Le Tour De France. The time when cyclings finest get together to hurtle down some roads, up some mountains and try to avoid crashing into one another in a quest to come out on top. First held in 1903 this event is a pretty obvious choice to have a game based on it. After all, it is THE biggest thing in world cycling and one of the most anticipated sporting events on the annual calendar. It’s also the time when millions of normally sane individuals jump into a bit of lycra and attempt to recreate what their heroes are doing. Release a game involving the Tour and it should be an instant money maker.
But the game. Ah, the game. None of the previous incarnations have been much cop. In fact, they’ve all been rather dire and I’m happy to point out that nothing has changed with this version. Yes that’s right, I’m happy to point out that Tour De France 2013 is a pile of crap, for in these tough economic times I wouldn’t want anyone to waste their hard earned money. Even if the game was priced up at 50p (which it’s not btw!), you’d still be angered that you bought it and you’d need to do a load of explaining to the other half as to why you’ve spent your kids inheritance on something so poor. But feel free to read on and I’ll try and tell you why.
It does manage to start off quite promising. A lovely video intro showcases the best that France has to offer. From the snowy caps of the Pyrenees to the flat sandy beaches of Nice, the Tour covers some of the best our French cousins can throw at us. The video doesn’t last anywhere near long enough though and we soon get chucked straight into a menu or five. Choose your team, all good there because all the official teams are represented. Then we get to choose our rider and a tinge of disappointment starts to set in. For the most part, riders names are correct, however any Brits seem to have been tarnished with the Pro Evo brush. Sir Bradley Wiggins becomes Braulio Waggons whilst Chris Froome has a humourous moniker of Vroome. The rest of our finest guys have also been treated to such hilarious changes. I’m afraid the official game really does need to have ALL official teams and riders present, we don’t live in the 1980’s anymore and when we could once get by with having Nijel Mainsail in a racing game, that just doesn’t cut it anymore.
Anyways, once a rider has been chosen we then get to choose your Tour. I’m sure you can go the whole hog if you really must and choose all 20+ stages but believe me, you’ll want to be slitting your wrists by the end of the first one so how the hell you’re meant to complete all those is anyones guess. So one stage it is then. Flat? Mountainous? The choice is yours but each plays pretty much the same as the last, badly!
The gameplay itself consists of three things. Holding the RT button as long as possible and then occasionally hammering the hell out of the A button when you wish to sprint. Once you’ve got bored of these two things a quick hit of the start button allows you to get into the proper part of the game......Fast Forward! No matter how well or how badly you’ve been doing in the first two things, the option to fast forward a stage is like a joyous gift from god. 200kms can be wiped out in an instant leaving you with the arduous task of completing the final couple of yards yourself. Whether you win or lose is hit or miss but it’s a million times better than sitting in front of your tv pressing a couple of buttons for a few hours. Some may call this game skipping option, cheating. I like to call it saving your sanity and without it I can see a good few discs taken out of the tray and launched across the room quicker than you could say ‘Arise Sir Braulio Waggons’.
And once the race is over you get a quick mention of which objectives you have passed (I find it quite funny that one of the objectives for the bronze rating is ‘finish a stage’, a task in itself!), and then you’re whisked away to pick another stage and start the anger build up all over again.
I guess at this point I should mention something about the graphics and the sound. If truth be told, I’d rather give both a miss as, in line with the rest of the offering, both are pretty damn poor. Granted cycling is a quiet sport so the odd ‘Allez, allez, allez’ is about all there is to break up the monotonous din coming from your team radio. I guess there isn’t really an awful lot else Cyanide Studios could have done with the audio other than add some nice music or something, anything! Graphically though they could have stepped out of the 1990’s and got with the times a little. Your rider looks like all the other 197 riders, with the only thing to tell them apart being the different coloured team shirts and their little legs look rather strange pumping up and down hundreds of times a minute. There is seemingly no texture to anything and that also goes out to the crowd on the side (which honestly reminds me a bit of the crowd in something like Sensible Soccer), whilst the beautiful scenery shown in the first opening sequence is replaced with a bit of rubbish. Sorry, a lot of rubbish.
You can also add in the fact that collisions between riders (something which is common in bike racing) is non-existent, replaced instead by either a little bump into each other or by just letting riders ride on top of each other. Tis a strange feeling at the very least especially when you can be stopped dead in your tracks by a single blade of grass on the side of the road, a road which you cannot leave no matter what!! What if I wanted to go sightseeing Cyanide? How about it eh? All that pales into insignificance when you're put into a team time trial event though. Screen glitching whenever you get near to the side of the road or when you slow down too much makes this event almost impossible. Now, where’s that fast forward option again.
For those who haven’t managed to build up enough hatred whilst playing the main game you can also pick up an additional piece of DLC costing 320 microsoft points which adds 3 more stages to the game. Oh joy!
I’m not gonna lie. I’m one of those normally sane individuals who has got swept up in the whole cycling phenomenon which has swept Britain over the last year. I watch the Tour on TV religiously. I’ve got the expensive bike. I’ve got the even more expensive lycra. I’ve even got the silly shoes that make you look like you’re constipated whenever you try and walk further than 2 yards. I’ve got the whole damn package really and now, unfortunately, I’ve also got the game. But whilst I’ll continue rolling the roads in real life, I can’t ever envisage a time when I’ll be so bored and in a such a place where I’d even consider putting Tour De France 2013 - 100th Edition back in my Xbox tray. Even if I had a friend round for a gaming session I wouldn’t even consider mentioning playing the split screen version as that’s just more of the same old mess.
I like my 360 too much and to put this game back in it’s ever eager mouth would be too much to handle.
I don’t know if it’s a case of cycling not lending itself well to a game or if it’s more that the development studio haven’t captured the essence of what makes cycling great but either way, I’d be very surprised to see another Tour De France/Cycling title come out anytime soon. A disaster and one to keep away from no matter what.
