I recently reviewed Legendary,
another 2008 shooter from Spark Unlimited released
several months after Turning Point. It was a
massively under-rated game, only let down by
it's short length and buggy last episode. Thus,
coming into Turning Point I was expecting more
of the same. At least this game got more average
reviews, with a 40% aggregate on gamerankings.com.
That's still well below the par with a score
not likely to warrant many purchases outside
of hardcore shooter gamers - like me.
In many ways Turning Point
is the same as Legendary. It does, in fact,
deserve a higher score than 40%. It's not as
polished or creative as Legendary, understandably
so since this was only Spark's second ever game
and first for the PC. But it's plays very similarly.
First I'll delve into Turning
Point's high hit; the design. Just like Legendary
the levels all look good. It starts out epic,
and I love epic in my games. In TP's case, you're
hundreds of stories high on tiny scaffolding
working at the top of a skyscraper when New
York becomes under attack. Planes are flying
low overhead with buildings falling and carnage
all around you as you navigate your way down
the skyscraper. Looking down you can see hundreds
of little vehicles on the hazy city streets.
It all looks fantastic. How can a game start
so awesomely, just as Legendary did, yet get
such bad reviews?
After fighting through the
under-attack New York city, the game visits
Washington D.C. and finally London. The tight,
twisted levels are very similar to Legendary.
Sure, they are very linear - there's no exploration
whatsoever. Most of the time it's all very small,
with the except of the London Tower Bridge you're
in fairly cramped quarters. But the Unreal Engine
3 is put to good use and there's plenty of detail
all around you. This isn't the best looking
UE3 game, but it's not the worst either.
In fact Medal of Honor: Airborne
is probably the most similar gameplay experience
to TP. It's the same engine so the two games
look very similar. They could easily pass as
being all part of the same game. MOH: Airborne
has no story. TP at least has some story, although
it should have been developed a bit more. They're
both very short, around five hours. So then
all it can really come down to in MOH: Airborne
getting reviews averaging 76% compared to TP's
40% is... gameplay.
Does the gameplay in TP stink
THAT much? In short, no it doesn't. It does
have it's problems though, namely the weapons.
Some of the weapons are great but since 90%
of the enemies carry the MP50, that's all you
really use throughout the game. Unfortunately,
it's a crappy weapon. It's not accurate unless
you use the iron sights, but then you can't
even see where you're firing. Some of the other
weapons are fun, but you don't really use them
a lot. Then there's the inconsistency of your
weapons all resetting every time you start a
new level (of which there are eight). Your default
pistol and machine gun are rubbish, so the start
of each level is spent playing conservately
until you've replenished your MP50 and some
other weapon, since you frustratingly only carry
two at a time.
The enemies all have your typical
budget title A.I. They duck behind objects and
that sort of thing, but aren't a huge challenge.
I played on normal and only died several times
during the game, mostly through being lazy or
a grenade surprising me. This isn't a one-man-army
style game, you still have to slowly pick enemies
off one at a time. But it does take a bit more
damage for enemies to kill you than the standard
realistic shooter, at least for most of the
game. It felt like by the last couple of levels
enemies seemed to be dishing out more damage,
although they still only had the same weapons.
So the gameplay isn't that
bad at all. My only big complaint about TP is
the checkpoints. They're sometimes far to distantly
placed. You can get through a good ten minutes
of gameplay before getting to a checkpoint,
which is ridiculous. I felt like if I hadn't
reached a checkpoint in a while, I better start
playing more meticulously because I don't want
to go back ten minutes if I suddenly die. And
it did happen a few times. The last level, which
really amps the difficulty, is particularly
bad where you start out with no ammo, enemies
everywhere and you're constantly sprinting to
cover trying to stay alive so you don't have
to replay it over and over.
Many reviewers criticised that
the story was under-developed. TP tells the
story of an alternate WWII where Germany has
taken over all of Europe and Africa and is now
invading America. And sure, the story didn't
evolve much. All I knew about my character is
that he was a construction worker. There's no
other characters in the game you'll get to know.
So there is little story development. Does that
REALLY matter that much for a developer's very
first game on the PC? Cut them some slack! Even
Crysis didn't have much of a story.
Wrapping TP up, it wasn't as
good as Legendary. The combat and checkpoints
needed some work, it needed more than eight
levels and five hours of gameplay, the story
went nowhere. But I still enjoyed it, and I
would play it again!
