Baja: Edge of Control
EXTREME…ly difficult
Tags: Baja Categories: Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Nov 6th, 2008
| Title | Players | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Baja (title page) | 2 | ||
| Developer | Publisher | Genre | Online |
| Racing | No | ||
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One notch past rally racing, you’ll find Baja racing – a grueling test of endurance that will separate gearheads from wannabes. This is a contest that sees people savoring each hard won victory or those who’ll be left in the dirt, weeping and pulling their hair out. Oh, and the actual racing is probably pretty tough, too.
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In the grand style of such luminaries as Gran Turismo and Forza Motorsports, Baja: Edge of Control presents the now-standard formula: buy a low-end vehicle, race to earn cash (or credits) to upgrade your vehicle, race more to earn more to buy better vehicles and open new levels of racing. Where Baja differs is in the environment. Not confined to oval paved tracks or even the tree-lined ruts in rally games, Baja takes racers out into the wilderness. Tracks are ill-defined, twisty, and avidly attempting to defeat racers. A spill off the side of a mountain trail barely wider than your vehicle is commonplace, and making it through even a short race with all the panels still on the vehicle is a rare occurrence. And in any of the hours-long races (yes, hours), it’s a race between which will wear out first: your vehicle or your patience.
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The game designers included a neat feature in this huge game world: free-range driving. Want to take a vehicle out and just drive all over the levels and look around? Knock yourself out. You can turn damage off and the designers even gave you a reason to drive around. Each stage has discoverable landmarks, and as you might suspect, finding them all gives you an Achievement. If you’re one for getting every achievement in every Xbox game you play, prepare to put hours – nay, DAYS – into this game.
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Baja has two major flaws, and they actually compound each other. First, while AI vehicles are easily able to knock the player vehicle around, they are as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. Forget trying to bump them out of the way around a corner – the most you’ll do is get tied up on them and have to brake to disentangle. Yes, AI vehicles will go off course, crash, and flip over, but they’ll be back in action and passing you soon enough.
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Secondly, the difficulty in the game is stupefying. There are steep learning curves and then there are games that let you think by upgrading your vehicle you are actually improving its performance when, in fact, you are engaging in Sisyphus-like machinations. This game is in the latter category. Winning races is hard. And since advancement in the game pretty much depends on you winning races, advancing is really hard. See those shiny awesome trucks that could make short work of Everest or Kilimanjaro? You might actually climb either of those peaks before you’ll get a chance at driving them in career mode. You can play around with them in arcade mode so you can see what it is you’re missing, though, so you’ve got that going for you. Which is nice.
| What Works | Score |
|---|---|
|
+ Miles and miles of track + Free-range driving + Lots of unlockable vehicles |
6.8 |
| What Doesn't | |
|
- AI drivers area apparently driving immovable tanks under the flimsy offroader exteriors - Difficulty level cancels out what could have been a lot of fun |
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| Under the Shrink-wrap | |
| It’s nice to look at, but only serious masochists need apply. | |
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Tags: Baja
Posted by Mark "MadMup" Zwolanek on Nov 6th, 2008 and is filed under Reviews, Xbox 360 Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can post a comment, or trackback from your own site.
