Pro Cycling Manager 2014 Review

Management simulators, it’s fair to say, are an acquired taste. Often impenetrable to those unversed in its intricacies, Pro Cycling Manager 2014is no different. Unless you’re an aficionado of the sport that delights in poring over the minutiae, there’s little here to set the heart racing.

Pro Cycling Manager’s main pull is its Career Mode, where you can channel your inner David Brailsford and commandeer a professional cycling team – cherry-picked from a list of organisations separated into three tiers: CYA World Tour, Continental Pro and Continental.

Can you spot the clones in the Crowd?

 



CYA World Tour is the Premier League of the cycling world, where the best teams compete in the most prestigious events, including the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia. While the Continental Pro and Continental brackets house teams that compete at a lesser level, in smaller events and with a more modest budget – the Championship and League One equivalents, to paint a crude picture.

The game’s tutorial suggests you pick a Cya World Tour outfit on your debut season, as you navigate the title’s micromanagement labyrinth for the first time. Being a newcomer to the series, this writer heeded that advice and elected to helm Team Sky, home to Great Britain’s triumphant Tour de France riders, Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome – or, as you’ll now call them, C. Vroome and B. Waggons.

Cyanide Studio, it seems, were unable to secure the licensing rights for the Tour’s riders. As such, like Konami with the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise, you’ll have to settle for a moniker that approximates the athlete’s real names. Although a fan-made patch that remedies this lack of fidelity will doubtless be released in the future, it still sticks out like a sore thumb in a game that prides itself on a fastidious attention to detail.

Upon finalising your team selection, you’re thrown into a Football Manager-esque interface that serves as your base of operations. Your first ports of call are to finalise competition schedules and rider objectives, and to correspond with sponsors to secure funding. The game’s tutorial prompts guide you to the relevant tabs but that’s where the assistance ends, leading to all manner of confusion.

With 28 riders on the roster – each with their own strengths, weaknesses – being tasked with amending the race calendar and goals for each individual would be an ordeal for a seasoned Cycling Manager fan, let alone a first-timer. Perhaps you’re best placed not tinkering with the pre-set variables in your first season, yet the tutorial encourages you to do so without any instruction on how to approach it.

Moreover, the charts and spreadsheets that populate the game are needlessly confusing. For example, the attributes that govern the effectiveness of wheels you can research are criteria such as aerodynamics, lightness and comfort. It might appear self-explanatory, but you’re never educated on the consequence of favouring each stat – what effect does employing a comfortable wheel model actually have on my riders’ performance?

This is the screen where you’ll spend most of your time. It’s not exactly inviting, is it?

This implied grasp on the game’s internal logic gives the overriding feeling of a clique that’s resistant to new members. To preface this, I should say that I’m far from an expert but enjoy the perennial drama and elite competition of the Tour de France and have been inspired by the British renaissance in recent years. As such, I’m part of the demographic Cyanide should be striving to attract, yet it rarely come across as such.

This oversight is at its most noticeable on race days, where you’re given the option of either a Quick Simulation or 3D Animation. 3D Animation allows you to take direct control of your legion of riders, dictating the individual and team tactics from an elevated perspective. Stages are – mercifully – not simulated in real time but can still last 20 minutes or so.

The first thing to note is that the presentation leaves a lot to be desired. Identikit racers funnel down streets flanked by inert onlookers and uninspiring environs, while the only audio to speak of is a grating commentator that barks out trite observations in a similar vein to football’s own Andy Townsend.

You’re given a brief rundown of the numerous commands at your disposal – attack, maintain position, relay and fetch water bottles – and are then left to your own devices. At this point, it quickly manifests that road cycling is not a discipline that lends itself well to engaging gameplay, with most of your time spent maintaining position in the peloton and reeling in breakaway groups that attempt to steal a march. In truth, it’s painstakingly tedious and devoid of variety.

Quick Simulation, meanwhile, simply plugs all the data into an algorithm and churns out a leaderboard of results for the stage. This lack of visual feedback undermines the meticulous preparation that preceded it, with all your careful deliberations amounting to solitary line of text. Which raises the question: why should you bother arranging training camps when that 0.2 increase on B. Waggons’ stamina engenders no tangible effect on the race outcome.

Elsewhere, you can test your mettle against friends or AI riders in single stages or complete tours in in a selection of modes beyond the career. Most interestingly, however, you can visit the veledrome and try your hand at track cycling.

Attack of the clones

 
Track cycling could have been a brilliant diversion, particularly in the wake of the London 2012 Olympics and the burgeoning interest in the sport, yet it’s as poorly executed as its road counterpart. The up and down arrow keys control the pace of your rider, while the left and right keys allows you to weave up and down the banked track – and that’s it. There’s no attempt to replicate the tension and excitement that enraptured the nation two summers ago.

To afford credit where it’s true, Pro Cycling Manager 2014 is a real labour of love, so avid followers of the sport will likely find enough here to keep them occupied, yet that doesn’t forgive the game for being so inherently unrewarding. Ultimately, Pro Cycling Manager 2014 feels like a missed opportunity from Cyanide.