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PC Roundup Review
PC Review by Dan Whitehead
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Pro Cycling Manager Season 2008: Le Tour de France
- Developer: Cyanide Studio
- Publisher: Focus Home Interactive
If you're surprised to learn that there's a sports management game based around cycling, imagine how surprised you'll be when you discover that this is the latest entry in a series that has been belching up yearly updates since 2001. This surprised.
You'd assume that a series which has been going for this long would have arrived in 2008 as a fairly well polished product, bristling with refinements and features accrued over years of development. Given that the 2008 model is an ugly and often impenetrable slog, with graphics that would look outdated on a 1994 educational CD-ROM, you have to wonder what it looked like eight years ago - and who the hell keeps buying them.
The aim is to manage a team of international cyclists through various events around the world with particular focus on the Tour de France, this being the officially endorsed game of the race. All the usual management sim options are here - all orbiting around the calendar that tells you which events are coming up and your inbox, where incoming messages update you on your team's status. Scouts can be sent around the globe to spot new upcoming talent, while riders can be encouraged out of their contracts to join your pedalling crew.
It's all presented through bland menus, bristling with opaque options. You really shouldn't need to refer to the instructions in order to understand the basic functionality of a management game, yet at all times Pro Cycling Manager feels more like a spreadsheet than entertainment software.
Still, the races themselves should brighten things up - or so you'd think. Events themselves take an age to load, with the loading bar dutifully informing you as it prepares terrain, textures and riders. Quite what it's actually doing during these long loads must remain a mystery, however, since the sight that awaits you on the other side is so laughably poor that it can't possibly justify all the hard-drive chugging.
The "no stoppies" rule was strictly enforced.
A featureless grey strip slices through a grubby green expanse. This is your countryside. From your aerial viewpoint, hundreds of identical cyclists bunch together, clipping through each other and generally merging into a weird bike-themed optical illusion. You can change the camera angle, but that just reveals their weirdly-shaped heads and torsos in even more grim detail.
Icons for all of your riders clutter the left of the screen, while tiny buttons across the bottom can be used to give them orders. You can set their effort as a percentage, getting them to move up the pack, and then tell them to hold their position or react to an aggressive overtaking manoeuvre. Heart rates must be monitored, water can be dished out, and yet it's all so...uninvolving.
If you're so deep into professional cycling that you'd want to play a game where you navigate sterile menus and tell other people how to ride bikes, then there may be some small morsels of enjoyment to be found here, provided you accept that your own enthusiasm will be picking up the slack for a drab and technically sloppy game.
3/10
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Mount and Blade a 5? Wow. Judging by the comments on RPS, it really seems to be a love it or hate it game. I've been playing it on and off since 2005, and the battles alone make it easily an 8 or 9 for me. It has the by far best melee and horse combat of any game, and the metagame is like Pirates - only better.
I can only recommend people who haven't played M&B yet to give it a fair try. |
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With Lou on this one. I haven't payed the final version, but Mount & Blade was better than 5/10 even two years before release. I can't imagine they have made it worse over time, so I can only assume the reviewer didn't 'get' it. Always a debatable statement, I know, but the thing is I also didn't get it at first and fell in love with it on my second try. I had even made a caustic post about it on the forum, I felt like an idiot after that.
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most recently on 30/09/08 @ 11:49
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DanWhitehead
30/09/08 @ 10:50
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I can definitely see why people would fall in love with Mount & Blade. I really wanted to feel the same. It's just that in its current state the experience is far too clumsy for me to give it a hearty recommendation. I agree that people should try the free trial for themselves though.
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MrChuckles
30/09/08 @ 11:00
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Btw, i played the best new PC game of the year at the weekend, get KING'S BOUNTY: THE LEGEND from the Atari website.
It's like Heroes of Might and Magic but without the dreary castle management. You control 1 hero rather than splitting your time amongst 4 or 5 heroes with rubbish equipment, and the whole game is structured like an RPG, really highly recommended, it's driven me away from Warhammer. |
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DanWhitehead
30/09/08 @ 11:35
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I would give Mount & Blade an 8, kept me busy for at least a week straight.
A week of play doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement for an open-ended role-playing game though. Remember, a Eurogamer 5/10 isn't the same as a similar score elsewhere. From the score guidelines, a 5/10 is "a game that had the potential to be good, but simply ended up saddled with a catalogue of issues that the majority of gamers will not put up with." That, to me, is Mount & Blade. As I said in the review, there's a ton of features that I really wanted to like. The combat is innovative and fun, and I applaud the attempts to move away from RPG cliches. But I know that if I gave it a 7 or higher then I'd be scoring it for its lofty ideas more than its often clunky execution, and that's not how I do things. |
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Yeah I quite liked Mount & Blade... I even had some mates that thought it was cool watching me joust the poor river pirates only to get hit square in the head by a sea raiders throwing axe in the next battle... good times! At least a 7/10... it was even Eurogamer that first introduced me to the game a couple of years ago :-)
Shouldn't reviewers be praising indie game designers for not following the tried and tired structure found in most commercial games anyway?
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most recently on 30/09/08 @ 12:43
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Empedocles
30/09/08 @ 11:42
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Been playing M&B for 3 weeks solid now having bought a beta key, easily a 8/10 based on the combat alone - standing on top of a hill wioth you troops facing off a calvary charge is just magic.
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TessaTickle
30/09/08 @ 11:56
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Regarding M&B ... it's worth knowing that it's a two man effort, a one-man-one-woman effort to be exact. Some chap and his wife started this out on their own as a side project while they both have day jobs.
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I don't think M&B should necessarily judged by RPG standards. It doesn't tell an epic story, or is really that much about levelling up - like I mentioned, I think the metagame (silly term a bit, sorry) is more comparable to Pirates!, with the awesome battles coming on top of that. There's not much in gaming that compares to a skirmish in M&B, with you in the middle of it, on the back of a horse. The fact alone that they made something like shooting a bow from the back of a horse so much fun, and so well to control, is astonishing.
That said, I've been hoping that other devs shamelessly rip off M&B's combat mechanics for their RPGs, but so far that hasn't happened, much to my amazement. |
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What a fucking bullshit review of M&B. Having played the game for something like half a decade, I can't help but think the reviewer spent an evening with the demo and then spent a day writing the review. It has some very rudimentary RPG-style features, yet it's pigeonholed as an RPG?
The graphics and physics are shoddy, the rest of the game is excellent. There's no obvious Main Quest, which is neither a plus nor a minus. The combat is the best of any action game on any platform bar none. The tactics are simplistic but satisfying. You're not a general who lays out complex tactics over a battle map, more like a front line sergeant yelling orders to your troops. It's a great sandbox game, no matter if you want to play as a trader, lone wolf, slave master, archer or any other type of role you can think of in the skill-based character system. It's one of those games you dive into for a week straight, spending way too many hours with until something else comes along to grab your attention. Then you spend some time with the new game, realize it's over hyped bullshit and before you know it, you're back in the saddle, charging into four dozen foot soldiers with your elite cavalry. Like TESIII and TESIV, it's a great game on its own, but adding mods to the mix makes this a must-buy. Marking it down 3-4 points because the graphics are dated - it's a very old engine after all - is just bullshit and proof of how little a true gamer can rely on your reviews. |
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Silvervein
30/09/08 @ 13:58
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I have to agree with general opinion about Mount and blade on this thread. I was playing different versions of it over the years, some of it modded (story mod comes to mind, it turned the game into really compelling experience: pity it's not compatibile with new versions), some not. It does fantastic job of placing player into role of medieval type mercenary vagabond (although there's nothing stopping you from becoming a merchant). Big highlight of the game are battles, which are marvellous. Untill you charge group of pikemen at the head of cavalry charge, or hold your ground with infantry as enemy cavalry charges at you, you saw nothing.
As for the engine, it is basic, yes, but it's more than sufficient to show quite real looking environments, wounds on characters and best of all: it allows even big battles to take place without framerate problems, and that on computers that were not imported straight from USS Enterprise. Which are needed for games like crysis.
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"Yikes you guys need to get over yourselves. The review is one persons opinion. If it doesn't match your, then simply say you disagree and move on. When the heck did insults get introduced into things. that's what 4 year olds do when they are loosing an argument!
" Uh, what? I think you'll find that's what all of us did, with the exception of Trikk, maybe. Well, maybe we didn't move on, but we disagreed and gave reasons. I wasn't aware the comments section only was for console fanboy arguments. |
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"A featureless grey strip slices through a grubby green expanse. This is your countryside. From your aerial viewpoint, hundreds of identical cyclists bunch together, clipping through each other and generally merging into a weird bike-themed optical illusion. You can change the camera angle, but that just reveals their weirdly-shaped heads and torsos in even more grim detail."
Excepting the clipping, sounds just like the real thing. 10/10! :P |
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The review is one persons opinion.
And what is an opinion based on nothing worth? People don't read a review to get someone's opinion on how the screenshots look, they read a review to get an opinion on the game. The graphics are not great, but they do their job. I didn't see Duke Nukem 3D geta 3/10 for having outdated graphics. The criticism is inconsistent with what I've come to expect from an EG review, this sounds more like a random amateur's review of a demo. The main meat of Mount & Blade game play is given as much room as the features not in the game. There is no mention of the world map, where you spend a lot of your time. There's no mention of your troops, NPC companions, questing, sieges, tournaments, trading, etc, etc. I know these roundups are supposed to be short reviews, but if this review was my only exposure to the game I wouldn't have understood shit about how the game actually plays. The review simply does not do its job in explaining the game and sells it short by slapping on an unfair score based on superficial traits. That may be my opinion, but at least I can back it up with some substance. |
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hiddenranbir
30/09/08 @ 15:46
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That's why round ups suck.
EuroG needs more space for pointless news items like, "THIS IS WHAT SOME GUY SAID!" |
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"I LOVE Mount & Blade! Please vindicate my love of Mount & Blade! Your opinion is worthless if you do not love Mount & Blade!"
Here's the thing. I like Mount and Blade too, but I'm also not going to blindly claim it is a 10 out of 10 game, nor will I say it is anywhere near perfect. It is a fun, if spotty, release and the reviewer called it as such. If you disagree, it doesn't mean his review is "wrong" or that he "only spent an evening playing the DEMO." It means his opinion is different from yours. Get over it. If the game is as perfect as you say, then one review isn't going to spell its doom, nor will a single reviewer ever knock it down a peg. You don't need to defend it. Unless part of you realizes the game isn't as good as you say. In which case, defend your insecurities away!
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most recently on 30/09/08 @ 17:11
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To only give Mount and Blade a 5/10 is shoddy reviewing, especially with no mention of the castle sieges, the massive battles against varying styles of army and the flexibility you have to create your own force (and not just an epic sized one), the npc heroes you can recruit, the armour, items and new mounts you can get as well. Sounds pretty much like you played it for a half an hour and saw a few easy chances to be dismissive, when anyone who actually bought the game or is interested in the genre would invest a lot more into it.
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"If the game is as perfect as you say, then one review isn't going to spell its doom, nor will a single reviewer ever knock it down a peg. You don't need to defend it. Unless part of you realizes the game isn't as good as you say. In which case, defend your insecurities away!"
Don't waste a post like this here - it belongs in an XBox vs. PS3 thread! ;)
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most recently on 30/09/08 @ 19:02
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Have the Mount and Blade devs created multiple profiles on here just to put down the review? :)
Joking, joking! I read the review of M&B (having never heard of it before now) and thought 'shame, sounds like an interesting concept' and disregarded it. Now, having read the comments and the rabid support it's getting, I'm off to download it! |
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Obiwanshinobi
30/09/08 @ 19:24
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Mount and Blade obviously has not been reviewed on equal terms with the likes of TES. Perhaps it's just not "big" enough to get full-fledged review. I can't blame the reviewer for not praising this game to the skies. He's not paid for doing so. But isn't he paid for playing it a little bit further into than demo version allows? Maybe he's not. I'm not well aware about EG's policy concerning these roundups.
Anyway, this so called review made me curious, and you apologists did the rest of reviewer's job, writting some more about game's content and justifying your opinions. Now I'm making some space on my HD, having shareware version downloaded right here.
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most recently on 30/09/08 @ 20:25
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BlackKraken
30/09/08 @ 19:30
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I started up mount and blade, went through character creation, and then saw the ugliness of the world. I thought "urgh, this is awful"
Then (a little later on) i started fighting. As a (moderate) TES fan, ive been accustomed to god-awful combat. Every future RPG maker should play this game so they can get their combat systems right... Sure, this game isnt well implemented, but if only a few of the ideas from it are taken on by other developers then its release is a godsend. |
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It's hilarious how people can't differentiate anymore between reasoned disagreement and fanboy reaction. Shocking lack of reading comprehension. They just read something, sense some disagreement, and offload a pre-fabricated, knee-jerk response. I really blame console gaming discussion culture - absolutely terrible.
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Obiwanshinobi
30/09/08 @ 20:55
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I really blame console gaming discussion culture - absolutely terrible.
Roll on PC fanboyism vs. console fanobyism discussion. We'll have another discussion culture to blame. From what I know, people discussing pros and cons of different consoles, often discuss pros and cons of different PC games as well. Are they switching between discussion cultures?
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most recently on 30/09/08 @ 21:56
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+1 to the Mount & Blade support. There are still a few problems - the sieges are a bit of a slog - but other than that, it's fantastic. I feel rewarded for the time I've spent with it. The combat is about as realistic as you could hope from a game, rewards you for preparation as well as risk-taking derring-do, and supports a really impressive range of play styles simply by creating a set of rules and applying them consistently. It definitely requires a little bit of imagination to flesh out the world at the moment, but there are great potential scenarios - the rebellions/succession wars you can start, for example.
My only criticism is that after a while the fighting can come down to a bit of a disciplined science: when to pick off stragglers, when to bunch up, when to charge, where to stand. In that regard it is perhaps too close to reality; but that is also part of its charm. In many ways it is a game for people who want to get down on the ground in Total War and shout at people (while chopping off a few heads themselves.) |
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The main meat of Mount & Blade game play is given as much room as the features not in the game. There is no mention of the world map, where you spend a lot of your time.
Well, if you want to pull the review apart on accuracy you could point out that you can dismount your horse anywhere as long as you remember to stop it first. Even in mid air if you abuse the physics system :P For me the big problem with the review is for some reason the game has been pegged as an RPG, when it's far more akin to Sid Meier's Pirates! sans ships. There's some elements of roleplaying there, but it's not quite the full shilling. If you're coming to the game expecting a Neverwinter Nights style romp then you'll be disappointed. It's a big point in favour for me though. Don't get me wrong, I love RPG's, but I find it impossible to really enjoy them unless I can get a good three or four hours together to really sink my teeth in (my ability to completely forget what I'm supposed to be doing, important plot points and similar no matter how many in game journal entries are provided doesn't help here). I don't need that with M&B though; it's the kind of game you can enjoy just as much playing in short bursts as you can with marathon sessions; you can hop in for a twenty minute Nord bash during your lunch break in a way you simply can't manage with The Witcher. |
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The low score for M&B is sad because it's such a "small" game. As others mentioned, it's a two-men effort, as such a true indy game. Games of that scale don't get a lot of press exposure, and if that little bit of press that they get says it's "meh", it really hurts them.
And even if you say that an "Eurogamer 5" is better than other reviewer's 5s: that accounts for nothing when scores are accumulated at Metacritic. It should have scored higher for its ambition, scope and for fairness's sake. |
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hiddenranbir
01/10/08 @ 09:22
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I'd say majority of responses are reasonable. Not specifically at the scores but the fact there isn't much love for short quick 'round ups'. They don't provide as much coverage as high profile games, when in most cases, they deserve it much much more.
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I will defend Mount and Blade from a poor score as it's damn fine game which I would like to see others encouraged to play. With the vast amount of underwhelming and identikit games released each year something like M&B that offers a fun and interesting experience should be praised, especially as they do not have the publishing muscle to push for a proper review and score like the big boys can (and even to an unfair degree).
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