Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

The concept of a world where the Nazis won WWII pops up every so often in genre fiction. Turning Point’s story begins when a car accident in 1931 kills Winston Churchill; without his rallying, Nazi Germany achieves total victory on all fronts. Predictably, the Führer’s ambitions stretch across the Atlantic, and the game opens in 1953 as Hitler’s forces launch a multicity assault on American soil. Players inhabit the role of New York City construction worker Dan Carson, who joins the resistance after an air raid. Lady Liberty’s been bombed into so much scrap metal while threatening zeppelins (laughably dubbed “assault blimps”) blot out the sun across the cityscape, but players never really get a sense of how else Fall of Liberty’s world differs from our own. Already saddled with an indistinct hero, the game wastes an intriguing idea with story beats that dribble out only via cut scenes. It’s ironic that the game hinges on an alternative-history hook: In another alternative history, one in which TP came out eight years ago, it would’ve been a great first-person shooter. In 2008, it just feels like an underrealized effort.—Evan Narcisse