Tour De France 16 – Review

In Tour de France 2016 you play a professional rider competing in the “Grande Boucle”. Immerse yourself in this supreme challenge of professional racing, and experience all the adrenaline and thrills of the greatest champions of that sport!

So being a fan of racing games when this was dropped on me to review I was less than excited, so I needed to make some essential preparations before playing this purely for the sake of authenticity.  I procured some lycra shorts and a lycra vest, wrote some obscenities on my living room floor in chalk and set up a variable speed desktop fan directly in front of me.  Meanwhile, my wife had gone to our local pet shop to buy some exotic pet food, unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to buy a box of fly’s so I will have to make do with crickets and meal worms.  Anyway back to the game.

Select one of the official teams participating in the Tour and embark on an amazing Tour de France 2016 packed with challenges: from the “grand départ” at the foot of Mont-Saint-Michel, battle through the tough routes in the Pyrenees between France and Spain and challenge the best climbers on the mythical inclines of Mont Ventoux and the Mont Blanc massif to experience the excitement of the grand finale on the Champs Elysées.

This is one of those titles that require you to actually play the tutorial to get a handle on how to effectively control your team, bike and the tactics of the races themselves.  Each of your team member’s have a particular special skill set for example sprinting, hill climbing and flat specialists.  The use of these team members to lead your group is essential as is the positioning of your team within the peloton during the duration of the race.

All of the above may sound a little confusing to the uninitiated and to be honest is, not being a massive road racing fan the tactic involved are daunting and very complex.  The mechanics for coasting and keeping pace with a rider in front are good, it is simple to hold the X button and tuck in behind a leading rider and keep pace with them.  The energy management of the team and rider is probably the most time consuming and frustrating element of the game but yet also can be rewarding at the same time all the rider carry 2 types of energy sachets one for sprinting and one for endurance.  I am aware of the contradiction but a good example is you have the ability to send orders to your teammates, while I was in the leading pack (1st group of 5 riders) and have tucked in behind the pack I instruct my team to join me from the main peloton……. guess what nope they just sit there and do nothing.  So I tell them to attack yep they do that alright they streak past me, the leader and expend most of their energy.

The team instruction menu is very complex for the beginner and while simple commands are there I found them to be less than reliable.

For the sake of authenticity while playing this in full cycling lycra and with added wind effects my wife intermittently threw crickets and meal worms into the stream of the fans air flow, this is not advised for the casual player of this as not only do meal worms not fly too well but also crickets are fantastic at getting stuck in your teeth, hair and taking up residence inside the lining of your furniture, they also make a lot of chirping noise at night, which the wife does not appreciate…..

The handling of the bikes are fine and a little more refined than I was expecting, the game employs a coloured arrow system that would be familiar to anyone who has played any racing game in the last 8 years as you enter a bend the closer to red the arrow gets the less likely you are in making that turn.  In the game, there are some very tight chicanes and the best tactic I found was to tuck in behind an AI rider to get through these quickly.

What does let this down though is the collision detection I am not sure whether it was to make the game more playable or a by-product of the game’s mechanics but sometimes when you expect to knock someone off or be knocked off your bike this just never happened to me disappointingly, as I had a cheese grater at the ready to replicate road rash.

The riders are modelled really well and the animation of their movements are very good, the developer really does need a pat on the back to this.  The scenery is beautiful, although it’s not photo-realistic it is still a pleasure to behold, it undulates and seamlessly changes as the tour progresses.  Towards the end of stages and during the uphill climbs the crowds are on the roads as they are in real life and they too look good as you slog on by.  I didn’t notice any frame rate drop or clipping during any of my play testing but when compared to other games out at the moment it falls short of expectation.

During this review, I tested this on a set of Tritton Pro + 5.1 and My home Cinema Set Up:- Yamaha Cinema amp, Sony Power amp, Wharfdale Qube Satellite Speakers, Sony Centre and Sony Sub.

The sound is good, the riders, environment, and bikes all have rendered sounds and make a vivid sound field that is rich and immersive. Unfortunately, it tends to get overshadowed by the fact that you are concentrating so hard on the race and team management it gets lost.