Where would strategy and FPS games be without World War II to use as source material? When the developers at Spark Unlimited decided to return once more to this fertile well for their latest shoot-‘em-up, the problem was in trying to come up with some new angle on such a well trammelled theme.

The answer came from a minor car accident. In 1931 the then-little-known Winston Churchill was struck by a cab on 5th Avenue in New York and, apart from a lifelong limp, he survived the encounter. But suppose instead that he'd been killed and as a result the Nazis won the war and occupied all of Europe, including Britain? This game starts with this hypothesis and the action begins as the Nazis launch a surprise invasion of the USA in 1953.

You play Dan Carson, a well-toned construction worker who witnesses the invasion of New York atop his nearly constructed skyscraper and doesn't take kindly to the Germans wrecking his work. So within minutes he joins the Resistance and embarks on a series of missions that will take him from the Big Apple to Washington DC and finally London, to prevent the enemy's even more Dastardly Plot.

For all its great intentions, though, it's hard not to look at Turning Point as a DC comic where the outcome is never really in doubt. The Nazis get shot and blown up but don't bleed. You can get shot up but if you hide round a corner for a few moments you'll recover most of your health (although there are no indicators to tell you how quickly your health is deteriorating or improving).

Weapons have been designed around believable upgrades of WWII German army issue plus a few American standards like the Thomson machine gun and the M1 Garand. You're allowed to carry four grenades and a symbol appears when one's thrown at you but without any indication of where from. The only puzzle you have to solve is how to wire a bomb, but only a one-year-old child could possibly fail the test. The sound, however, is universally impressive, especially during the opening attack.

The enemy AI is haphazard at best, the graphics (despite using the Unreal engine) are unimaginative, the thin storyline is rigidly linear and the only fun part of combat is the grappling feature which provides some entertaining animation as you knock your opponent out.

You should have no difficulty whizzing through to the end within a few hours and, unless you fancy a bit of multiplayer deathmatch using the same maps, it's hard to imagine why you'd want to revisit this invasion.

A classic case of a great idea marred by disappointing execution. Such a grand theme needed a longer, more involving and intricate plot with characters to care about, villains to boo and truly hair-raising missions.