Let's be honest here, there are so many great rally games available on modern platforms, Here are some reasons you should not spend your time here and instead play one of those games instead (I played entirely in simulation mode)
- Every car regardless of tyres feels like it is driving on black ice at all times and wants to spin
- Random rocks strewn across the edge and sometimes the very middle of the road, causing you to flip and total your car out of nowhere
- Sometimes you will hit the wall *slightly* too hard and your driver will literally die, forcing you to go back in the career mode, even better when this happens when landing a jump the developers put in on purpose
- The offroad trucks randomly flip 90 degrees onto their side at the slightest change in elevation
- Worse tracks than the original game
- Often runs at over 700 frames per second, causing some rather bad screen tearing issues
- Sometimes the brakes do not work and the car speeds up instead in a corner as you fly off the track

Positives to playing both Xpand Rally and Xpand Rally Xtreme:
- Probably will run on a graphing calculator at this point
- Immense sense of accomplishment for 100% the games despite above issues, which I did for some reason
- You will lose 15+ hours completing both games which takes your mind off the real world issues that made you buy and play a middling mid 2000s rally game in the first place

Enjoy! Or play something better in the Rally genre. Please.

Could be an ok rally game, but it seems like it randomly totals your car out on invisible obstacles in the road. One time that stands out to me was going over a bridge on tarmac the car immediately became totalled out, came to a stop, and I was informed that my driver was injured. In this game that requires a "career rollback," much like a system restore on a computer, losing all your progress since your last race series was completed.
Also the game crashes when you try and exit, leaving me to do the good old CTRL+ALT+DEL trick to close it and get back to my desktop. I wouldn't recommend anybody to buy this game.

An awful game.
Whatever good it has, it's from Xpand Rally, its predecessor. The only thing new to the game is special stages, but they are almost impossible to win fairly. Either your AI opponent will drive into a wall at the beginning, or you will have a very hard time keeping up with him.
The regular races are hardly different from XR — well, the US stages are exactly the same. Asphalt physics is still terrible. Winter stages were removed completely — you won't even have to use all your arsenal of different tyres, only two types are needed for most of the game.
The AI becomes too strong relatively early in the game, and the only way for me to beat him was to use Cheat Engine to boost money and install all the available upgrades on the stronges car. Or, you could raise the funds without cheating and win previous races over and over, but honestly, this game does not deserve so much of your time. And even with that, the AI is very hard to beat.
The developers were so lazy they didn't fix any obvious game breaking bugs, didn't try to improve balance.
Even for a decade old, low-budget, aimed at casual crowd rally-themed racing arcade with no licensed cars, it's a terrible game. Do not buy it.

It's kinda fun but it's like Forza games where if you are in the lead at the end the AI just appears and passes you going a speed their car wouldn't normally go.

Note: The game has a bug which may break you career progress, making a car unusable in a race because the game freezes after every race. Be sure to always own multiple cars in a class or to always have money ready to buy a second car so you're able to continue your career even if the bug happens. Otherwise you will have to cheat your way forward or to begin a new career.

I can't imagine how a bug like this managed to get through to the final release!

Tags: Driving & Racing
Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: Had to be launched in safe mode. Resolution hurts the eyes. Xbox pad does not work. Play something modern and playable instead.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/310560/DiRT_Rally/

I wrote this review from 2019/07/21-10:01 to 07/29-16:45 as I played the game, and cleaned up after.

I'm a Rally fan, but ‘cuz I can't imagine myself watching official highlights or going to events just to see a single section of a course, I can't be bothered to watch, so I just play. I think Enduro is better for watching, but I don't know, prove me wrong on Rally being boring to watch.

I played Colin McRae Rally 2005 last year and finished DiRT 3 this year. 2005 is one of my favorite racing games, and DiRT 3 was great. So, when I saw this game on Steam, I thought it looked similar to the former, and I decided to buy it.

First impressions, wow, the game has fairly deep car setup and part upgrade options.

Of course, I set the difficulty to simulation because it’s more fun to wrestle with the handling than it is to slide non effortlessly. 2005 and this are arcade sims, and I've got no problem with that, in fact, I like it.

Initially, the visuals blurry as hell. To fix that, I disabled the bloom and motion blur. I don't think this game looks as good as 2005 does, that game looks fantastic - especially the German and Japanese stages - but still, this looks great.

And by that, of course, I'm not talking about realism - that's not interesting in of itself - I'm saying the aesthetics are great, and realism has nothing to do with it looking good.

I had some trouble getting the handling down at first. I was sliding a lot during the first 10 minutes in the first stage, losing grip and spinning out at high speeds. It's normal, it takes a little while to get used to a racing game's handling. I also figured it was because my car wasn't upgraded and had bad spoilers and thus downforce; I was right.

The wheels you choose make a ton of difference in the handling; if you choose the wrong ones, you'll be 3 or 5 whole seconds behind your opponent at your fastest.

The game's got a cool set of replay cameras. My favorites are chopper and orbit. It's annoying that you can't control the camera yourself, but I'm yet to see that in any racing game's replay. Haven't played any racers with screenshot features, either – those usually give you free camera control.

You’ll find yourself flipping now and again even with the highest quality spoiler parts. It’s unrealistic in an unhelpful manner; you shouldn’t expect a rally car to flip while trying to slide on a hairpin.

Current Campaign Completion: ─ 23.4%, 22.5h

I'm sad to say, the game is Very grindy.

You can die. Yeap, you can die in this game if you crash too hard. Your driver dies and you restart after you finished your last championship. I really like that feature because it adds stakes, but if the pacing of the game isn't right, or if it's too grindy, it ruins it by making you play and replay too much. Which it is. I also like how small rocks mess your car up.

I suggest zipping your save in a .rar before replaying a course you died >1 on, so you don't have to regrind the money you made to buy part upgrades.

Here's how it's been going for me. I can't beat a stage because my car sucks too hard. For example, in the two Super Special stages that let you win your second car, if you go there without grinding, you'll flip or fishtail because of a lack of downforce and grip.

I have no experience with the other two starter cars, but the issue must still exist. (Future me: It exists even in a WRL car...)

So, you must replay stages to get money for part upgrades. If you ♥♥♥♥ up, you'll have to pay for the repairs. If you didn't cheap out on the wheels (you shouldn't, they make the handling easier), you'll be paying 2k every two runs. You’re not allowed to race If any one of your parts is damaged by >10%.

I'm on stage AC7. I've ground like 3.5 hours to get my car to a point where it can be 2-3 seconds behind the opponent, it's like, 90% upgraded, but there's something wrong still. I'm not sure if it's my driving, or if the stage has too much mud or both. This stage is so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard.

For now, I'll recommend the game. It's enjoyable, but the grind... it's pushing my enjoyment.

If you didn't play 2005, play that instead; you'll have a guaranteed fun time. Well, the gravel stages are too slippery, but everything else is fun.

If you liked 2005, get this, play it for 80 minutes just to try it out. If you don't like it, refund it. Refunds are the new demo.

Got past AC7 after Fully upgrading the car and throttling less. Wheels are very expensive. Driving in the tarmac is not fun because they're mostly straightaways and the turns make you fishtail because you're going too fast. Braking is very inefficient thus unusable (I found that making the brake bias 100% on the rear helps).

Unlocked the third car. The game actually gets fun here, WRL stages 3 and 4, which are the most fun stages yet, require no grind.

The Moonlight Challenges are cool but really dark. Kinda impossible to do, I skipped them for now.

─ 65% - From stages 21 to 23+ the tracks get really difficult.

I noticed that in this game, I find gravel/dirt/mud tracks to be more fun than tarmac, whereas it was the opposite in CMR5.

The campaign is not well designed. I just did all of the WRL stages and the rest of the events in front of it are just special events, so I'm doing those, plus sp. events I didn't do initially because I didn't have the funds to buy a car.

Funny. When I scroll to the locked stages in the career stage list, the game tells me I must finish WRL stages 27/28 in >2nd place to unlock them. I did, yet they’re locked.

Anyway, I'm doing some Xtreme Offroad tracks. It's like... Forza. You're in an open map and you race towards points without a set race track. This is interesting because 3 other cars are racing alongside you. It's... not for me. If this were Dakar, I'd be more interested, but no.

─ 80.4% - Just did the Moonlight Stages. I think they're some of my favorite in this game. They test your stage knowledge, and it's intense - you have to keep your eye on the throttle.

─ Career Complete. Finished it. The game requires you to play the last two Super Special stages even though they’re not stages 27/28. I had to cheese the AI in them; wait for it to break, so I could do a solo race and win.

I noticed I kept my same, third car ever since I got it. No reason to play with the other cars.

I tried playing the races after you finish the campaign, the ones you race with a car called Retti. Not fun. It’s track racing. Except it SUCKS because the brakes suck. If I didn’t stop playing here, I’m sure I’d need to grind to upgrade this car, given the number of extra stages.

The game comes with the same level creating tool the developers used. A shame the game just is not good...

Extrenuously grindy. The game has 4 (5, counting the non-offroad ones) maps whose track layout changes according to the stage – that would’ve been fine if only the game weren’t grindy. Car upgrades suffer from the same issue. The physics are not good, you flip and crash at points where you shouldn’t.

I rarely had fun with the game. I only saw it through to the end because it was similar to CMR5, I had to see what this had to offer. It was a chore to play. Don’t play it.

Tip: Don’t write a review as you play. Take notes instead.

Game tips: https://ybin.me/p/b660938902483ad3#JK+yYzCkvXN05Pke+GyIMNrCRFIUlRsNiSBzmjHaG1w

I bought this game for 0.79, realised that one of the cd packages has this game hidden, this is pretty not cool

Meh I got nothing much to say but I wouldn't call it bad or good and I wish there was a mid rating like unsure or smt but.....ehh

If I want to start the game, the message appears: ''Your Serial Number is incorrect. Please reinstall XPand Rally Extreme.'' What? I never had a key in my hands. I bought the game on Steam! And btw, a reinstall does't work.
There is no support from Techland either. Techland did not answer my message. If a company sells on steam then the product must be fine!
This is not a drama for me now. But next time I prefer to buy a sausage for the euro..