Xpand Rally Hands-On Impressions

Techland's upcoming PC racing game Xpand Rally was on display at graphics chip manufacturer Nvidia's booth at Game Developers Conference 2004. The game will let you take the wheel of a rally race car and run a solo race to beat out an established time. The version on display had only two tracks and one car available--these may or may not appear in the full game. The car we drove was a "TinyHooper," (a cleverly disguised version of the Minicooper). Xpand Rally's cars have various statistics, including driving modes (like all-wheel drive), engine size, displacement, power, and torque. Winning races can also earn you enough cash to customize your car with new tires, suspension, brakes, steering, and gear ratio options.

We were able to race on two tracks, one based in Las Vegas, the other in Techland's native country of Poland. Both levels were huge outdoor areas with tracks that wound around mountains and hills with plenty of tall grass and bushes that swayed in the wind. Xpand Rally is played from a first-person driver's seat perspective, but even from this view, you can see some evidence of damage on your car as you make more and more collisions, particularly when your car's hood gets knocked clean off.

Like in other traditional rally games, in Xpand Rally, your car is the only one on the road. You must get to the finish line as fast as possible; an arrow indicator appears at the top of the screen in advance of each turn to let you know how to steer. The game's control scheme is extremely simple; there's a forward throttle, reverse, and turning (which can be mapped to the arrow keys, or WASD if you prefer), gear up and gear down keys, a handbrake, and headlights for night races. Like in other racing games, you can accelerate into a turn, then apply the handbrake to powerslide through it. Though the TinyHooper was the only vehicle we were able to use, this car handled like an extremely light vehicle that could not be slid too tightly into turns without going into overdrift, causing the whole car to spin backward and face the wrong way. The game will presumably have a larger set of cars with different handling when it's completed.