Tour de France 2024 Review (Xbox Series X)

STAFF REVIEW of Tour de France 2024 (Xbox Series X)

Wednesday, September 11, 2024.
by Adam Dileva

I know what games I enjoy, so I often try to stick with those. Every now and then tough I like to try something new, because you don’t know what you do or don’t like unless you try it, something I tend to find myself repeating to my daughter when it comes to new foods, so I took my own advice. Knowing practically nothing when it comes to the sport of cycling, I decided to try something new with Tour de France 2024. I enjoy my racers, so I was curious how it would compare.

Doing my research, I actually learned quite a bit about the sport and what it entails. For example, ‘Peloton’ – The main field or group of cyclists in a race. Now I know where the popular exercise bike gets its name from. Having seen packs of dozens of riders, I didn’t actually realize how beneficial riding within the peloton was for conserving a rider’s energy (drag can be reduced drastically by drafting within the pack). It’s time to earn that coveted yellow jersey, not just by out-cycling your opponents, but bringing your team to victory as a whole.

Tour de France 2024 has all of the World Tour Teams already, but also now has over a dozen Pro Tour Teams as well. In ProTeam Mode you can now take the reigns as a professional team, or choose to create your own team from the ground up if you wish. This of course will take a lot of sport knowledge, as not much is really explained for newcomers without a lot of trial and error. Fine tuning your team and playing for a number of seasons is the goal here if you’re playing for the long haul.

You’re also able to create a rider in ProLeader Mode and then take them through the career, free to change many of the settings for a customized experience. More than just adjusting difficulty, there’s a number of options for you to adjust how you see fit, able to utilize different rulesets you wouldn’t see in the actual sport.

While I didn’t expect racing on bicycles would be exactly like racing in a car, sure the acceleration, braking and race lines are similar, there’s a lot more you need to factor in when manually pedalling a bike hundreds of kilometers. If you push hard and pedal quickly non-stop, your energy reserves will deplete quite quickly and you’ll find yourself at the back of the peloton in a short amount of time.

Endurance is key, so you’ll need to manage your energy levels very strategically, knowing when to pedal, when to attack, and when to draft and regain some energy. Unlike racing games, you don’t always want to be in the lead at the front, as it’s not generally a great strategy since you'll wear yourself out early in a race. It’s about how you finish, and there’s many different strategies you can utilize to ensure you place best as possible.

Racing within the peloton is a great example at how much energy a rider saves while in the pack, as you won’t have any wind resistance or drag if behind others while slipstreaming. Also, leaning low while coasting on the downhill sections are another great way to get your reserves up. Learning how to utilize these tricks at the most opportune times is how you’ll ensure you have enough energy to not only finish the race, but attack at the right moments near each of the stage sections.

Even after my first lengthy outing, I realized that Tour de France 2024 isn’t so much a regular racer. Pedalling and braking are part of it, but instead, you’re really just managing two different bars for your endurance. The blue is for your regular pedalling and energy level, whereas the red is your attacking when you need to stand and push hard for a short period of time. Races take quite some time to finish, so you need to manage these resources long term.

It’s a constant balance of staying within the pack, knowing when to attack, yet not let the lead get too far ahead. A mechanic I really appreciated was being able to ‘latch’ to another cyclist. Holding the ‘X’ button to the closest in front of you will have you essentially mimic what they are doing to stay within range as close as possible, even steering. Since races are so long, sometimes it’s good to do so just to give your fingers a rest for a while too. Most of the CPU’s are decent, so if you do this to one of the riders generally out front, you’ll be in good shape for the race for the most part. This is actually how I started to race better, by learning when to follow, when to peloton, when to rest, and when to attack.

While you’ll surely focus on your main rider, you need to remember you’re a team. This is where the other portion of the game comes in; team management. At any point in an offline race, you’re able to pause the action and decide on which team commands you want to issue. You can issue orders to attack, get in the peloton, defend, and more. You’re able to even swap with a teammate if you want to control one of the others directly. This portion too takes some strong knowledge of the sport, as you’ll be taught how to do it for controls, but not really any of the strategy behind it. I’m still focused on my single rider, and I know learning the team management portion would probably make my team stronger overall.

The bike handling itself is quite basic on its own. Right Trigger to pedal, Left Trigger to brake. Given that you’ll be latching much of the time within the peloton, you don’t actually ‘control’ your biker all that often outside of the occasional attack and passes. AI seems to follow their line regardless if you’re in the way, and the collision detection is quite weak, simply bumping riders over a little each time without any recourse. With invisible walls blocking going off the main road, you won’t have to worry about too many sharp turns either, as you’ll simply bounce off of them majority of the time. You’re more watching your meters than actually pedalling and ‘controlling’ your bicycle.

Like most sports games, it seems that the yearly iteration brings a few new features, but generally nothing too drastic. Outside of the new online Criterium Mode, which I will concede is a drastic and must needed addition in this year’s entry, the rest of the listed improvements are minor in comparison. The inclusion of “Controller vibrations on dirt roads” shows how little new stuff was added outside of the Criterium focus.

Last year’s 2023 edition seemingly had no online multiplayer, only local, which is surprising these days, but it seems this is the big addition to 2024’s outing. Yes, finally there is online multiplayer for you to race against friends and opponents, being called Criterium Mode. While it’s limited to six players currently, at least it’s a step in the right direction. Here you’re able to make a team of two riders from the pool of hundreds of cyclists, and the most important, choosing your jersey.

There's a lot of settings to go through setting these races up, choosing which leg to race that are randomized, as well as which team type from hill, flat, versatile or mountain. It seems the characters statistics are also randomized, as to try and give everyone a fair chance. I wish I could comment on the interesting and long awaited Criterium Mode more, but every time I tried to find a match it just sat looking without finding any other players, and without any crossplay, I worry that the niche audience is so small that the mode is essentially dead unless you have other friends to race along with.

Visually, there’s not much here that will impress other than seeing the peloton of riders all together. While the number of riders on screen is impressive, each individual model is not, neither is the barren environments. Animations are so stiff, including the pace car, and as you bump into fellow riders your rider slightly nudges over awkwardly. Textures are low quality and the draw distance isn’t all that far either, so you can expect some pop-in in the distance. For audio there’s not much to mention here, as bikes don’t make much noise like how car engines do. There’s some commentating that occurs now and then, but aside from that, races are near dead silent with no soundtrack, so you might want to load your Spotify playlist during each lengthy race.

I’m still somewhat surprised at how little actual racing there is, as you’re generally just managing your meters and team orders throughout a race for the most part. Races are quite long, so you need to have a dedicated amount of time to see each to completion, but it does become monotonous to simply be watching two meters for the majority of each race outside of the attacking portions. I’m sure true fans of the sport will enjoy seeing actual Pro’s and Teams as it caters to its niche audience, but as a newcomer there wasn’t enough to want me to compete for that yellow jersey.

**Tour de France 2024 was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 5.0 / 10
Gameplay: 4.0 / 10
Visuals: 6.0 / 10
Sound: 4.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of Tour de France 2024 (Xbox Series X)

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