Three years after Techland launched Xpand Rally in Europe, the company knew it was time to step up and release a sequel, an improved version of the original game. This is Xpand Rally Xtreme. The main features of the first title were beautiful graphics with carefully modeled cars and lots of nice lighting effects. Unfortunately for them, Xpand Rally was a rally game, not a photo shoot simulator, so the game was criticized in what concerns its approach to driving. We were given the possibility to review this game before the launch, which we feel will happen soon enough, so eager to proceed with the game’s installation I looked under the desk and… dude, where is my wheel?

        After a few days of playing cat and mouse with my wife I finally figured the location of my wheel, a simple Genius one, so I was able to get it up and running in no time. Calibrating the wheel to match the games’ control was a little bit scary, but after adjusting the dead zone everything worked just fine. Xpand Rally Xtreme features the same two modes as its older brother, arcade and simulation. The difference between them is the driving difficulty and the laws of physics applied, though none of the modes seemed too real to me. More on that a bit later though.