Developer: Cyanide Studio
Publisher: Bigben Interactive
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Pro Cycling Manager 2019 – Review
This year is already half over and each year many annual sports games come out like FIFA, NHL, UFC and many others. We’re in the middle of the cycling season with the ongoing Tour de France and the Giro d’Italia already over, so it’s a perfect timing for a new Pro Cycling Manager to release. This new installment brings all the game modes available of the previous game with a few new things coming with this release.
Story
Well, mostly in a sports game, there isn’t much of a story mode or anything like that available. The closest you’ll get to a story is to manage a team and make it victorious or you can create your own young cyclist and try to make him one of the biggest talents in the cycling world. These modes will progress day by day and each day, you will get messages from your staff and crew to know what’s happening in your team and in the world. At the calendar page, you can see what events will be in your interest and when you reach that date, your cyclists will enter. The messages received vary from messages about sponsors, injuries, scouts, trainings and a lot more. Reading is one of the biggest activities in this game as you’ll spend most of your time in the management screens of your team.
Graphics
Graphics wise, you can split this game in two categories. The first being the menus, these look good, simple but modern and will show you everything you need. A lot of colors have been used to make it good to look at. The second category is the races themselves. When you reach a race date, you can let the race be simulated and you will instantly get the outcome of that race, or you can do a 3D-race. This 3D-rendering looks good with detailed textures of the cyclists, a great environment with routes through real places that may be recognized by you if you live there or know the area well. But these races aren’t always perfect. There were instances were racers would just cycle through trucks, fences or other obstacles that weren’t generated how they should have been. Also, due to the lack of all the necessary licenses, not all cyclists’ names are correct in-game. This can be adjusted by downloading mods from the Steam Workshop that will change the wrong names to the correct ones.
Sound
When you start the game, the music played in this game sounds just like The Sims. Very gentle music that will keep on playing throughout all the menus. When you start a 3D-race, the music will stop playing and you will only hear some environmental sounds and a commentator announcing events that happen during the race. After playing for a while, the things this commentator says are really repetitive as he will not rephrase anything he says. For example, when an attack happens, he will always shout the same sentence.
Gameplay
Pro Cycling Manager 2019 is a cycling sports simulator that allows you to manage a team or a newly created cyclist and try to reach the top. This game has all the game modes that were available in the earlier installments of the series with the career mode as the main game mode that allows you to manage a team of cyclists. The Pro-Cyclist mode lets you create your own young cyclist and your target is to create a new champion in this sport. You can also choose to let a team ride a specific race course for a short gaming experience.
For the most annual sports games, the biggest question will be: what has been changed relative to the last installment of that series. There have been three big additions to the game this year. A skill tree has been added that unlocks special skills that will grant extra bonuses as your cyclist levels up. This can be a big motivator for players to get good results. The transfer system has been expanded and a pre-transfer period has been added which allows you to tell your agent which teams have your preference. Lastly, the interface has received an overhaul, which has improved the looks of all the menus and the graphs and statistics look a lot better than in the previous versions.
One of the disadvantages of this game is that each race must be simulated, even when no one in your team is eligible to enter it. This results in a loading screen that needs to be completed before you can continue playing on. This will reduce the pace of the continuation of your progress as it will hinder you each time a race needs to be simulated.
When you start your first career mode, you’ll be asked if you want tutorials explaining all the game’s aspects when you get there. This is highly recommended if you don’t have much knowledge of the sport and the management tasks that go along with it. At each screen, these tutorials will give you a thorough explanation of what you can do there. These will help you master the game in the beginning, but even after all these tutorials, you’ll need a lot of knowledge to successfully manage your team or pro-cyclist.
A race can either be simulated or played as a 3D-race. When you choose 3D-race, you will see the full race where you’ll need to give your team the best instructions for victory. This requires quite some knowledge of the sports to successfully participate in these races. If you don’t know anything about the sport and timings, you’ll have a hard time bringing your team to victory. During the whole race, you can give team members commands to engage, follow, take the lead, get water and more to bring the race to a successful end. Luckily, all these commands will be explained in the tutorials mentioned above so you’ll get some good explanation before you’ll be thrown into the race.
Conclusion
Pro Cycling Manager 2019 is a great game for its genre and the sports it represents. Some minor issues exist with the license, so not every cyclist has his name written correct, but the majority is correct. This definitely is a great manager game for this sport. Sure, creating a flawless game around the cycling sports is a really hard task but they’ve done a pretty good job on this one. While being a great manager game for this sports, the majority of gamers won’t get excited for this type of game, but for the true fans of the sport, this is a wonderful game that offers a great challenge and is sure to grant you many hours of pleasure in managing your own created cyclist or your chosen team.
Pro Cycling Manager 2019 - Review,
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