Introduction

With the advent of Richard Burns Rally and Colin McRae Rally 2005 (as of yet neither of these titles have been officially released in the U.S.), and FlatOut which is set for U.S. release in April, one wonders if the demand for PC simulations, or games, can support one more offering for European Rally Fans.

What makes Techland's Xpand Rally interesting (it has not yet been released in the US either) is the expandability that is hinted at in the title.

Xpand Rally (or XR) cannot boast of a license to the World Rally Championship cars and venues, but it does offer a very interesting solution to these licensing issues and this should also be of interest to flight simmers, because what Techland has done is to ensure that all the necessary core elements are present and accounted for in terms of game structure, rally stages, and car shapes with skins that are not exact reproductions of their real-life counterparts, but are close enough.

Polish developers Techland also shipped an editor (a map or level editor) with the retail version, thus allowing users to make their own rally stages. A tool for importing 3D car models into XR has also been released.

New skins, cars and rallies are readily available at sites like Blackhole Motorsports and R.E.G.. As such, the community is taking to the modding of XR. Before going too much into the modding, let's take a closer look at what you get out of the box and with the official patch 1.1.0.0.

Cars

All cars are "look-a-likes" with made up names and in-game you can choose from a number of available different skins. Here's what I think the cars are meant to represent in real life:

Fiat Punto
Peugeot 206
Mini Cooper
Ford Focus
VW Golf
Seat
BMW SUV
Mitsubishi Lancer
Subaru Impreza

Rallies

All-in-all, you have rallies in the following locations:

Poland
Kenya
Arizona
Finland
Ireland

Additionally, specific stages for multiplayer and "freestyle" stages are included. According to Techland, these total 46 stages.

Installation

XR comes in the popular DVD-sized box and the box-content consists of two CD's. No problems were encountered during installation and a quick launch of the game to ensure satisfying functionality before patching was also trouble free. My Driving Force Pro was easily recognized and I assigned the control-functions where I wanted them.

To install the game you must enter a 27-digit code. In order to activate the game you then have to enter an activation code, consisting of 25 digits. Add to that the fact that XR uses the controversial Starforce protection scheme. It's very sad that a few bad apples spoil the fun for the legitimate user and force developers and publishers to add such cumbersome protection schemes.

User Interface

When launching the game, for some reason, my system activates the dialogue box usually seen when I place a DVD or a CD-R/W in the disk tray, and asks me if I would like to view the CD in Media Player, open an Explorer window, or do nothing. I cancel this misplaced dialogue box and select the "play Xpand Rally" option from the Windows start menu.

That being dealt with, I would like to give top marks to Techland for making a user interface that actually supports the mouse consistently and in all menus.

Recently we have been swamped with PC games and sims that force the user to make do with arrow keys and enter buttons. To such an extent that we had just about begun to doubt if the device called a "mouse" was ever really invented and that perhaps we were just the victims of a mass illusion in thinking it existed. But Techland proves that it is in fact possible to program a user interface (UI) that supports the mouse. Thank you for that, Techland.

In the background of the main menu there is a nice video running, making the menus quite pleasant to look at and use.

Manual

The manual is 36-pages with some pages being used for the usual items: an epilepsy warning, credits and copyright stuff.

It does a fairly decent job of guiding you through the different game modes and options in Xpand Rally, as well as taking you through the first tentative steps towards creating your own track. But there is nothing in the way of driving technique, strategy or a rundown of the different cars or rallies that are included in the game.

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