongruous flashing yellow graphics, lest you attempt to climb, jump or explore in an undesignated area.
Most enemies are psychically aware of your presence in a room, but if you manage to 'sneak up' on one standing facing a wall for some reason (maybe he's been an extra naughty Nazi), a shot to the back of his head will, well, wake him up - there's no kudos for a stealthy kill here.
Health loss is indicated by your vision becoming increasingly black and white - a feature that's just inspired in a game mostly set in grey corridors/streets at night. You'll most likely die thanks to getting clipped on a wall rather than your own mistakes, and it's then that you'll feel the weight of the moronic checkpointing.
This is a game so stupid a checkpoint will appear right before it loads an area, but not after completing a set objective, and almost always before a tiresome run-and-gun section ten minutes before the thing that's likely to kill you.
This is a colossal mess, looking years out of date, filled with scrappy glitches (enemies regularly 'ping' out of vision as they get their animations in a muddle), that manages to screw up the absolute basics. I'm now imagining an alternative history where different developers are working on Legendary, so I can still have that to look forward to.
So far I've really enjoyed this game. I think you're probably right about the quality control issues, but why ... what is the phrase ...
"Don't hate, appreciate. Don't be a tormentor, be a mentor." ?
I think the developer deserves encouragement not a barrage of insults. I personally find the alternative history angle very interesting. I know some people just really don't like it. Fair enough. but that doesn't mean the game is a load of "S**t". Encourage these developers please !
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