games
Dark Games of March
Nazis in New York, bio-mutants and ancient mayhem
By Scott Gardner
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty
PC, PS3, Xbox 360
In America, the 1950s are fondly recalled as a time of peace and prosperity, when life was happy and predictable. In Turning Point: Fall of Liberty, however, things happen a little differently.
Set in 1953, this first-person shooter imagines an alternate history where the U.S. never enters the Second World War... until the war enters the States. As construction worker Dan Carson watches from a half-built skyscraper, a fleet of Nazi warships takes New York harbour, and waves of giant Zeppelins darken the sky. With German paratroopers assaulting the city block by block, Carson barely escapes, but the Big Apple isn’t so lucky — it falls quickly as the invasion grows. And videogame or not, it’s chilling to see a huge scarlet swastika banner hanging from the Statue of Liberty.
Playing as the street-smart, but otherwise regular guy, Carson, your first task is just to survive the chaos, but you soon join the American Resistance, using guerilla tactics against the occupying Nazis. Of course, the Third Reich was no pushover, and after handily defeating Europe it has spent the last decade developing powerful new weapons — not spaceships and lasers but the technologies that were on its drawing boards at the end of the real WWII, like jet engines and rocket launchers.
So you’re outgunned and outmanned, but you make up for it with your knowledge of the local “terrain” — subway tunnels, rooftops, bodegas — and desperation. For example, short of weapons and ammo, you’ll engage in a lot more hand-to-hand combat than the usual shooters, including nifty grappling features and using enemies as human shields.
In most heroic, invasion-themed games the ultimate goal is to single-handedly win the war, but in Turning Point your sights are set a little lower. Carson and his comrades just want to stay alive and maybe, just maybe, strike a few larger symbolic blows to inspire their besieged nation. Can they do it? Well, if there’s one tribe of humans you shouldn’t mess with it’s a bunch of pissed-off New Yorkers.
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Dark Sector
PC, PS3, Xbox 360
While infiltrating a secret lab in a crumbling
Eastern Bloc country, ruthless agent Hayden Tenno is infected by a
bio-weapon that turns parts of his body into metal and allows him to
morph into different combat forms. Even worse, the bio-weapon has mutated everyone else into huge, violently insane metallo-creatures.
Now the military thinks Tenno is a monster, and the monsters think he’s
human — a pretty convenient set-up for a kill-’em-all action and
shooting game. And what kills they are, since our hero’s main weapon is
his glaive — a pizza-sized throwing star now growing out of his right
hand. But there’s another variable, along with these superpowers our
hero is growing something even less welcome: a conscience.
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God of War: Chains of Olympus
PSP
This prequel tracks the trials of the brutal (but oddly lovable)
warrior Kratos during his decade of servitude to the gods. He’ll have
new magic and weapons, but it’s still all about hacking and slashing
the nastiest creatures of Greek mythology all across — and below — the
ancient world.
Gamers have good reason to be suspicious of epic console games
reappearing on handhelds, but the God of War series exists in a
different reality. The PS2 versions are that system’s smoothest and
best-looking games, yet Chains of Olympus recreates the same dramatic
camera angles and epic set pieces despite the PSP’s four-inch screen.
So to update The Bard: Cry havoc and let slip the gods of war!
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