Welcome to our review of Le Tour de France 2023, another year, another cycling game made specifically for its fans.
NEW IN TOUR DE FRANCE 2023:
– All 21 official stages of the Tour de France 2023
– Updated rider and team ratings
– New Medium Mountain and Agility rating added
– New “”grupettos”” between riders added
– New challenges added to Race of the Moment mode
– Distinctive bibs added for “”super combative”” and the best team
– Improved rider behaviour and trajectories for more realistic races
– Updated equipment items and official brands-
To add more realism to races and more variety in the race to win the Tour de France, ratings for Medium Mountain and Agility have been added. Based on the rider selected, playing and controlling your rider is now different. It’s easier to reach maximum speed and to take certain trajectories tightly with a rider like Wout van Aert than with Primož Roglič. But be careful, because the lower the Downhill and Agility ratings of your cyclist, the more control you need!
To add more immersion to the core of Tour de France 2023, we added two new bibs this year. You can now see and wear the “”super combative”” bib and the best team bib. Prove you deserve to wear these distinctions by showing your panache!
As in real life, riders can form a “”grupetto”” to make a breakaway or if they have fallen behind. This helps to limit damage during difficult stages and conserve energy for future stages or the end of the race.
All ratings have been updated based on the results of the riders’ last season so that they reflect reality and the latest performances of professional cyclists. The Race of the Moment mode has also been updated with new challenges, races and optimisations that add more variety. There’s also a brand-new mode: Downhill of the Moment.
Like every year, the charades behind cycling stretch from daily races to the usual pretention of grandeur by its many teams in existence. Mind you that I am not a fan of cycling in its current form and I play this game solely for the purpose of this review. I do not watch this sport in real life, nor do I think it should exist. Sadly enough, this attitude makes me the perfect reviewer for this game. I look at it from a point of view that pretty much dislikes the genre/Sport and I am at the same time a very strict person towards the game.
Like many other editions of this game, the main attraction is the up to date racing course roster. Not so much the cyclists themselves, like you would expect with similar games like Fifa (yearly edition sports games), but there are just no 2 years the exact same. Like I mentioned in previous reviews, the presentations of said day courses, the best thing in this game. It is truly a piece of art that you just have to admire. From one city to the next, Tour de France games do this right.
Aside from that, I dont know the value of these games for non-cycling fans, quite honestly, like most racing games, they are boring as fuck. I cant help it, they just fail to impress me as a sport and well, that comes from someone that is from the same country as some of the greatest cyclers of all time, names like Merckx, Museeuw, Boonen, Bruyneel, … Fun fact, from all those mentioned, only Boonen did not use doping to win throughout his career, it was not just them, this entire sport is filled with doping and it just makes things so dislikable. I am happy the new generation like Van Aert and Evenepoel are legit cyclists at least.
So should you get this game? Probably only if you are a fan of the genre, the sport is too niche to be a real game to get.
In conclusion, it looks good, but often plays rather boring. I wish it was better, because it usually feels like a waste of time rather than an enjoyable game…
