We would have put our house on NACON and Cyanide coming back to the virtual cycling scene with a 2022 edition of Tour de France and Pro Cycling Manager. That home would be safe too as today they have fully detailed and dropped the all-important release date for Tour de France 2022 on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, as well as Pro Cycling Manager 2022 on PC.
Coming to market with a whole new game mode and a range of improvements, Tour de France 2022 will hit Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and PC come June 9th 2022.
It’ll do the usual too – following on from the plethora of Tour de France titles to have released over recent years, celebrating the third-most-followed competition in the world. It will see you given the chance to grab the lycra and take in up to 14,000km of racing across four different countries, enjoying four game modes and managing twenty-six teams.
All the world’s top cyclists will be included too, such as Tadej Pogačar, Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert, Primož Roglič and David Gaudu, as you go about racing across ninty-two different cycling stages.
There’s new stuff though, with Tour de France 2022 key features sitting as follows…
- New game mode: Tour de France 2022 introduces the all-new Race of the Moment mode, in which players can compare their results online with others in ranked weekly challenges.
- The new official course of the 2022 Tour de France: like previous years, players can race around France, this year starting from Denmark. All 21 official new stages are in the game, including the time trial in Copenhagen to start, then Lille Métropole – Arenberg Porte du Hainaut and its cobbled sections, the iconic Hautacam climb in the 18th stage, and the final flat stage on the famous Avenue des Champs-Elysées in Paris.
- More varied racing situations: the game’s artificial intelligence now offers a wider range of behaviours, which are better tailored to races and events. Players will experience early breakaways more often and enjoy better collaboration in breakaways.
- New classic inspired by a famous Italian race: the Primavera Classic.
- New playable teams: Eolo-Kometa Cycling Team, Caja Rural-Seguros RGA and Uno-X Pro Cycling Team join the game for the first time.
- Race incidents: players now have the option to enable or disable falls and illnesses as well as set the frequency when enabled. The consequences vary depending on the severity of the incident.
- Race preparation: this new system randomly selects five cyclists to be well prepared and five others who could potentially underperform. This encourages players to keep a close eye on their competitors as well as their own team.
- More immersive cobbled sections: when racing on these difficult sections, the user interface shudders, just like cyclists experience in real life. Players have never experienced the Arenberg trench like this before.
And then we also have Pro Cycling Manager 2022. A PC only option, this introduces a new interface and more cyclist versatility as you drop into the shoes of a cycling DS. It’ll be up to you to scout, recruit, manage and train the finest riders, taking in all twenty-one stages of the 2022 Tour de France. The key features of that include:
- New talent scouting system: in Pro Cycling Manager 2022, players can now choose the territory and young riders they want to monitor, while their scouts develop and improve their effectiveness over time.
- New generation of cyclists: the latest edition introduces a new mechanic based on the level and potential of young riders using a six-star rating system. Young cyclists now emerge from the age of 16 and contribute to a pool of athletes three times larger than before. These versatile riders develop in the same way as current stars of the cycling world.
- Cyclist development system: for more realism, all riders recruited must now be integrated into the team for optimal development of their talent.
- More dynamic opponents: the pelotons in Pro Cycling Manager 2022 have more varied behaviours, breaking with the familiar patterns of previous editions. Players can see their favourite riders take the lead from the start and watch multiple breakaways from the very first hour of the race.
- Improved interface: as well as the redesigned interface, menu ergonomics and objective planning, a new cyclist page has been added. It includes new statistics, highlighted skills and results, and an interface to compare the attributes of two athletes.
- 70 teams available: players can become the sports directors of top teams such as Team Jumbo-Visma, B&B Hotels-KTM and Groupama-FDJ.
Tour de France 2022 will be available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PC on June 9th 2022. That same day will see the launch of Pro Cycling Manager 2022 on Steam.
