BAJA: Edge of Control HD - Racclog #1
I remember a time when racing games were everywhere. Franchises like Gran Turismo and Need for Speed were household names, while every developer and their dog was throwing their hat into the ring. The 2000's were a time where series like Project Gotham Racing could get four entries across five years, Need for Speed could be experimental, and simcades you've likely never heard of released to tiny fanfare, like Ferrari Challenge: Trofeo Pirelli and Superstars V8 Racing.
Nowadays you have a few flagship series like Gran Turismo, Forza and The Crew, a small number of devs trying to keep the sim racing genre alive with games like Assetto Corsa (rest in peace, Project CARS) and the odd indie title attempting to stir up fond memories of old arcade racers. Racing games are all but absent in the AA and AAA scene - you simply wouldn't get games like Pure or Split/Second anymore. Weirder still, I think, would be a remaster of a late-2000's racing game. Sure, EA occasionally obliges with Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2010, but games like the aforementioned Pure and Split/Second are certainly off the table.
Somehow, of all games, BAJA: Edge of Control persisted. How? Why? And what possessed THQ Nordic to think "well, THQ went bankrupt, and we don't wanna follow in their footsteps... how about a remaster of a game no one would ever remember even at gunpoint?"
BAJA: Edge of Control (I’m sure there’s an orgasm denial joke in there somewhere) is probably exactly what you think it is: off-road racing, lots of desert plains and dead shrubs, and dune buggies, sometimes of the little and blue variety. You'd be right! The game is a loose adaptation of the famous Baja 1000, a race across the Mexican desert where buggies, trucks, dirt bikes and the very cutely named "truggys" compete side-by-side in a roughly 1000 mile (1600km) endurance, a bit like the Paris-Dakar rally.
By "loose," I mean you don't get to ride dirt bikes and side-by-sides in the game, and while you can do the Baja 250, 500 and 1000 events, they're split up into seperate 10-20 minute stages and are massively truncated, with the 1000 taking me about two hours and twenty minutes to complete. As someone who spent over four hours competing in a fourth of the "1000 Miles !" event in Gran Turismo 4, I believe this is a mercy.
Regardless, Edge of Control is admirably ambitious. Even featuring the Baja 1000 at all let alone in the lengthy form it's in is no mean feat, but there's a lot to chew on here. Aside from the big Baja events, there's also an extensive career mode featuring championships, rallies and one-off events, a sizeable roster of vehicles and a bunch of offline and online free play modes as well. It's also really impressive that all of the game's circuits and rally stages take place in one of nine open areas that, while not exactly large on their own, add up to a pretty enormous open area that you can freely explore and test drive vehicles in (even if they're pretty barren and there's little to find).
That ambition spreads to the racing itself in a few different ways, even if it's not immediately apparent. On the surface this is an incredibly simple off-road racer, virtually indistinguishable from others of its ilk around the time of release (there were a lot of off-road racers back then. I kinda miss it) but the physics really sell it. It's a great middle ground between arcade and realism; you really have to be paying attention and taking stock of the track and how you drive, but handling is pretty fast and loose and there's plenty of big air moments to be found to the point you spend just as much time with your wheels in the air than they do on the dirt. It's really impressive seeing how the suspension and each of the four wheels independently interact with the track, reacting to pretty much every little bump you see; there's been great care and attention given to the roads in Edge of Control, and it's one of the best things about it.
Racing isn't as straightforward as it seems, either. Learning how to operate the clutch is almost mandatory, as pumping revs into the clutch as you go around corners before letting go as you exit gives you an invaluable boost that can mean the difference between rocketing up a steep slope and getting overtaken halfway up. You can preload your suspension to get extra height off of jumps, which has limited but occasionally practical applications such as skipping smaller inclines or skimming over the roofs of opponents, and racing lines aren't always typical apex-hugging affairs, as often it's faster to ride the outer banks on corners. You even get a bit of mid-air control to mitigate damage upon landing or orient yourself for a slide into an upcoming corner, which is endlessly satisfying to pull off.
Another important aspect of racing is the damage your car receives, which isn't something you can simply avoid if you’re skilled enough - it's inevitable. Constant acceleration will damage your engine and decrease your acceleration dramatically, landing on the wrong angle can damage your oil pan and shock absorbers, and overuse of the clutch will eventually render it useless. When your car becomes too damaged, you have to decide whether it's worth the risk of continuing on or stopping for repairs at designated points (there are no animations to accompany this, which makes it look a little funny, but it is what it is). In rally events though, you're at the mercy of a helicopter which you can call for assistance with the triangle button, at which point it'll either tell you to get lost since it's got its hands full with another racer, or it'll stop up ahead and you have to pull over beside it for repairs. Oddly, contact with opponents doesn't cause any mechanical damage, only causing body panels to fall off which will reduce payouts from your sponsor, but all-in-all, it's just enough of a dynamic to keep races feeling fairly fresh throughout the relatively chunky career mode.
The career mode is pretty standard though, with a lot of elements that feel half-baked or thrown in for the sake of having features they can slap on the back of the box. There are a few other event types aside from circuit and rally racing, such as hill climbs (which the AI is too stupid to handle) and open class races, where one car from each of the game's eight car classes share a track in a two lap race - trophy trucks have to do the full two laps while Baja bugs get a massive headstart with everything else inbetween. Since there's only one each of these in every class, they feel a little tacked on, sandwiched between countless championships and extended rally races.
You can slap upgrades in your vehicles, but bafflingly, these also increase the performance of your opponents, meaning aside from things like tires and the clutch, you're actively discouraged from spending money outside of new vehicle purchases. Upgrades are the kinda thing you should be being asked to buy as you progress and opponents become tougher, not to make them tougher. And since most if not all vehicles in any given class drive identically, I almost have to wonder why we're asked to buy them in the first place - why not just let us pick teams or select whatever vehicle we wanna use before the race, Burnout style?
There's also the invitational events, which play exactly the same as normal career events, rarely give you any more credits than regular events do (often less!) and don't have any special requirements or restrictions, even letting you enter with whatever class you like. They're also only available on certain days of the calendar year, which, yeah, there's a calendar system - but it only determines which invitationals are available on any particular week, and absolutely nothing else. Invitationals also don't count towards 100% completion. It all feels kinda superfluous and unfinished.
Unfortunately, I didn't end up finishing Edge of Control. I got pretty close - I edged myself to near completion, if you will (ayy there we go) - worming my way into the trophy truck league, the game's final league, but the career grew tedious and repetitive. Normally this isn't an issue for me, since I play racing games in short bursts inbetween other games, but there was a key issue preventing me from reaching 100% - damage inexplicably became unbearable.
I remember one race near the end of my time with the game where I went over the second jump of the race and somehow, I'd already racked up enough damage to throw my wheel alignment off, pulling me to one side and crippling my top speed. Ten seconds in. This was not a rare occurrence, either; maybe it didn't ever happen that early on in a race prior to that, but around halfway through the career, it got to a point where mechanical damage piled on so quickly that I'd have to stop for repairs every lap, and I mean that with no exaggeration. It's like they were trying to truncate the experience of a full Baja event into one tiny, six minute, four lap race, but it doesn't work, and feels especially unfair when opponents don't have to pit half as often as you do. Though in fairness, the AI likes to slow down for you a lot if you fall too far behind - I can count on one hand how many races I lost.
Still, it didn't feel particularly enjoyable to wreck my suspension halfway through a lap, then spend the next minute or so lumbering around the track itching to stop at the pits. The career mode doesn't seperate difficulty and damage settings, either - Easy sets the AI to easy and the handling to arcade, while Hard sets the difficulty to hard and the handling to simulation. I think I would have completed the career mode if I could beat it with damage turned off, but it's always on, and the way it's handled is borderline infuriating.
I did beat the BAJA 250, 500 and 1000 though. The 1000 was pretty fun and the game's absolutely at its best during these lengthy rally stages, especially since damage doesn't feel as egregious as it does in circuit races (though it still raises eyebrows from time to time). This also isn't a particularly pretty game - it wasn't much of a looker on PS3 and 360 and didn't even render above 600p on the former - but I'm a big fan of racing through these kinds of barren environments, especially while listening to some Queens of the Stone Age or King Gizzard. The soundtrack itself, speaking of, is pretty decent with stuff from Say Anything and The Hives (Tick Tick Boom should be in every racing game) but it's short and I flicked it off early on.
I do have to cut BAJA: Edge of Control a little slack. It's very obviously a title that had twice as many aspirations and ambitions as it did dollars in its budget. It's solid where it counts most, with great track design and vehicles that were fun to drive right through to the end of my time with it. I had no previous nostalgia for the game prior to playing the remaster so it's impressive how smitten I was with it in its earlier hours, but at least in the career mode, it fell off pretty hard for me. I imagine this might be a lot more fun online racing against real people and not the braindead AI, assuming damage isn't as ridiculous as it is offline, but as an almost exclusively offline gamer, I feel a bit let down by the game in the end - the one-two punch of a repetitive career mode and the awful damage system soured it pretty hard. We don't get a lot of these kinds of off-road racing games anymore, though, so if your curiosity is at all piqued, I really think you could do a lot worse than to pick this up on sale, at least if you're not intent on fully completing it. Sample its wares, have a crack at the BAJA 1000, harass the traffic in Free Ride, and I think you'll have a hoot and a holler.
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