Video games are for everyone. No matter who you are chances are there’s a game out there to suit your tastes. Simulation games are designed to the niche of the niche out there. If there’s some sport, job, or activity, chances are there’s a simulation game for it. Such is the case for Tour de France 2019, a simulation-based on riding a bike really far, really fast.
There are times when the world just lines up a certain way. The day before Tour de France 2019 landed on my desk I spent a few hours lost on YouTube in a spiral of cycling videos, both of the best and worst moments variety. So, when the game popped up on my Xbox, it was almost destined to be by the cycling gods in the sky.
Apparently, Tour de France 2019 is part of a long-running series, something of which I should have noticed with the year moniker tacked on at the end. It’s not a title I’ve ever heard of, but since the world of cycling only ever pops up in my life when the Tour de France is actually on TV, it makes sense this title never pops up on my daily game feed.
What I do know is that this is the first that the game is under the Bigben Interactive publishing arm, so I’m sure there are at least a few people out there looking to see what new stuff is being brought to the table. Well, what’s being brought to the table is an interesting game that sure isn’t very new player-friendly. I’m the perfect sort of person for a title like this: I’m interested in cycling and am totally new to it in video game form.
The game kicks right off with a tutorial that highlights everything you’ll need to know before jumping into the famed race. It starts off easy enough: you learn to pedal, to brake, how to take turns and draft. A lot of this feels like a Nascar game in many ways. Where things get difficult is when other racers become involved, most notably the rest of your cycling team.
This is a simulation, sure, but there also comes a point where fun needs to come into play. Managing your team on the fly is a difficult task in the best of cases. Many tutorial missions as you to have a team-member push hard and secure a fifteen-second lead in the minute or so you have to complete the tutorial stage. The game never makes it clear when they should push or for how long, so many times I simply got lucky, something you don’t want to be during a tutorial.
The same goes for switching to the lead rider at a certain moment and pushing to a finish. It’s all timing-based, which is fine, but the game never makes it clear when you should be doing anything, just that you should be doing it via the given buttons prompts. Add in having you use Star Trek-inspired energy and stamina gels (those can’t be real) and you are micromanaging to an extreme level. That might fly in a management game, but in a sim, it does feel a little too over-complicated.
It’s not often that I spend over an hour working out the tutorial missions only to get through them through sheer luck and determination. It was a concerning sign for the game as a whole. Thankfully, the actual tour experience was a good bit of fun, even when still trying to get to grips with the tutorial. I really would have loved to race a small tour in the tutorial and learned on the fly, maybe like a new rider coming into a team as opposed to the minute or so long bits we got.
As for the racing, it was super interesting, relaxing and tense all at the same time. Tour events are incredibly long, and while you won’t be riding for several real-world hours, races are lengthy and offer a lot of variety. It’s easy to break ahead of the peloton and fight between you and another rider or two. Learning to manage your stamina and energy is an absolute must here. I learned that the hard way as I could make it an entire race (upwards of thirty-minutes) and hear that I’m a minute ahead of the peloton, only to be passed by on the last climb and die out with the finish in sight.
But this is how I learned, more so than any tutorial the game provided. I learned from my mistakes and and remembered the basic commands the tutorial game me as I began to race more and use strategy to earn a yellow jersey. I relayed on drafting and holding with the peleton longer, I used the auto-ride feature to give myself a mental break, I spaced out the gels alongside the climbs I saw on the on-screen map, and I began to understand how to leverage my team to break from the pack and for protection from other riders.
I think one of the coolest features Tour de France 2019 offers is in how it saves content. Races here are quite long, and even completing a full stage is going to require a fair be of time. The game understands this and allows you to save anywhere you want, much like an FPS on the PC would. Jump back into the game and you’ll pick up from the spot you saved. This is a super handy feature that lets you enjoy the game in short spurts, instead of all in one long sitting.
Tour de France 2019 seems to understand (outside of the tutorial anyway) that there are lots of different players coming into this experience. The more time you invest, the more you’ll get out of the game itself. But if you are more casual you can still have fun and still do well and win races. This is most clear in how team management works during a race. I ignored this initially because of how poor it was laid out int he tutorials, but as I played more I began to experiment with it, which opened up my experience.
Early on I ignored my team and simply coasted with them and tried pushing really hard on the breakaway at the end of the stage. Much of the time this would work and required less of me, but when I dove deeper into calling shots for the team I began to see the complexity of the game features under the surface. I never mastered the team call, but I learned how to finally push a group ahead at certain intervals, how to heal members, and how I could leverage them into a mini-peloton that I could use strategically. All really cool stuff that serious cycling fans will really enjoy.
But this is more than simply the Tour de France, although that’s one heck of a huge race with a massive twenty-one stages. You also can take part in smaller events like the European Tour and Open Tour, among others that I can’t even pronounce, let alone type. This of it like a mini section of the full Tour de France. You can also take part in challenges like various sprint events, downhill and climbs as well. These are really great in helping you better understand the mechanics of the game without guessing as they happen during the Tour de France
That’s a fair bit on offer for a game about cycling. But wait, there’s more! You can also create a rider that can start from the bottom and progress through several seasons like one would in a FIFA game. Then there’s the pro team mode that lets you manage a whole team as you work your way up the worldwide ranking. There’s a whole ton of content for a game based on racing from point A to point B. I came into this experience thinking I’d be pedaling and coasting up and down hills like nothing. Instead what I found was a surprisingly deep experience that left me respecting the art of cycling a whole lot more.
But with the good comes the bad that keeps this one from being a great experience. The visuals are fairly lacking for the tail-end of the Xbox One and PS4 life-cycles. Characters all seem to have the same model, so kick off a race can be a weird experience with a single facial model repeated dozens of times. Fans will often clip through the environment too. I know they couldn’t digitally scan every racer and fill it with varied fans, but it feels a bit creepy and everyone looks dead on the inside. You also have to deal with a fair bit of blandness during long stretches of races where you sit back and simply hold a button to tail someone. It wouldn’t be so bad but the graphics and limited models make it hard to enjoy.
At the end of the day, those issues aren’t enough to kill the game, especially for those looking for a solid simulation of the Tour de France experience. The enjoyment you get out of this game is equal to the amount of effort you put in. Play it casual and follow along and break to victory, or play it professionally and tweak everything in a race, there is a style here for everyone. It’s not like there’s a huge market for cycling games out there, but it does seem like the people behind Tour de France 2019 really do care about getting the details right for fans of the sport.
“I came in thinking this would be an easy ride and left with a lot more respect for the art of cycling”
Final Score: 3/5
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