Here at MyGamer I have managed to review many, many odd simulation games. From the almost no effort put into them lows of construction simulations ported so poorly from phones to PC that they make high end until chug, to the highlights of being a goat. None of that, in anyway, prepared me for the simulation that was Tour de France 2018.
Sections of France have been painstakingly recreated for insanely long distances at a time so people can ride through them at this event. The odd subtle and unique physics of drifting behind the person in front of you on a bike are present, as is the wobble the player can get when they step out of the slipstream. There are so many small touches that it can seem entirely insane how much was included in the game, and how much was recreated.
The problems is that if that isn’t something that you are really into it becomes extremely boring within minutes of playing. All of the picturesque landscapes of France quickly start to look almost exactly the same after the third rolling hill and town the player has rolled through. Most of the mechanics of racing can be broken down to holding one button to keep pace with the rider directly ahead. Probably the worst offender is that there is an insane amount of load time between any one event. That means that going into and out of anything can take several minutes. While the game is probably simulating a ton of data, and updating all kinds of stats, it still is rather annoying that several chores can be completed in the amount of time it takes to simulate the completion of a race.
When it comes down to it Tour de France is a fine game, but only if you have probably played the last several and are already super into this series. If you have never heard about it before, feel free to go ahead and skip right over it. Don’t feel bad about it, you can’t even crash your bike into other racers or even attempt to cause a bike pile up—the entire point of losing in any form of a racing game. When it comes down to it, this game is catering to the people that are already in the in crowd. And that is ok.