Tour De Farce or Arc De Triumph?
This is the first Le Tour De France game I’ve played; I didn’t know what to expect to be honest. It shows a serious strategic side to the event, taking it slowly when necessary and even eating/drinking to sustain your energy out on the course. It sounds promising and isn’t just your standard racing game, but having said that it’s far from perfect…
First of all, the lack of collision detection is a major drawback. You can’t even lose control of your bike and head off track, you magically bounce back on to it thanks to invisible walls on either side, also making it impossible to crash into spectators, which makes sense but would have been amusing nonetheless. Secondly it appears that there are some licensing issues that make it impossible to list the names of some of the more famous cyclists like Bradley Wiggins, instead replacing him with a laughably bad similar name so we know who they mean.
The controls are decent, but there’s no online play of any kind. The most you can get is split-screen, which is ridiculous for a next-gen game…which by the way, looks nothing like one. The draw distance is pretty bad and the level of detail isn’t anywhere near what you would expect…to be honest, it looks just like an upscaled version of the PS3 version, which is a shame. There’s a good career mode to be found, but after doing that there’s little to come back to and that’s a real shame. And seriously, where’s my ‘roided up Armstrong?
The Verdict
Le Tour De France 2014 is a game full of potential, but never capitalises on it. The lack of collision detection, licensing issues and no online really hold it back. There is a good game in there somewhere, it’s just hidden throughout it’s issues.
