14 DAY TRIAL // I am a huge cycling fan and, in the manner befitting my nerd status, I spend quite a bit of time playing alternate scenarios for a number of races in my head so if Pro Cycling Manager did not exist as a series I would have gotten a team together to create it.
Fortunately Cyanide, the French studio that is also creating a video game based on A Game of Thrones, has created this series, which has received, just in time for the real life beginning of the Tour de France, it's installment for 2011.
The game includes a management section, which deals mostly with stuff like finances, choice of equipment and races, training schedules and cyclist management, and a simulation side where the player actually controls his team during classic races, short tours and the three big ones, Il Giro, Le Tour and La Vuelta.
The management side is not very different in terms of core gameplay, but there are some nice touches about sponsor management and the way cyclists behave that will be clearer as I play more of a season.
The big change introduced in the actual races for Pro Cycling Manager 2011 is that cyclists are no longer able to go “through” each other in the peloton when they are accelerating and trying to get to the front of the pack.
And this really modifies the way the game is played radically, forcing players to pay more attention to the race and keep an eye out on positioning from start to finish.
I found myself spending less time in the 8X time acceleration and more watching where my main riders where and making plans about how they could quickly get to the front, evaluating the effort level needed and trying to decide when to make my move.
The entire experience is more exciting than in PCM 2010 and so far I have not found any glaring bugs or gameplay issues (which have been a staple of the series so far) which means that it's time to get a full season rolling without waiting for more patches or community databases.
Here's a look at Pro Cycling Manager 2011 in action: