Very few racing games can combine arcade and simulation gameplay successfully, but this game pulls it off.
Edge of Control is the perfect title for the game. The entire time, you are right on the brink of loosing it, but actually flying off the track doesn't happen unless you make a mistake. The other racers in the beginning of the career are bad enough to ease you into the gameplay but it doesn't take long before they really start to challenge you, even on the easy difficulty setting. There is rarely a time when you can just keep the gas down and you must keep a fine balance between the regular brake and the handbrake. A technique that must be mastered in order to earn victory is the use of the clutch. When at low speeds, pressing the clutch will rev the engine up. Releasing it will give you a slight but effective speed boost. Naturally, this is very bad for the clutch and it will wear down after continuous use. Even in the rare event that I got a good lead on the rest of the pack, the game was still non-stop excitement because of how much you have to concentrate on keeping the truck on the track.
The AI is, hands down, the best I have ever seen in a racing game. I don't mean the best drivers, but the most realistic. On their website, the developers make a point to say that they made sure all the rules that apply to you in the game also apply to your AI opposition, and it clearly shows. They make just as many mistakes as you will. They don't drive better and faster when you get in first like many other games do, but they also are good enough that you won't win by massive margins once you get good. Many other games will have that driver from time to time that cannot be beaten. I almost thought this game did that in one particular race. I fought as hard as I could the entire time to catch one particular racer. We were coming to the last turn and I was about to be annoyed when suddenly, he took the turn a bit too wide, over corrected, and slid to a stop in the middle of the track. Seeing the computer make colossal mistakes like this on occasion really makes the game much more fun.
There game strikes an awkward balance between simulation and arcade. The damage system is incredibly detailed: tires wear down, vehicles overheat, the clutch burns out, shocks go bad, and tires go flat. When these things happen, all that you need to do is pull into the repair area and wait a few seconds while your vehicle is automatically fixed. The vehicle physics are incredibly realistic, but if you leave the track, all you have to do is hit both top shoulder buttons to be reset onto the track without losing much time. After resetting, your car is a ghost for a few seconds that other cars can drive through. Even though the game is based on the real life Baja 1000, that race isn't actually part of the career mode in it's entirety. It is broken up into several different segments that are spread throughout your whole career. Most career events can be completed in less than fifteen minutes, which breaks the game into short, arcade-like gameplay segments. A full, three hour version of the Baja 1000 can be raced outside of the career mode, but it would have been nice to get some career rewards for doing it. While none of these things really hurt the game, I would have preferred if it leaned a little more away from the arcade racing. MotorStorm has that category cornered and there isn't a good choice for a realistic off-road game in this genre. This doesn't mean that I didn't have a blast playing, though.
There is a vast number of licenced vehicles available to drive, ranging from an old Volkswagen Beetle to the trophy trucks that are seen on television. There are eight categories of vehicles. In the single race mode, all categories are open from the beginning, but not all the vehicles are available in each until they are unlocked through the career mode. In career mode, only the first category is open and experience must be earned to unlock more.
Progression through the career mode is probably the best aspect of the game. Many of the events are tournaments that consist of three or more tracks. Points are awarded depending on your place and the winner is the driver with the most at the end of the tournament. Like MarioKart, it is possible to win a tournament without ever getting first place in a race. The other type of event is a rally race. These are basically just a race against the clock with other racers on the track. The game tells you that although all categories of cars are on the track, you are only competing against those the same as you. I don't really believe this because I have been passed by cars in the same class as me but remained in first. Even though the scoring isn't entirely accurate, these were still my favorite events. These were races over large areas of the desert that were usually at least fifteen minutes or longer. There were no repair points in these races. If you damaged your vehicle, which is bound to happen in these longer events, you have to call in a repair helicopter that will land ahead of you to help you out. The higher you place in either race type, the more reward credits (i.e. money) you earn to buy new vehicles or upgrade your current one. There are different levels of each upgrade part, but the price difference is minimal, so there is no reason to buy anything but the best parts. Credits can also be earned from sponsors. As you gain notoriety, better and better sponsors will offer to put their decal on your vehicle and pay you for it. The amount they pay depends on if the panel that their decal is attached to is still on the truck at the end of the race. This adds an interesting aspect to the game because if you drive conservatively and place second or third, you can actually make more money than if you beat the hell out of your vehicle in order to make first place. Since you still earn experience from a race even if you don't get first place, the next category of events can still be unlocked without always getting first; it will just take longer.
Since the last off-road racing game I played was MotorStorm, I was a bit disappointed by this game's graphics at first. As time went on, however, I grew to like them. During the rally races, you can literally see for miles and the view is amazing. The free roam mode covers nine square miles of completely unrepeated land. The trucks could have looked better, but still look good. While the tracks left in the dirt look nice, the mud flung up by the tires looks bad and the dust kicked up dissipates too quickly. The pieces that start flying off your vehicle as it gets damaged look great. As they start to fall off, they will flap in the wind and after they come loose, they will remain on the track for you to run over on the next lap. Collision detection between vehicle is a bit off. The collisions between bodies of the cars themselves is accurate but the tires will clip into each other regularly. Once you get into a race, these issues don't really detract from the action.
Problems considered, I still can't stop playing this game. The action never gets old and the game is always challenging. Since it seemed to have come out of nowhere, I didn't expect much. I was pleasantly surprised by this title.