What if......What if by some chance Hitler was assassinated during the early years of the second world war? What if there was some sort of political coup and the Nazi's were overthrown? What if the Germans then decided to side with the Americans and the British and they all decided they hadn't had enough and wanted to fight some communists? OK, this isn't exactly the most original idea. There's a few alternate history World War II games out there, the red alert standing out the most. There seems to be a trend of the Russians wanting to fight all of the western democracies, and major players like Japan are always left out of the equation. That's fine though, it is, after all, an alternate history.

Warfront: Turning point does mix it up a bit. The story begins with Americans and British attempting to retake southern England from the Germans after Operation Sea Lion was a success. Back home, the German resistance is staging a coup against the Nazi regime. Meanwhile, the Russians decide to march across Europe.......why not, they're already there. Now, old enemies are forced to work together to stop the Iron curtain from taking over Europe.

This set up lends to the game having three different selections of unit types, with distinct differences. Many staple units of the area are of course there, including Sherman tanks and paratroopers, but there's also a few hypothetical units, such as soviet ice tanks or German war zeppelins. Though all three sides are distinct in their unit types, and have certain bonuses such as extra defense or superior air power, the game puts strategy to the wayside in favor of brute force. It seems that resources aren't generally a problem, so fueling the war machine is all taken care of. The units, while all having their distinct use, are in general pretty fragile. This mixture leads to large armies, and massive casualties. While you do need a good mixture of units to take over any base, the general rule of thumb is quantity over quality. A system like this leads to a lot of exciting gameplay, at least for a little while. After you play with all the unit types you'll quickly find the inherent lack of strategy makes the game turn stale pretty quick.

The game is not without it's perks, however. One of the things that really caught my attention was the ability to jump into any of the ground based turrets and use them in a first person perspective. This grants you a bonus to the firepower of that turret, but forces you to leave the main map. Also, you can queue any factory for endless looping of production. In addition you can set up a factory to automatically group units into a specified group, leaving you free to command the battle at the front, and not keep switching back to base.

Anybody who has played a RTS game in the last few years should feel at home very quick with Warfront. You build your base, gather resources and then churn out your war machine. The standard top down view and 360 rotatable map are all common place in any RTS these days. Another item Common with many recent RTS games is that of the "hero" unit. A named unit with a specific skill set and the ability to gain experience points and new skills as the game progresses. These units have more firepower and are a lot more hearty than your standard units, and also give surrounding units buffs. These are the units that can turn the tide of battle,and its often a good idea to cripple your opponents hero's early on.

After just a few rounds of play, you can tell the design team put a lot of work into the graphics and coding of the game. Screens and menus are well designed and polished, and the landscapes, from the streets of London to the frozen soviet homeland, are all beautiful. The physics engine is well put together too. when a tank explodes a shock wave is sent outwards. When units are attacked by any kind of explosive, expect to see them flip through the air, often not in one piece. In addition, small aesthetic items such as headlights turning on at night add to the visual enjoyment of the game. The music, while nothing fantastic, adds to the experience. Where the graphics team really shines is on the cutscenes between levels. They're really well rendered and really add to the story line.

It's unfortunate when such a beautiful well designed game falls victim to stale gameplay. This game is definitely worth playing, It just lacks replayability.