Refill your water bottles and prepare yourself for a ride in your pro cycling manager career. This sports simulation game is definitely a cool game if you’re a fan of the sport. You can go from managing a whole team all the way to making it on your own in a solo career. Maybe you will even become the next world champion. Let’s get a closer look at what you can expect from Pro Cycling Manager 2021 (PCM).
Graphics
For being a game in 2021 the graphics and animations are pretty disappointing. I understand the focus isn’t on the graphics in this game, but I can’t help but notice the crowd being very repetitive and the cyclists all have the same animation as well. Which after a playing for a while can add to the boredom and the already monotone grind. But the areas where this game lacks at least got compensated by the quality of the actual gameplay.
Gameplay
To be expected from a simulation game it does a really good job in realism. As you have complete control over what your team or your cyclist does, with tons of tactics and strategies outside and during races. Ranging from planning your training and upcoming races all the way to formations, attacks and even deciding which cycler will fetch water bottles for the rest of the team. Talking about teams and sponsors it’s a shame the game doesn’t have the correct names for everything. But there is a solution if you’re a hardcore fan of the sport and want the full pro cycling immersion. As there are community-made databases in the steam-workshop you can download to fully recreate the pro cycling experience. The game also has dynamic weather that actually affects the races in multiple ways like wind and rain.
The game comes with all 21 stages of the Tour de France 2021 which is pretty cool if you’re a cycling fan. A little downside to the game is that it can get boring watching and controlling every race, but you don’t have to actually watch all of your races in your career for example. You can just simulate your race instead and see the results your rider or your team delivered. For the more casual players that don’t want to spend their time building up an entire career, you have some casual races where you just pick a team and choose a race to compete in. Or you can even join open lobbies with friends or others online who are already hosting races.
Conclusion
I’m not a cycling fan myself and I definitely do not have the patience to sit through a whole race. But for a sport-simulation game, it doesn’t do a bad job at it. You have a lot of control in everything you do with your cycler or team, so everything may be very overwhelming for new players or people who don’t know the sport very well. Luckily we live in 2021 and tutorials are a thing now, there are tons of guides on YouTube and clear tutorials in-game. Once you get the hang of it, it’s a pretty challenging game, you better hope you got the wind in your back or you’ll be tired in no time. Anyways the community support on this game is pretty incredible with tons of mods to enhance your gameplay. Even the developers bring a lot of support after release, with tons of patches already being released. The graphics aren’t the best on the market but for a simulation game they’ll hold up fine. That’s why I’m scoring this game a 7/10, it’s definitely worth picking up if you’re a cycling fan.
