Wow, Turning Point is really bad. I thought the premise was pretty cool and had hoped that the delay would result in a respectable FPS, but dear God the demo is a total mess. The graphics are bad, the animation is bad, and the controls are sluggish and unresponsive.
From the very start, you can tell they're trying to wow you with this large-scale set-piece of the Nazi invasion of New York with tons of explosions and debris, but all it does is showcase how painfully lacking the game is from a technical standpoint. The city looks utterly flat and primitive, with no sense believable of scale or atmosphere. There are a lot of explosions going off, but there's also a lot of flicker and popping as the game struggles to decide which sprites are in front and which are behind.
Character movement is stiff and wonky, and your character's arms and hands feel completely detached. There's absolutely no feeling that those limbs are connected to your body in any way - reload animations look totally ridiculous as a result.
I also noticed that the game has suffered a visual downgrade from the last time I saw it. Gamespot had a stage demo of it during last year's E3, and the parachutes of the troopers had self-shadowing of the suspension lines on the fabric, which are gone now.
Throw in some attempts at getting an emotional response that are just too ham-fisted and poorly presented to come across as anything but unintentionally funny, and you've got a demo that never should have been released. Honestly, this one is as bad as Hour of Victory.
