Pro Cycling Manager – Season 2012 Review (PC)

What is it?
A management game for cycling fans who find Microsoft Excel exciting.

Is it fun?
No. Oh, for the love of Thor, no.

Is it worth the money? £29.99
Not at all. Even if you were a hardcore cycling fan I would say no.

Why not?

I’m not entirely sure if this classifies as a terrible game or not. Maybe there really are people out there who find organising lists the pinnacle of gaming perfection, but when I spend over 8 hours playing a game and I still don’t understand what I’m doing then there is definitely something wrong. I played through as much of the training stuff as I could, I even won a few Time Trials (somehow…), but at the end I still had little or no knowledge of what all of the 11 pre-race menus actually was linked to.

I figured out some of the more simple ones, such as the team/rider selections, the tracks, the statistics page, and previous performance and fitness pages, but a vast majority of it was nothing but black smears on a yellow background which I just shrugged at and clicked ‘Next’. I have seen football manager games played before and they are not this convoluted.

Am I just totally thick? Possibly. However, if you’re already into cycling managing games then you’ve probably already up and bought this game. I can’t imagine it’s a particularly saturated market in the PC realm. I just could not get to grips with it, and even once I pieced together what little information I could I still didn’t really care or enjoy myself.

It’s not even well programmed or rendered! The game took anywhere up to 179 seconds to load a single race (yes, I timed it) and it chugged like an Irishman on a Tuesday night even on my upgraded Alienware Aurora. It’s damn near inexcusable. If it weren’t for Duke Nukem Forever I’d say they were the worst loading times I’ve ever experienced.

Also, as a stern warning, I recommend you never, ever, select 3D Race Simulation. Ignoring the absolutely pig-awful graphics, and the broken camera angles which give you a whole three locations to view the race from (four if the helicopter view decides to move instead of remain stationary behind a building, which can and will happen), it can take anywhere from 25 to 40 minutes to watch the entire thing. There’s no speed options, no fast-forward, even the menu doesn’t appear to have a ‘Quit’ option as far as I can find. You just sit there and watch, with the same 15 second music loop slowly oozing into your ears, until every single racer has crossed the line.

Just… Just don’t do it. Trust me. I did it five times and I regretted the fact I had to try it about 10 minutes into the first attempt.

So, in summary: terrible graphics, confusing menus, painfully long loading screens, crappy camera angles, hammer nails into your ears calibre music loops, and for the same price as two Gordon Freeman action figures. I wouldn’t recommend this, unless it drops to £5 or something in a Steam sale. Then it does have a ‘Railworks Train Simulator 2012’, let’s see just how hilariously bad and confusing, kind of vibe to it all.

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