Just how many Es can you replace with Xes for the title of a video game? Late to the trend of replacing Es with Xes in the title is Xpand Rally Xtreme, a realistic racer that has you competing in off-road rallies and tweaking your car between events. There's a lot of realism here, car damage affects performance and your driver can get injured bad enough that it will end the event. As real as it is, its still fun, easy to play, challenging and a focused experience. Every turn matters, every ding on your vehicle matters. When your co-pilot announces rocks inside, there are major rocks to mess up your car.

I'll start with the negatives and you can compare to see if you find them enough to scare you away. The first is this is a race the clock game that has you racing a ghost rather than against real competition. The game is all about your skill to shave seconds off your time through improving yours and your car's performance rather than playing dirty and wrecking the competition. Other than that, the big negative is a freeze frame split second pause at many junctures through each race. Even with a modern computer that can handle today's games, this decade old game still flinches and freezes here and there. The load times are long, even when loading cars in the dealership to look at.

You can set the driving to be manual or automatic for the lazy like me. There's a setting for realistic or arcade, the latter of which gives you trolley controls of forward and reverse rather than the former which forces you to brake, then throw your vehicle into reverse before you can back up. All of these styles play well and you have a respawn button if you stray too far off the beaten path. To add to the realism or arcade fun, there are several different camera angles. Chase, close chase, bumper, hood and even the driver's seat.

Xpand Rally Xtreme takes place in Asian countries like Malasia, China and Japan across a few different areas. The career has you participating in blocks of events. Ranking bronze, silver or gold in eight car competition unlocks the next set of events. The events consist of typical races against a ghost, time trials, one-on-one races on closed circuit courses that start one of you at the beginning and the other halfway through the track. There's even a boss fight, which is just a fancy way of saying there's only enough for first place against a single ghost car.

The tracks look beautiful and have a glow about them all depending on your graphical settings. You'll tear across dirt, gravel, sand, water and even tarmac or pavement for each event. Areas feel lush with vegetation and I prefer racing in these areas to those with cold concrete covering everything. It just feels more diverse driving over bridges or along coastlines. I say diverse, but the sad thing is racing three events back to back in the same area feels like a bit much. The courses change routes, but that's about it. They do their best to block off areas with barricades, so by the time you're out of each set of three events, you'll be ready to leave. Each course has a few details to make the environment feel more alive such as animals running in the distance or men in red shirts scurrying across the track. If you hit these guys, you respawn with wasted time as punishment. Its tough to even hit them.

The events are meaty enough to get some time investment into them, usually around four to six minutes for the early portion of the game. Terrible drivers will soon feel the bumps and bruises of having a door torn off and having to compensate with your car pulling to one side or the other. Its tough to start losing parts though, because with trees and tape, those make for tough targets to bash into. Its a lot easier to lose parts in races that have walls everywhere.

Each of these races gives you cash to spend and the first thing that you'll do is repair your vehicle. Damage is real and it'll cost you, but the choice is yours what to repair and a parentage of just how damaged something is. While everything can be repaired, its the tires that need to be completely replaced. Do you wait until you're at sixty percent or wait for eighty?

You need to be wise with your tires and you're given stats on each course how much is tarmac and how much of it is gravel. In fact the game warns you if you're using the wrong type of tire, but the decision is always up to you. It can be a bit click heavy to go through the menus to get where you need to go and then return back.

These parts all have specifics. I'd normally call them stats, but these are specific numbers and details that you need to look into when tweaking your vehicle. I just go for the more expensive, the better it is approach. There's just too much here for me, but its here if I want it.

You can visit a dealer in the menu that will sell you new vehicles. Some events require specific vehicles that you'll need to buy. Every past event can still be played for more cash, so you will have to grind your way up to earn enough money to purchase a new vehicle or just start selling parts.

With everything said, this is a deep game, but more than just the car mechanics. There are a deep set of options. The controls let you rebind keys for everything but the pause menu. You can use a controller with your directional pad or analog stick and even control the dead zone. I went for controlling with the direction pad rather than messing with the dead zone. The only problem here is if you have 360 triggers for your forward and reverse, they are also your up and down in the menu. Otherwise you can always just use the mouse.

You can set to have your co pilot warn you, along with icons of upcoming turns and even how far ahead they tell you what's coming. There are even performance settings for the ribbon tape physics. There's always a certain something to being told the direction rather than checking a mini map. It keeps your eyes on the action. If you want to turn off the ghost car, the choice is yours. Xpand Rally Xtreme lets you play the way you want to and I'm happy for that.

For anyone that wants it, there's online multiplayer and even LAN support, but with this game being so old, the multiplayer has been dead years ago. There's no split screen either. Heck since you're the only car on the trail, I wonder how they pull off multiplayer. Seeing ghosts of your friends or just seeing their time through each checkpoint.

At a mere $5 this decade old game is worth a risk for anyone that enjoys realistic racing. There are performance issues that make it a tough recommendation, but the game is still an enjoyable challenge for a cheap price.

Oh boy here I go reviewing games nobody cares about anymore!

Just want to say I bought this game for $.99 as a lark because I like rally games and was surprised that it actually drives really well.

I'd say if you're a po boy, nobody loves you and you really want to play a rally game and you can't pirate Richard Burns Rally you could do a lost worse than this game.

But this game was made in 2006 so it's kinda ugly. However you can go beyond the built in resolutions by editing the config file \Techland\Xpand Rally\Data\videosettings.src

I successfully ran it in 2560*1080 and it looks OK.

With almost 2 decades behind it, Xpand Rally still remains a fun rally game to race in every now and then.

Watch gameplay of Xpand Rally & Xpand Rally Xtreme here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_PpmEDeuU0

I won't claim now that the 'then photo-realistic landscapes' are as impressive as they were in 2006, but the controls and handling of the powerful rally cars remain gamer-friendly.
The game brings us a campaign mode where you will build a career based on time trialling through individual races or championships, keeping the traditional rallying activities.

What was also unique about this game at the time was that, just like in Gran Turismo, you will have to earn money to upgrade your car(s), repair damage or pay entrance fees, but through these and similar ways you will operation and the condition of the car.

+ Very important to know, this sequel of 'Xpand Rally' comes with a lot of news such as a series of interesting new vehicles!
Besides the usual rally cars you will also be able to drive Buggies, GT cars, 4x4 cars and even monster trucks!

Xpansion to Xpand. It is more of the same great gameplay with some seriously insane cars to boot.

Tracks are more focused on the arena dirt and Island style racing, and none of the snow races (my favorite).

It is an excellent expansion to one of my favorite rally games, and is certainly worth a play if you like Xpand.

It's an old rally game but............ is Xtreme Good. If you miss the days of Colin McRae Rally this game is perfect for you. The only problem , for my, is that the game no licensed cars ; resembling the original cars but with names derived Ex:Peugeot 207 Super 2000 'Lion 2007'; Subaru Impreza WRC 'Kosumo Showdown WRL' ; 2007 Volkswagen Golf 'RV Wolf 524' ; Fiat Punto Super 1600 'Italic PNT 1.6'.
Beware on the damage system of the care because you will need to repair the car; and one more thing the driver can be injured as well or even worse die in accident resulting in loss of career.
If you like old rally games is greate but if you are looking something like Dirt series this isn't for you :)

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.

Some people may not like this game, and that's a shame. Yes, it is old, and hard - recommended 1st person driving (which makes it more realistic and much more harder than 3rd person driving that's available among other viewing options) and only ... Rallys (which means you compete, eventually, against the clock), no midgame saving - no room for mistakes. Car models are false, but resemble real life models.
But, you can still choose from different cars, you can change the wheels and etc. and adapt the cars to each rally. The difficulty in Arcade mode is pretty easy (well, only at first), while in Simulation the races are very hard since even 1 accident (with a tree or something else on the road) means you lost precious time. All of this makes finishing 1st feelling very rewarding.

Help/Spoiler: Advancing is very hard without significantly improving your car. If you find it hard to go on - go back, and race again where you already won - you race against the same drivers with same cars as before, while your car should be improved, and therefor it's much easier to win and get easy money.

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.

Despite the game's flaws, it's still a pretty fun and challenging experience if you get used to it's physics and the gameplay.

Pros:
-Tons of cars and tracks to choose;
-Tuning (Cuz' why not?);
-Weather/Daytime changes for each trach;
-Good soundtrack;
-Decent optimization and graphics;
-You can actually sell a vehicle that you no longer need for the rally championship, giving you a possible advantage of getting better parts for the said vehicle you're maining or buying a new one. Also, the better the parts you install to a vehicle, the more valuable it gets. Also, you can actually grind credits to get the best parts/vehicles in the game quickly.

Cons:
-The (unnecessary) Injury system (For example: If you screw up very hard in a race and die miserably in a fiery crash, you'll have to start ALL OVER AGAIN! Fortunately, there's the Rollback Career feature to remediate this problem. So, get good for real);
-The physics are good but they're not fully fledged;
-After a race, you're forced to repair your vehicle and you'll still have to pay about 2000 credits even if the damage is very minor;
-Difficulty spike depending how well tuned your vehicle is;

While it may not be one of the best rally simcade racers out there, but overall, it's a very decent and underrated gem.

7.8/10

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.