BAJA: Edge of Control HD

My first honest reaction to BAJA: Edge of Control HD was: who asked for this remaster? A mid-tier 2008 off-road racer getting the HD treatment in 2017 sounds like a THQ Nordic catalogue decision made on a spreadsheet. Then I actually played it, and the answer became pretty clear: off-road racing fans did, because the niche has been criminally underserved for years. At its core this is a simcade dirt racer built around the real Baja 1000 endurance race in Mexico's Baja California. You start in something as unglamorous as a VW Beetle and work your way up through eight vehicle classes - buggies, 4x4s, trophy trucks and more - each sitting inside its own tournament ladder in the Baja Career mode. Races span four types: circuit events, rally stages, open-class races, and hill climbs. The rally stages in particular do something interesting: they play out like real-world stage racing with no co-driver, so reading the terrain becomes the skill. A helicopter repair mechanic can pull you out of a broken-suspension disaster mid-rally, which sounds gimmicky but actually adds a bit of endurance-race tension. Controls lean arcade rather than sim despite all the tuning depth on offer - suspension preload, rebound, and balance are all tweakable, but you can also just jump in on gamepad and have a good time without touching any of it. Xbox controller support is solid; racing wheel compatibility is weak, so leave the Fanatec in the bag on this one. The content pile is genuinely large. Nine open-world maps, around 95 tracks, and over 160 vehicles. Free roam lets you tool around outside of races, though reviewers and players largely agree it runs dry fast without any real objectives attached. The career's XP-and-credits loop is steady and satisfying in the early classes, but the late-game Trophy Truck championships stretch on long enough to test anyone's patience. The AI will happily shunt and clip you, which keeps races scrappy, though the vehicle damage system - flat tires, broken shocks, oil pressure failures - never quite lands with real weight regardless of how carefully or recklessly you race. Here is the part I want to be upfront about: solo career can feel repetitive. The environments are largely open desert, dirt plains, and rocky canyons - attractive in a sun-baked way but lacking the visual variety that makes racing games feel kinetic over a long session. The PC port has had its share of friction too: video settings live in a separate launcher, the Steam overlay historically caused full-screen issues, and asset pop-in (trees, cones, even shadows blinking into existence right next to you) is a known and persistent problem. Online multiplayer exists but the playerbase is thin, so treat it as a bonus rather than a selling point. Locally, though, the story changes. Four-player split-screen works, runs smoothly, and transforms this into exactly the kind of dumb-fun Saturday-night racer that a group of friends can pile into without any prior knowledge of the Baja 1000. That couch mode alone bumps the value proposition up meaningfully. Baja is not trying to be DiRT Rally or MX vs. ATV. It sits somewhere in between: approachable enough for casual players who just want to send a truck over a canyon jump, with just enough tuning and class progression to keep the gearhead crowd interested. It carries its age visibly, and the PC version needs some patience to configure. But as a niche off-road racer with a big track roster and legitimate local multiplayer, it fills a gap that very few games bother with.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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