Review: Pro Cycling Manager Season 2007 game

The Tour de France has had another traumatic year with more doping scandals than you can shake a saddle at.

Indeed, some of the names with a troubled history are missing from this game altogether. There are 1,500 other professional cyclists to choose from though, with 60 official teams and 520 different stages to cycle on, the Tour de France taking centre stage.

Unsurprisingly, the game was developed in France, and when you first load the game everything’s written en français. If you change it into English, spelling oddities arise like the word ‘ascension’ rather than ‘ascent’.

These are minor flaws though, and there are a huge number of options when you venture into Career Mode. This includes signing contracts, organising budgets, sorting out your sponsors, choosing equipment and scheduling training and events.

Once you’re done managing your team, you can control your riders during the race in 3D. It’s not arcade gameplay, but instead you control how much effort riders should exert and tactics such as which order they should cycle in.

It’s thorough to the extreme and, unless you’re a real cycling enthusiast, Pro Cycling Manager is difficult to learn. In-game races lack the suspense and excitement associated with the real thing, and levels are marred by long load times ­ it can take three minutes just to load a 30-second tutorial, followed by another three-minute load for the following steps. The graphics are also very poor, with choppy cycling and crowd animation along with jagged edges ­ even with the best anti-aliasing applied.

Cycling fans will appreciate the amount of thought put into this game, but it doesn’t have the instant appeal to make it a big seller.