Turning Point: Fall of Liberty second look

Where's the beef? - This game sucks. Too harsh? I've been told recently that I can be a bit tough on how I grade games but I call them like I see them. For my own reasons (that I can't really get into) I'm a little bit bitter about being urged to give games higher grades than they really deserve. Who does this serve? Not the gaming company that makes an inferior product. Unless you're dealing with kids, telling people what they want to hear doesn't help anybody, especially a gaming company who can use constructive criticism so that they can improve their product. It also doesn't help the person I most serve as a gaming journalist, the consumer. Why blow smoke saying how good a game is and let someone buy a game then find out it stinks? It gives a writer no credibility and bad gaming experiences can sour a casual fan on the greatness of gaming. Sure, all reviews regardless of medium are subjective (I rarely agree with movie reviews) but the job of any review is to give the consumer as much information as possible to make a good decision. A dishonest review, or even worse, a review that's softened so as not to offend anyone, is a lie. Okay, I'm rambling because I'm annoyed about something else, let me get back to my original point.
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My first impressions of Turning Point was that it was rental only. I'd stick with that assessment but after playing the multi-player, this games flaws are even more magnified. The online server is a joke as I'd wait endlessly to find a match. I spent so much time in the online lobby that I felt like I was at the DMV. Once I finally played a match it was laggy as hell, had no mapping system to see where you were or where you're going, no radar system to see other gamers, had few weapon options, and the recoil was so bad that shooting a gun felt like holding a fire hose. Having such an important part of a games offering suck so hard sadly reduces the enjoyability of its single-player option. I'd still recommend Turning Point to rent for all of the things I mentioned in my earlier post, but don't bother playing it online. It'll just piss you off.
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