Tour de France 2023 review

Cyanide’s latest entry continues to nail the simulation of energy management but falters to improve many of the franchise’s lingering blemishes.

As a kid, I’d routinely watch a group of older acquaintances tackle the 1500-meter event in the Atari 2600 game, Decathlon. Here, four competitors waggled the Atari joystick back and forth, simulating the measured pace of a long-distance runner. After several minutes of performing the motion repeatedly, forearms would grow sore and stiffen. But the final rush toward the finish line would often intensify into a heated commotion that would often gather the entire household. Years later, I wonder if any of the competitors have moved on to the niche delights of Cyanide Studio’s Tour De France series.

Much like Decathlon’s definitive event, recreating the 21 stages and 2,081 miles of the Grande Boucle can be an exercise in human endurance. Of course, it’s far more sophisticated than David Crane’s 1983 title. While controlling your rider during a real-time simulation of a 200-kilometer stage can test your fortitude, the real challenge is managing your virtual athlete’s stamina level. If you haven’t played any of the previous entries, heading into the game’s tutorial is essential.

‘Peddling’ Cycling Offshoots

Pleasingly, steering your digital Cannondale, Trek, or Canyon (sorry, don’t expect licensing; “Team” seems to be the dominant brand) is rather easy. The steering feels like a car racing title, with TDF 2023 offering a color-colored racing line that alerts you when to brake. You’ll learn about drafting, which is a term when one rider closely follows another, taking advantage of the slipstream. Learning to take an aero (short for ‘aerodynamic’) position is one of the easier and final lessons.

After completing this, you’ll have the fundamentals down so you can compete for the yellow jersey in the game’s Race mode- optionally selecting your own succession of stages. If you’d rather jump into management, there’s a Pro Team mode, where you’ll be given a restrained budget and use that to build a two-wheeled legacy. It doesn’t get too deep, serving as a sampler for Cyanide’s standalone Pro Cycling Manager 2023. Meanwhile, TDF 2023’s Pro Leader mode offers a light role-playing approach, as you level up a promising rookie toward a career that rivals Greg LeMond’s.

An Hour of Progress Can Be Lost in Seconds

Regardless of mode, energy management is one of the foundations of Tour de France 2023. Smartly, Cyanide pared things down to an on-screen meter with blue and red gauges. The former reflects the overall stamina of your rider. Obviously, stronger pedaling will proportionately reduce your endurance, and you’ll want to make sure there’s enough gas in your tank for any upcoming elevations. Meanwhile, the meter’s red dial represents your ‘attack energy’, which is consumed any time you sprint to break away from the peloton.

While brief downhill coasts and consuming gel can replenish some of your energy, you won’t want to depend on either of these actions. Success, especially in mountainous stages, entails careful conservation of your power and eliminating as much drag (air resistance) as possible. Otherwise, you’ll face a ‘breakdown’ where your rider will inevitably lose ground. When this happens, your fellow athletes will pass by and color will evaporate from the screen, indicating the precariousness of your physical state.

Like a Fish in a School, Advancing in Perfect Unison

Sure, riding in the middle of the peloton can seem daunting at first, but the game struggles with crash modeling, so won’t have to worry about triggering a pile-up like the actual 2021 Tour de France. However, the limited collision detection breaks the sense of immersion. Veer too far from the road and you’ll encounter invisible walls. Given that spectators saw the same five things (across five different languages), you might be tempted to hit them. For better or worse TDF 2023 forces you to obey the guidelines of good sportsmanship. If you do turn up the collision setting, the game displays a single lackluster animation for the event, which is unfortunate given that Cyanide has been adapting La Grande Boucle since 2009.

That’s hardly the only disappointment. There’s some audio commentary, but it’s repetitious and lacking any of the insights offered by real-life announcers. While the game’s soundtrack occasionally crescendos into a groove, just as often it sounds like license-free, sports-sim filler. Visually, TDF 2023 makes little attempt to recreate the likeness of actual athletes, so expect to witness a herd of clones. On the upside, the game’s jerseys occasionally reveal actual branding and help to capture the medley of colors that make up a rushing peloton.

Lone Wolves Don’t Wear Yellow

Woefully, Tour de France 2023 rejects any real-time multiplayer component, opting instead for an asynchronous multiplayer component. This design decision might make things easier to participate in but confiscates the kind of real-time interactions that can make road cycling stirring. That said, this year’s edition includes a downhill-dedicated component. Given that weekly participation is incentivized, there’s a fair chance of at least a small community forming around this component.

But even if you’re a staunch individualist, TDF 2023 injects some teamwork into its races. Although there are limited communications with your colleagues, switching control with one of your teammates introduces an interesting wrinkle into stages. Alternatively, you can have the CPU seize control of your rider, with the game’s AI doing a serviceable job at competing. While we’re a long way off from the carpel tunnel syndrome inducing days of Decathlon, Tour de France 2023 demonstrates that the franchise has plenty of prospects for improvement.

Tour de France 2023 was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.