Review: Tour De France PS4

Select from one of the official teams and take part in this supreme test of endurance. Compete as one of the riders in a bid to reach the Holy Grail of professional cycling: the yellow jersey! Go on a reconnaissance trip of a specific stage, decide the composition of your team and the rider with whom you will start the race and then launch into the epic stages. The English countryside, the route through London with its iconic landmarks, a cobbled stage in Northern France (every rider’s nightmare), the grueling mountain stages or a solo time trial that could in fact decide the winner!

Pros:

• Graphics are detailed and the back drops in particular are glorious. Riders have every bit of detail, all the way down to the sponsorship on their outfits.
• Controls look complicated but are actually not that bad, Triggers are used for cycling and braking. Right bumper is to go into aerodynamic position to gain speed down hill. X button is to cycle faster otherwise known as attacking and Triangle is used to eat/drink your item.
• Four game modes:
  • Warm up: Tutorial section that gives you a full over view of what is required of you and how to play the game. You will do this over a multitude of short scenarios all around the race locations.
  • Tour De France: The big one! Jump into the action and take your place in history.
  • Pro Team: Here you create a team and take part in races and earn xp to level up so you can recruit legendary riders. Very much like master league in Pro Evo so in short this mode is Master League on wheels.
  • Multi player: Offline split screen racing.
• Online leader boards which can be filtered down to friends only, race location etc.
• Outside of Pro mode, You can go in and edit team names, rider names at will.
• Tutorial really does cover everything and you get helpful hints whilst playing.
• Full commentary through each event and sometimes they give you tips on whats ahead or behind you.
• HUD is clear with your need to watch bars right up in your face. Yellow bar is your stamina and will go down as you cycle. You can refill it by using particular items or by holding back on your pedaling. Red bar depletes as you use the attack button, Again can be restored with items. You also get a percentage bar for telling you how steep a hill is.
• Wind effects you on corners and hills and can drain your stamina more as you ride into the wind.
• You pick two feed items before the race and each one has pros and cons on what they do.
• Feed stops located through the stages will give you your second item you chose at the beginning.
• Controller layout is on each loading screen.
• Can save mid race and at any point really. You have a handful of save slots for each of the different modes.
• You can give commands to your team mates, Bring up the menu and select a rider, then a whole circle of options will come up. Get your team to push up, back off, block riders for you, and just about anything else you can think of.
• You can swap between riders in your team at any point in the race which is really handy. Before swapping you will get shown a map showing rider positions.
• You can fast forward races and in theory “sim” the game and you can stop it at any point and carry on.
• Pro mode allows you to play it in co op with a split screen partner.

Cons:

• No real hit detection and you can drive through other riders wheels with no worry at all.
• Really hard to actually fall off your bike, Even if you plough straight into a wall.
• Gameplay is really slow even with the fast forward button.
• Team commands menu is eally intrusive and fills your screen with command boxes. Keeping an eye on the race and trying to read every command is nigh on impossible.
• Commentary is very sporadic and after a while will just repeat things.

In Summary, This is a game strictly for die hards of the genre/sport. The game play is really slow and you never really feel like you know what you are doing. As a new player to the genre I found I never actually felt like I was in control and it all seemed like an interactive on rails sim game. It looks fantastic and it really captures the locations to the dot but as a game it just never really gets going. I personally cannot appreciate all the teams and riders depicted in the game and feel no real connection to them. On the other hand if you are a fan then you have a great looking game with so much depth in the pro mode and with the added co op ability, Your all set for a great summers cycle. In short this is one for fans and does it well for the fans but does nothing to try and entice new players in.