By Brad Russell
This game is almost a glorified ad for the real event. You control a team and
can determine if they win or lose, but your options are limited. The game
unfolds almost like a horse racing game at the carnival and here the app works
in much the same way; you even have an option to furiously tap a button to do a
burst. While it is an insanely simple concept, there is a little bit of
excitement to be squeezed out, and if polished better this game could be
somewhat addictive, but you have only two options: figure out the game and win
easily, or never figure out the game and rage quit.
You work off of energy which allows you to execute the moves that increase
your position. You have a handy display to quickly switch to a member of your
five-man team, but for some reason they don't have all five as tabs ' four tabs
and you have the bottom controls for the current cyclist and then the tabs snake
through your team making it hard to tell who is who and where they are. Since
the background is a copy and paste job, there is no way to tell your position in
relation to anyone out of view and since the tabs for your cyclists are always
moving you can only do your best to juggle everyone at the same time; you can
slide the view along the race progress meter, but that hardly helps. Some stages
are super short while others can take 5 minutes or more, but as you may know you
don't need to win every stage of de Tour to be the champ.
This app could have been a deceptively fun game, or at least something any
competitive person could buy into, but as it is there just isn't enough here to
justify a download. Thanks to a clunky interface, no explanation of what is
going on, and graphics not even worth mentioning, this app manages to be less
fun than watching the event in real life.
Final Rating: 28%
