When is a WWII shooter not a WWII shooter? When its Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, a first person shooter from developer Spark Unlimited and publisher Codemasters that has the US remove itself from the Nazi threat in Europe, until the Nazis invade our shores. At E3 last week we got to see a brief gameplay demo of the title that's due out this fall.

We first saw the opening level of the game which takes place in New York City in the 1950's in this alternate timeline. Your character isn't a solider; he's a construction worker who as the game begins witnesses the Nazis invade Manhattan via both planes and armed Zeppelins. You are on top of a still under construction skyscraper when the invasion begins and the first part of the level has you trying to get down to ground level while the city blows up around you. We got to see enemy paratroopers coming down to the ground. If you shoot them down before they land they won't come back to shoot you later in the game.

Eventually your character gets down on the ground and finds the city under attack from all fronts. You join up with some National Guard troops to fight the invasion. However we were told that later in the game the realization hits that the city is lost. In the second part of our demo we saw the exodus from New York City of our character and his new buddies. Part of the game takes place inside the New York City subway system which are being used by citizens as a "safe" place to hide. Unfortunately the Nazis know the people will use the subway system and have gotten down below as well. The sequence finds your character shooting through wrecked subway cars at the enemy invaders and then topside as they have to take out a Sniper's Alley location of enemies before dealing with a massive Zeppelin.

We have to say that the opening invasion sequence was one of the best openings of a first person shooter game we have ever seen and certainly different than the normal WWII shooter of invading Normandy. The game takes its alternate history seriously. The Nazis have the powerful guns in the game while the US, because they didn't enter the war in Europe, have weapons that are old fashioned and somewhat underpowered. Enemy AI in the game also seems to be pretty solid with foes out flanking your position and taking cover without the need for pre-scripted sequences. Visually the game's use of Epic's Unreal Engine 3 is pretty obvious but still gives the game some good character models and visual effects.

Turning Point: Fall of Liberty is aiming to be a WWII shooter for people (and there are a lot of them) who are just tired of the genre and having the Nazis invade the US is certainly a good way to go (besides New York City, Washington DC will be a location for the full game with other settings to be revealed later). We hope to get more hands-on time with the game before Spark Unlimited and Codemasters releases this PC-Xbox 360-PS3 game later this fall.

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