Tour de France 2023 – Review

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The Tour de France has been around for 120 years, and while I could chat all day about Football, Basketball and numerous other activities, cycling isn’t a sport I’ve paid much attention to, outside of the usual Olympic flurry of events for a few weeks every four years.

One thing I do know is the Tour de France is possibly the most prestigious event on the cycling calendar, so having not played the franchise before, I decided to dress up in skin tight Lycra, and keep an open mind to take on this review.

When you first start Tour de France 2023, you’re given a pretty basic main menu which lets you choose from a variety of different modes with a sixth panel to access the latest news and updates about the game, with he editor and options on the second page. Anyone as unfamiliar to cycling as I am will want to head into “training” which gives you five challenges outlining the game controls and features such as energy management and team comms.

These fairly short challenges will take about 30 minutes in total to work through and while they do cover everything, it does feel a little rushed and too simple. You simply do what you’re told and then spend the next 30 seconds wondering if you’re actually going to remember that in the main game, thankfully when you do head into a real race, you’ll get a friendly pop-up to remind you what you’re about to do, which are equal parts informative and annoying depending on how much of the tutorials you remember.

Back to the main game modes and there’s four in total… Race, lets you take on a pre-defined race set-up from the full Tour de France to smaller circuits, as well as the option to build your own tour by selecting whichever stages you desire to create your own custom race. It’s