This database is set in the year 2009, and the world of cycling has been shaken up a bit. With 10 new ProTour teams and many riders having switched teams, the best riders are interesting if not fairly predictable: Basso and Kaschechkin are the two best climbers and favourites for Le Tour, with Cancellara and Boonen the best cobble riders and Hushovd the best sprinter along with Tom Boonen.
Features --Cycling as of 2009 --10 new ProTour teams (including American Express and Alice) plus new jerseys and accessories for all teams --2009 stages for Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Paris-Nice --Brand new ProTour race of the Tour of Scotland --Mini maillots for ProTour teams
Graphics The graphics in this for the ProTour teams are very good. All teams have new jerseys, all of which are highly detailed and feature accessories for all teams. The mini maillots are, however, not as good, as in the management part of the game the new mini’s don’t even appear, and when they do on the load screen, they’re just too small. The big problem though is the lack of detail they’ve put into the Continental teams. Most are just the original jerseys, and the others are extremely poor, with one jersey in the game just being black: no logos, just a black jersey, black shorts, and black accessories. They don’t have mini maillots for Continental teams either, so the appearance in career mode looks unprofessional and very unappealing
Stats The stats are fairly subjunctive in this database, but the French team have done reasonably well in this. There are no riders who will totally dominate everybody, and in cobble stats and sprinter stats there are just about the right number of riders at the top. However there are more than more than 18 riders who have over 80 mountain of which most can challenge for the Grand Tours. The same goes for support riders, who all seem to be very good for every single team. The statistics in this database do some mostly strong, it’s just this slight hitch makes it slightly unrealistic.
Overall Editing Unfortunately, here we come to the big problem with this database: the overall feel of this database for a career is quite simply awful. There are many problems which make this database seem like the database will continue to be endlessly updated in order to correct the problems, and this cannot be anywhere near finished. It needs more work. There are many problems, such as some race distances for some reason having an extra 7 noughts placed in front of them, so an 81 km stage becomes 810000000km. The time bonuses given in races end up as negative times, completely destroying how the results are sorted, with the positions having no relation to the times, and many riders actually ending up with negative times. For example, after the first stage of the Tour of Malaysia, 1st place was on -25”, 2nd was on +0”, but 10th was on -11”. This flaw makes it totally unplayable. The continental teams also seem to have been rushed and totally forgotten: Auber 93 has 5 riders to begin with, and all the teams start with €4,000,000, apart from Unibet.com, who have €5,000,000, and one German team starting with €0. There also aren’t many new continental teams, and with this database, and this is the whole idea of this database. The final problem with the overall editing is that the calendar starts at 2006, instead of 2009
Extras - All new 2009 stages for Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Paris-Nice - Inclusion of the Tour of Scotland as a ProTour race
Pros and cons: + 10 new ProTour teams with all new jerseys + Nice challenge and something different to the normal database + The majority of graphics are good + 2009 stages for Giro, Le Tour and Paris-Nice + Tour of Scotland added to Pro Tour + Generally good stats
- Support riders are too strong - Disregard of Continental Tour (same budget, poor jerseys, small teams etc.) - Many bugs/issues - The time bonus problem and inability to sort riders properly Grading Cyclists’ stats: 7/10 – Reasonably good although hard to judge Overall Editing: 1/10 – Unplayable for a career, needs a lot more work Graphics: 6/10 – Very nice new set of jerseys for ProTour, but rubbish for Continental
Overall: 4/10 – A good concept that needs a lot more work
Conclusion This database is obviously not finished. With this number of errors and the lack of detail it just can’t be. I love the idea, it brings a new challenge to the game, and the work with the ProTour teams is great, but the problems are just too great to make this worth playing at the moment.
