In a world of recent arcade style off road racers, like Pure, DiRT, and Sega Rally Revo, Baja stands alone, attempting to bring the reality of a sim style racer to the off road world, and for the most part, it succeeds in doing so. However, applying Gran Turismo style thinking to a genre of racing that's long been dominated by arcade controls might not be the best idea out there, and I found myself having a hard time wrapping my head around the concept and the controls, and feeling more frustrated with my experience than enthralled.

To start things off you'll begin with the Baja Bug class of vehicles, but you'll eventually be able to bump your way up by winning events and cash, allowing you to modify your current vehicle in a variety of ways. As you gain experience from these wins, you'll also start to unlock the other classes to toy around with, but you'll need to have enough cash on hand to buy these vehicles as well. However, once you win 1st place in a race you can no longer gain more experience from attempting that race again. Overall there are 8 different vehicle classes to choose from, offering up a decent variety between each class.

Along with a variety of vehicles to choose from, 2XL went all out in bringing a large variety of real world locations and tracks to life in Baja. Track design itself is pretty solid as well, with plenty of challenging twists and turns along the way that even the most hardened sim racer will have to attempt again and again to nail down the correct path and best way of utilizing slides, gas and brakes. The constantly changing surfaces of the race tracks themselves also toss in another malleable element to maneuvering, guaranteeing that not every experience on the same track will play out the same way twice.

However, it's the controls that prove to be the biggest hurdle for Baja, but it's not necessarily because they're awful. Instead, you can tell the developers attempted to bring the most realistic physics possible to these off road vehicles, but along with this comes one hell of a learning curve for new players, and it's tough to struggle thru the first few hours of the game. Once you start gaining cash and can begin to work on upgrades for your vehicle, maneuverability becomes less of a hassle, but it's still a lengthy stretch before you'll actually feel like you're improving at the game. Get ready to face quite a few losses at first, as the game has an emasculating quality to it that'll surprise quite a few genre fans I think

Along with the tough as nails controls, comes the damage physics as well. It's really easy early on to cause enough damage to make placing in a race (other than last) damn near impossible, as you'll blow a tire, or cause some underside damage after a particularly nasty jostle, creating quite a bit of strain on your vehicle for the rest of the race. It is possible to get repairs, but it's not always ideal to do so. I'll admit that I like seeing damage featured in a realistic way with racers, but I'd also like to be eased in to it a bit, or have an idea of what to expect without being punished by performing the same race over and over again just to get things right.

However, once you get past that curve, there's a lot in Baja to check out and see, and the different classes of vehicles provide a lot of replay value later on. The sheer number of tracks, and even the length of some of these races is astounding, but a the endurance races are an absolute pain to tackle, with some of them going on for an hour or so at a time, which is far from ideal if you don't live alone or have other distractions to keep from sitting thru an entire race for that amount of time. Also, while the game does take it's locations from actual places, the visuals in Baja aren't exactly spectacular, and it's not the prettiest game to look at for an hour plus when you're just going thru one track.

There is a decent variety when it comes to events though, with five different types to compete in. Along with your basic races and the endurance competitions, there's rally, hill climb, and open class, allowing different vehicles to participate together with a few handicaps in place. All of these races are also available online, where you can compete with 10 racers in a few different modes as well. If you want to play at home there's also 4 player split screen, and a system link option too.

The lack of a solid tutorial system is another aspect that will hurt Baja for first time players, and while you can seek out tutorials to explain certain control elements, it could seriously use something similar to the Turismo license tests to get players accustomed to how the controls will work on various surfaces, and what to expect when encountering steep turns or jumps, and how to effectively preload, since the mechanics seem to be so different from other off-road racers out there.

So while Baja is technically impressive, it's also maddeningly difficult, and easily one of the more frustrating racers I've played recently. The controls are unforgiving, and the vehicle damage is definitely realistic but also provides a huge hurdle for actually enjoying the game. If you've been looking for a sim title in the off-road genre, then Baja is pretty much the only option out there, but be prepared for a really steep learning curve. If you can manage to wrap your head around the controls and physics then the game offers a lot to see, but be prepared to go thru a few controllers before you can get the hang of things.