New Off-Road Racing Game Coming from THQ

Baja (which to my ears rhymes with Plaja and is very sunny and comfortable) is the title of THQ's next generation off-road racer. Apparently, the recently released MX vs. ATV wasn't enough to saturate THQ's thirst for mud and gravel, so they sent the developers back to work while giving them a nice and inspiring racing-game name like Baja.

The press release for the game states that the "Baja" will, in fact, not be a sunny beach where you go and relax with cheerleaders and drinks, but more a game mode, the most testing one for both the player and the vehicle that the player chooses to drive. Baja is "the ultimate off-road endurance challenge" as it includes huge "open worlds" that "extend thousands of miles across all landscapes." The main consequence is that the bigger races can last for up to four gaming hours. Which is a bit much and I don't really see many gamers that are ready to endure a four-hour long race through mud, hills, or plains. Even if there's an option to save and later load the game, such long races might end up being more of a drawback than a plus for an off-road racing game.

Other than the Baja (I can't really let go of the beach image in my head), expect lots and lots of standard racing stuff. Some 40 vehicles will be selectable, some outright, others after being unlocked. A few hundred different parts can be swapped in and out of the vehicles and there are around 100 square miles of digitally-generated tough cross-country landscape on which you can race the vehicles. Apart from the now-famous Baja, there are Hill Climb challenges and head-to-head Open Class races, but details on what these game modes mean are not available.

Baja is currently in the final stages of development for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 and will hit consoles in August this year.

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