PC Release Date: 23/09/2004
Developer/Publisher: Techland/Techland
Official Website: https://www.xpandrally.com
Xpand Rally Game Guide

Gameplay teaser:
A wide variety of cars and 3 different types of stages were in the Xpand Rally E3 demo. Marketing Manager Adam Tutaj also offered a disc for more personal viewing. My favorite circuit is Nevada, covered with gravel, picturesque scenery and awesome drifting.. After that comes the Polish track on tarmac, very fast with a good amount of corners. More turns than the snowy and icy Sweden. Perhaps due to the narrowness of the latter stage and also to its whiteness but mainly due to the late calls - mentioned in my article - I haven't enjoyed the latter. I usually drive from the in-car cam, so it was virtually impossible to have an idea about the Swedish track. I often found myself going off in a big way indeed. The handling was good (more towards the arcade than the Simulation), but I'm sure with the Beta Testing now started it would improve to be a little more realistic.

An ambitious project from start to finish, Techland's Xpand Rally puts you in a similar role as "Gran Turismo 3" or the more recent "NFS: Underground" games. There were many things to ask about so I virtually carpet-bombed Adam Tutaj - PR and Marketing Manager - with my questions.

The core game consists of the Career: you supposedly have a cheap car but want to compete with the big guns therefore you need to race a lot to earn money, upgrade your car's equipment (from body parts to engine, gearbox etc.) and change it for the better. As you advance in the Career, you have the chance to bet pink slips with some opponents (special occasions) and win their car or loose yours. On paper, the game delivers a lot of features including dynamic weather and environment, lots of tracks, lots of cars, enhanced physics, realistic sounds, the real feeling of speed and a real ace: an editor. If that's what you have dreamt about, you can make your own stage with the help of tutorial videos and an easy-to-access interface. Crashes will not only affect your car, but the driver also has a sophisticated injury system, so his condition also affects the way the car handles.

The Chrome engine delivers state-of-the-art visual effects onto your PC and certainly blows away the competition making the 60+ stages (spanning over 9 different countries) lifelike even though they're all imaginary. The cars featured in the game are easily recognizable remakes of real models, but not licensed. Multiplayer is up to 8 persons having access to different game-modes, one with ghost cars and the other with cars actually pushing and shoving each other on track. To make the game more interesting Techland plans to have "hotlap"-competitions, one certainly at BHMotorsports.

As the game entered Beta Stage not too long ago, I wasn't surprised that the Polish developer even gave out press-demos with exactly the same content as the E3 prototype. In this demo you have access to 3 stages, each completely different: snow-covered in Finland, tarmac in Poland and gravel in Nevada (visually the most stunning). You can choose from 25 different vehicles and set them up for a drive. I enjoyed the driving, the sliding around on gravel and the sharp turns on tarmac and there were subtle differences between the vehicle's handling of the different classes. I immediately tried to jump off the cliffs in Nevada (that's an old Colin McRae 3 subroutine still vividly running in my brain), but before colliding with the ground the game has put my car back on track. After several tries I gave it up as I understand that it's not possible in this game. The same repositioning on the track applies if you try to cut too much ground off the stage. It is also possible to miss Checkpoints (like in the WRC-series on the PS2), in such a case you must turn back and cross the CP. The weather was not changed dynamically while driving, but I was able to change it before driving out to the stage itself. There was an enormous difference driving the same stage in different conditions!

Overall, the game felt polished and fun for the hours I've played with it. The late "announcement" of corners, I have discovered to be a major problem, but Adam reassured me that they are in fact working on recording the voices for the co-driver (the concept of having no co-driver is now history) and beta testing will certainly remedy this. One other thing is the menu system that needs to be greatly polished before release as it is not up to the overall quality of the game. The dynamic environment was a lot of fun (crashing into borders, gates and piling up a lot of stuff is fun, (but the game's main attraction at this stage is its graphics, which is on par with the best-looking FPS games of our days.

Even though I had the possibility to try the game out, we will all have to wait until August to grab the single player demo of the game and then post a verdict about it then. You may also expect a multiplayer demo on the day of the game's release. One thing is sure; Techland is taking things very seriously and wants to keep a good relation with their fans, offering new cars and tracks after the game's release.

Photos:


Techland's Xpand Rally booth.