Baja

Among the core genres that make up the videogame collective, racing games rank among the most specialized. Where most genres are fairly easy to delineate, the defining characteristics of a racing simulation are buried deep within the code. Under all of the shiny cars and spectacular vistas, the silent soliloquy of physics that unites car and driver is what determines a racing game’s true value. The devil is in the details, too, only he has borne a brood and formed a posse. Authentic handling characteristics as they apply to variable terrain, engine noise, weight displacement, oversteer and gear ratios are as paramount to racing purists as they are incidental to the typical Sunday driver who just wants to put pedal to metal and have a blast. Make it too real and Joe Sunday heaves the controller, but make it too “arcadey” and you risk losing the kind of credibility and enthusiasts spread like tear-offs in a mud rally.

After six MX-versus-ATV hybrids, nobody knows this quite as well as 2XL chief designer Robb Rinard, which is why you won’t find any motorcycles in Baja: Edge of Control, even though they’ve dominated 30 of the series’ 41 races since 1967. The fact that 2XL decided to ditch bikes (and ATVs) to focus their efforts on achieving a Gran Turismo-level simulation says as much about their dedication as it does about THQ’s fortitude and resolve to afford them the freedom. It’s rare these days that we find a major publisher willing to back a developer’s vision instead of simply issuing a diktat, and this was a major decision. I almost blew a gasket when I heard there were no bikes in the game. I’ve ridden in my share of desert scrambles, but Baja is the Super Bowl of Enduros, so the idea of a virtual re-creation really hit home, as I’m sure it has or will with anyone even vaguely familiar with the annual event.

Saddling up on the Malcolm Smith Husqvarna that I watched dominate the race as a kid sure would have been nice, but not at the expense of delivering the ultimate off-road racing opus, which, after three years and hundreds of physics-laden miles later, is exactly what they’ve delivered.

Is Baja: Edge of Control as good a racing game as Gran Turismo 5? In my opinion, absolutely, but in a completely different way. The two games complement each other more than they draw comparison. It all boils down to preference, really, but there’s no question that Baja is the Gran Turismo of off-road racing. GT5 will forever reign in overall presentation (it has its own cable TV network, for shit’s sake), but what Baja lacks in shiny superfluousness, it way overcompensates for in size, depth, navigation and a little thing called the Baja 1000: a 300-mile, four-hour-long version of the world’s greatest off-road race, as in 300 real-world miles of continuous, wide-open, point-to-point racing that never loads. The Baja Race mode spans the entire Peninsula, with three approximately 60-minute legs of the Baja 250 winding through San Felipe, Ensenada and Sky Ranch, and two legs of the 500 (Cabo and the Score Baja 500) coming in at around 90 minutes each. That’s 10 hours of real-world open racing through Mexico…per vehicle class, a single mode that spans 90 hours. And that’s barely the appetizer. The Race menu alone offers Rally, Hill Climb, Open Class, Baja Race and Free Ride competitions, each a full-fledged circuit unto itself. To get an idea of how meticulously 2XL labored over every aspect of the game, spend a few minutes playing around in Free Ride. Great physics on the track are one thing, but when you can roll onto the shoreline and see the ripples slowly folding onto the sand or hit a Palo Verde tree 50 yards from nowhere and it bends and pushes you back in exacting fashion, it really puts things in perspective, especially taking into account that the same level of detail applies to hundreds of square miles of open desert topography.

At the heart of it all, Baja Career is where it all comes together: A desert rat’s dusty dream come true, where the mother lode of racing circuits awaits in vehicles ranging from the 80-horsepower Baja Bug to the 800-horsepower Trophy Truck, sandwiched between Unlimited VW, 4x4, Open Wheel, Mini Truck, Fullsize Truck, and Class 1 Ltd. (and when all that dust settles, the coolest bonus vehicles on the planet). There are two ways to make money in Baja: Edge of Control, by placing in the top three or via contingency sponsorship, whereby various corporations pay you cash money to plaster their logo all over your panels—the only catch being you’ve got to cross the finish with them still attached to the car. You can call the support chopper for mechanical repairs, but they don’t carry duct tape, so play nice. Earning credits allows you to buy new vehicles and modify the one you’ve got in the game’s streamlined, easy-in-easy-out parts interface, storing each passing vehicle in your garage (to utilize elsewhere in the game at your discretion) as you progress. You can go as far as fine-tuning shock rebound and bounce, brake bias and gear ratios, or stick with presets: manage your oil pressure, tires, brakes, shocks and clutch or turn them all off. The level of simulation is almost entirely user defined. You can even lock down the camera—simply click the right analog stick when you find your sweet spot and there it stays. This is one game that I can say truly has it all: the gamut of online and multiplayer components, a perfectly suited narrative/tutorial and interface, dynamic audio, awesome video segments, tons of achievements and unlockables, and who knows how many other nuggets buried under all that desert (there’s gotta be an old Hodaka Wombat or two under all that sand). And not an ounce of it at the expense of the core game, which happens to be groundbreaking.

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