SCORE International Baja 1000

SCORE International Baja 1000 (known in PAL regions as SCORE International Baja 1000: World Championship Off Road Racing) is a racing video game developed by Left Field Productions and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, and the Wii. It is based on the official Score International Baja 1000 off-road racing event.

Gameplay
In this game, players start a career, participating in off-road events set in the desert region of Baja California, in vehicles ranging from dirtbikes and ATVs to trophy trucks and buggies before qualitying in the Baja 1000 event itself.

Why It Sucks

 * 1) The game is nothing but an shameless ripoff of the more superior MX vs. ATV Untamed, which came out a year before this game. The only original mechanic is a nitro system what overheats when you use it too much which is just an inferior version of a similar system from Motorstorm.
 * 2) Plagiarism: The front box art is lazily traced over from Baja: Edge of Control, another superior offroad racer that was released two months ago in September. In fact before the game came out, THQ had even filed a lawsuit against Activision in a dispute over each games' box art.
 * 3) The graphics and visuals are in an abysmally low quality even for a game that was released in 2008. The vehicles look like they were ripped from the early MX vs. ATV or ATV Offroad Fury games, the levels and environments feel empty with barely any life to them (nor do they reassemble any real life places located in Baja California), the character models for the bike/ATV riders and the crowds look on par with plastic models and have terrible animations, the very obvious texture popups, and overuse of effects like bloom and nauseating motion blur when you activate the nitro. It also has a awful framerate that is barely stable especially on the PlayStation 3 version.
 * 4) * The PlayStation 2 and Wii versions look worse due to hardware limitations, with even more blocky visuals and an lower framerate of 25 FPS, to the point where they look like a PS1 and Nintendo 64 game.
 * 5) False advertising: The PlayStation 2, Wii and PC ports use the screenshots from the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions on the back of the box.
 * 6) The sound effects are very terrible as if they were pulled from a stock library. The cars and bike/ATVs sound like broken lawnmowers, there are almost no ambient sounds to the environments and the mixing is terrible. You can barely hear any of the music tracks or your co-driver among the unnecessarily loud engine noises.
 * 7) The voice acting is pretty sub-par to say the least. The co-driver especially sounds mostly bored out of his mind when he reads out the pacenotes to you.
 * 8) The physics/handling is programmed badly and is on par with Ride to Hell: Retribution. The bike and ATV control like scared horses since every time they make a single turn the rear of the bike sways left and right constantly (This is harder to make them straight). The trophy trucks and the buggies aren't much better since they feel more like bumper cars with magnets attached.
 * 9) The opponent AI is horrendous and badly programmed. Depending on the difficulty, they can either slam into objects such as walls and drive off cliffs, slow down for no reason, or rubberband to your position and give themselves an unfair advantage over you.
 * 10) Many bugs and glitches, like the riders' ragdoll physics spazzing out when they crash, the sound effects suddenly cutting out, or being able to fall out of the map.
 * 11) Even when compared to other racing games released around that year there is a lack of content. Most of the tracks have little variety while mostly being set in the desert. Many of the vehicles don't really control any different except for other sponsors and a few stat changes. There aren't any upgrade and customisation options for the vehicles you get or even any kind of extras save for some worthless videos. Despite this, it was sold for a full price of $50 which is too much given the quality of this game.
 * 12) There is no ending whatsoever. Once you beat the game, all you get is a montage video, a few lines of text congratulating you for beating the game, and that's it.
 * 13) The PC version is just a lazy and barebones port of the PlayStation 2 version in which it has a even worse control scheme (you can only select options with the arrow keys and there is no option for mouse controls), almost no graphical options/resolution options and is very difficult to run on modern operating systems such as Windows 7 and 10.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) The soundtrack is tolerable at best with songs like "Bombshell" by Powerman 5000 that plays in the intro, "Let Go" by Red and "Silence and Goodbye" by The Autumn Offering.
 * 2) There is a variety of vehicles available from various bikes and ATVs to four wheelers such as trophy trucks and buggies.
 * 3) It's very easy to 100% the game. The vehicles aren't a grind to unlock thankfully and the achievements are an easy 1,000 gamerscore.

Reception
SCORE International Baja 1000 received mostly negative reviews from critics and players on all platforms with the Xbox 360 version getting a 29/100 on Metacritic. IGN gave the game a 3.3/10 citing it as "a poor attempt at virtual off-road racing".

Videos
9ZHBSxVbGII tOGmQbHsFLk 8pMrJfPT5es