Turning Point: Fall of Liberty - first look

Where would we be without alternate histories, eh? We'd be stuck fighting the same old conflicts, on the same old battlefields, against the same old enemies. But by upending the history books the possibilities become as limitless as time itself. The latest game to adopt a wonkified view of the past is PS3, 360 and PC first-person shooter, Turning Point: Fall of Liberty.

It's 1952, but Britain's Jerry smashing bulldog, Sir Winston Churchill, is long dead (ungraciously run over by a New York cabbie in 1931, apparently), England has been properly shafted by Hitler and Uncle Sam America has declined to play any part in World War II. With its passage clear, the Nazi war machine fixes its regulation blue eyes on the United States and launches a surprise attack on an unsuspecting New York.

This is when it all kicks off big style for Danny Carson, just an Average Joe construction engineer who's caught unawares - tool in hand - working on the girders of a partially built skyscraper high above the Manhattan streets when the Swastika vanguard appears on the horizon. The following moments act as the game's introductory level and it certainly makes for a dramatic and powerfully alluring scenario.

As Carson edges his way along the steel beams searching for a route to safety, an absolute shit storm of total chaos is happening around him. The sky darkens as jets, bombers and airships roar overhead, buildings explode, bodies flail desperately as they plummet to the ground, debris dances in the air to a chorus of screaming, shouting and the pervasive drone of an air raid siren... as game openers go, Turning Point 's pulls no punches.