Pro Cycling Manager 2014

Servers are down!! You can't play online and achievements will not trigger.

couldn't start a race. Crashed every time. PCM 2020 is running

I bought this game about 2 years after its release. I played it for about 3.5 hours in total, then
I left it.
My issue is not about the game play, but with the activation. After not playing the game for years, also using a different machine; The game start included going through the activation process. This is where it fails. It does not accept the key and of course, you can't start the game.
After going through all the channels and hitting all the dead ends. I have now discovered the cause of this.
It is simply because of the websites that the registration is linked to. Whether you want to activate, reactivate or deactivate the game.
It all goes to the same 2 websites. One of them is a dead link. The other one is high-jacked and identifies as a malicious link.
If you do dare you click on it, a couple more clicks and you find yourself on Amazon. With nothing but a long list of Pro Cycling manager from, arguably, every available year it was made.
This problem would be solved easily. If the developers at "Cyanide Studio" would either fix the websites or patch the game to jump over the registration.
PWM 2015 is the same problem, of course it's the same websites.
This is why I do not recommend the game. It's not about game play but the fact that you will never be able to play it. Unless they fix that.
I've told them and sent screen shots etc.
No reply, no change!

EDIT; Since writing this review, I have stubbornly continued my futile attempts to get the game started.
Of course, it never worked. However, despite the game not actually fully starting? My playing time clocked up to over 5 hours. Yes, that's how fanatical I am.
I also got all of the remaining card drops. So at least there's that. I do like trading cards.
But I love a game that works!

I've had so much fun playing this game, but it crashes. Not just like losing progress on a race, but losing your entire career and having to start again. They clearly don't back up the servers to steam.

I've lost 100+ hours worth of progress multiple times. This is such a bummer when you've built a continental team up blitz the world tour.

If they sorted this out, I'll be back for sure, but until then, it's not worth the disappointment of losing all your progress.

I'd recommend this only with a caveat that we all know that there are some bugs with the game. The bugs seem to pop up in later seasons or when you knowing overtax the games custom team building feature.

I am particularly addicted to the lottery like system used to scout talent for custom teams. I still haven't figured out a science there and I've built way more teams than I've raced. Give this a whirl - but pick one version in this series you want to afford and buy that one.

especially hill stages are insanely unrealistic whilst the ki doesnt change at all but rather does the same shit over and over again

Only played it for a few minutes, and I hate it.

I love cycling, I'm watching it all in tv and live.

But it keep crashes all the time while loading a race. And if one of my riders try a break away it never succeed because peloton will haunt you down!

I bought it for €4.99, and it not worth it.

I have enjoyed the sport of cycling since I was a little kid, so when I saw this game I was really excited, but after playing this game for a while, I have come across so many issues i just cant recommend it to anyone. Here is a fairly detailed list of major issues I personaly have with the game.

1. It crashes a lot, I cant click on anyting during the loading screen or it will crash for sure. Nothing I care about much though.

2. This Issue hurts me deep inside the most. When ever you tell a rider to accelerate, if he is stuck behind someone, his energy stats will start going down(like what is suppose to happen if he is free to accelerate), but he wont be going any faster. So you are going the same pace as ther person next to you, but using up all your energy.

3. One small issues is you cant sim the rest of the race once all of your people are done, and many when there is an early mountain there are many stragglers and it takes forever for the stage to end. The worst offender I have found is a rider named Schwarzman.

4. During Sprints for the finish, you can only exactly set up your people the last coupel of K's to go. In real cycling they spend many more K's organizing themselves. This will many times lead to losing some leadout men or wear them out unnessarly. Between this and people blocking themselves in sprinting seems to have a lot of luck to it.

5. Breakaways. if you try to personaly chase a breakaway down at the beginning of the game it is nearly impossible at some points even though its your entire 8 person team hunting down 2 people. I understand It should tire them out a bit, but it doesnt feel right at all. Once your in a break away sometimes its peaceful and everything seems somewhat normal. But other times the riders your with in the break will just keep attacking until your rider (who could even have way better stats then everyone else) gets too tired to do anything. This is either on or off, they either cooperate (which happens every time if your not in the break) or selfdestruct. The biggest issue i have is teams that have people in the break, chasing the break down by sending riders to the front of the peleton. It doesnt make sense and seems like something easy to code and fix.

6. The game mechanics at time make me want to pull my hair out. I understand you probably dont want to be able to tell exactly where your riders should be at all times, but many times its just impossible to even keep them in the general area. If a rider from another team(or your own team) decides to slow down right in front of you and your unlucky, you could have just lost 30 positions and have just blown the stage. In real life many riders swing off to the side so they dont get in the way of other people, in this game they just screw over 3 or 4 people every time they slow down. Its impossible to follow an attack and draft even a little bit. You just have to spen the same energy they did most of the time no matter what you do. The energy gel is stupid. It is a one time item each of your riders have and after a delay they ride better for a minute or so. In real life riders are constantly eating and the feature really doesnt feel fun to do and does not feel rewarding. They need to add feeding stations on the top of mountains near the end of the stages that have them.

7. I disprove of most of the career mode features. They way sponcers tell you what races to focus on and base your results only on what they are looking for. You might be able to change these but i havent seem an option. Its complicated and unengaging. Training sucks. You train to basicly improve your stats temperarly, or so that you have less likely of a chance your riders wont get a massive penelty (random numbers appear next to your riders in the race, and if it happens to be negative they will not do well at all) during key races, which in its self i consider a stupid feature because most all riders during key races rarly have a bad day, and they dont spend that many days training in those specific location. (also doesnt take into consideration you trained there last year, a real rider would not forget everything). The equipment is what i have the least to complain about, but for the most part you get what you get, and the computer auto assings the best combo of grear most times, so there isnt much to do, its just there. I most enjoy picking my scheduel, which when you do there are a few unique multi stage races, and then the rest are single stage races that have reused maps, so your doing the same races multiple times in one season. Most of the decision making is already done for you and its usualy on par, but if you want to make sure your riders are peaking at the right time and doing it correctly, it is near impossible without writing a multiple pages in a notebook to keep track of everything and make an informed decision. The major theme of the career mode features is complicated in the wrong ways, already done most likely better then you can set up, doesnt translate over to what happens in real life at all, ... sucks....

8. It seems like they made the maps and graphics to look good in certain screens shots, but in actual game if your paying attention they are not that great.

9. The online part of this game is a joke. I have personaly found it unplayable, harsh penelties for leaving/crashing out of a game, and best of all its pay to win...

10. Alright, so we have an incomplete game. That means they are going to patch atleast some of the problems right? No. It seems they only make updates so that the game will run on any system they claim it will work on, and thats it. Instead of making real patches, they just push all their updates to the next game that you have to buy all over again, and unless you wait 6 months your paying AAA price. And in order to sell the new game, they need a bunch of new features to adverise so they make money, so they do that instead of fixing all the problems everyone actually cares about. I have not found a good/complete guide or tutorial for this game that doesnt just highlight the new crappy features.

honestly I would rather have the game play out like this. The first half of the race is simed. You can tell your riders weither they should try and get in a breakaway (possibly make a skill out of this. The higher your breakaway skill is the more likely you will be in it). Then post a list of the riders in the break away. then say how much your team should work on the front or how close you want the break away to be when your done siming. Then start the race half way through. This is just one of my ideas(not even that fleshed out), Also something they will never do. Just an idea...

A bag game engine, terrible AI, stupid career mode features, bugs, crashes, alright? graphics. Thats about it. Sadly if your anything like me you love the idea way too much so you buy it regarless and play this game way too much...

On the PCM website you can see the neglect for the game. All the dev blog posts are before or right around the launch of the game, the nothing. Nothing of FB or Twitter. After looking around a bit, it just feels dead. Littel initial thought followed by nothing.

Please tell these people to hire me as an intern so someone making the game will know how cycling really works and atleast try and fix the game breaking problems. I looked to apply but could not find where to submit an application(i didnt look to hard though, so i could be wrong). If I had a few years to waste and all the art done I would totally make a similar game on my own.

If someone knows a way for my voice to really be heard by the people making this game, let me know please.

I love this game. This is the first game I have bought in the series of games. Although there are a couple of glitches and crashes, the game itself I good. If you save often, you the crashes aren't much of a problem. Some visual aspects could be improved but I like this game and play it all the time. I mean just look at my play time.

Having been an avid player of this series since 2004, I had to buy this one.
It has seen some big improvements on the 2013 iteration (especially the team name changes).
The 3d game mode hasn't really seen much of a improvment (though that doesn't really bother me).

Though, if you are not really a fan of cycling, this game will probably not intrest you.

I feel PCM has grown quite a lot since the original game, and I especially feel like this latest version has made leaps in terms of sponsors and equipment. The only problem is still the lack of change over the years, the stages and races should not be the same each year, in my opinion.

From my hours count you can see how I actually love this game (and I bought 12 and 13 versions...).

And this is really sad for me to say this: DON'T BUY THIS GAME.

Or don't buy it again...

The problem isn't if this is the best cycling simulation game (for what it's worth, it's also the only...), but if this game is worth is price.

The answer is NO.

For the last 4 years the game is remaneid actually pretty the same: some new graphic, some new features and some solved bugs.

And today?
- The new features are often broken or bugged, you often have to buy the NEW YEAR version to have them working, because the patches are often very modest and don't change much of the gameplay.
- The sim engine (3D race and fast sim, there was only a most advanced fast sim, and this was so bugged they decided to remove it rather than improve it...) hasn't changed a lot, quality talking. Same bug, and some modest new features.
- The game engine is the ALWAYS THE SAME, and have the same bugs.

Bugs? During season preparation, I usually go forward and save every 2 or 3 minutes, because, the game crash.
How often it crash?
During a season?
From 20 to 40 times.

I'm not kidding, and I'm talking of TOTAL CRASHES.

This is frankly unacceptable, in my opinion.
And all the three last games of this series crashes for the same bugs.
They've never be addressed.

Now, as I said, I really like this game, I will continue to play it, but no, I WILL NOT BUY THE NEXT YEAR VERSION.

Because it's pointless, I don't pay 4 times a bunch of euros (many, because this is sold like a AAA game) for have ALWAYS THE SAME STUPID PROBLEMS AND NOTHING NEW.

Be aware...

First of all would not have thought i would like this game.
But just the suspense at the final 30km in the race keeps me wanting to do 1 more race.

Pros

* Graphics
* Gameplay
* Community to help with name and team database.
* Length to finish just 1 year

Cons

* Online (Theres either not many people on or i dc pretty quickly)
* I'm a casual player and easy isn't that easy.

very nice game, alot off fun with the 3D raceses but there need 1 thing. only 1 thing. and thats danish in the game, if we can get that on it will be so mush more fun for denmark to play this game. i know 20 poeple there have buy the game over other a danish website, only becuse it was on danish. why cant we also get it on danish here, like in 2013? it will be a mush better game for Denmark if the game could be played on danish :-)

Do NOT buy this game if you hate starting all over again and again.

This game crashes a LOT. That is not a problem BC it has a autosave function. Well. Guess again. You cannot save yourself and if the game crashes during a day shift, you loose your autosave, so you need to start all over again.

The game itself is great. It's a good game with nice graphics, but as long as it crashes and looses the autosave, then it is not worth buying. Wait for a fix!

This is my opinion on the Pro Cycle Manager 2014. This is my first purchase into this franchise series.
Disclaimer: I am not involved in professional or amateur cycling and have no knowledge about managing a cycling team. I am just a gamer.

Rather than a deep dive into every aspect of this game I prefer to distill this down to a few points.
I will not cover the multiplayer mode, or Career Mode, I have not participated in multiplayer as of yet, and career mode seems to me overly done.

1. What enticed me to purchase this?
For me, I thought it would be fun to manage, train, and race my cycling team around the many different circuits. To outfit the team colors / sponsorship, bike frames, wheels, etc would be nice attributes for a cycling game.

After Purchase:
After downloading nearly 11gigs and doing the install, the game loaded without error and runs fine on my machine using the maximum settings. So, I am not too sure why others had/have crashes, maybe early versions of the game was problematic, I am using 1.3.1, Overall the game is stable and runs fine.

Graphics:
I have no real complaints, the "effects" and rendering are pleasant enough for realism, you have control over the color saturations, and in game special effects. One thing I did notice is all the duplicate bystanders along the routes, basically you have about 10 different bystander and they repeat which is very obvious, as well as photos of riders. Not that this matters since each rider is measured by his stats not his photo. The other minor issue is with vehicles going through riders, mostly at corners.

Camera Angle:
The in game camera allows for a few fixed views, mimicking those angles you would see on TV during a real race. You can step through these using shortcuts or via the side menu. I do wish they offered a free view, so I could put the camera behind my rider facing the challengers or on the handle bars etc..

Game Play:
Depending on how you approach playing this game will dictate your experience. What I mean by that statement is this game offers a "Career" mode which involves you in every aspect of managing a team; even to the point of scheduling, scouting for new talent, purchasing, salary, picking your team, calendars, answering mail, assigning members to training camps, setting objectives, trying to meet your sponsor objectives for scheduled races. - So, career mode is the long term play mode that involves all the tedious duties necessary to run/manage a racing team. With career mode you will not be immediately racing until you satisfy several pre-season task and for a lot of people this may be too much to do or frustrating.

The game does offers single non-career races that you can participate in. Unlike the career mode nothing in the single race is too overwhelming, You select, go through a few screens and your racing. So for me this is where I mostly find myself unfortunately due to my aversion of the career mode requirements. In non-career mode you select your team & riders, set objectives/strategy and show up for the race, then send commands/orders to riders via the riders interface.

What’s wrong for me?
In Non-career; I feel detached from the game and my team. During races, I simply move some sliders around an position riders as the race progresses.
I want to like this game so much, but it does not contain enough substance to keep me drawn in. I wish there was a simple TEAM mode where you choose team members, have the ability to take your team to training areas within a country/local and build up experience, fitness and other attributes and develop sponsorship as you build up and win races.

Final Thoughts:
CYANIDE founded a great franchise in "cycling”, there is room for improvement in several areas and I hope the game evolves to include more interaction and involvement with actual building of characters dialog with team members and with the inclusion of 3D training routes you can take your team to increase their attributes in real time. Overall the game does offer cycling fans enough to keep them coming back for races and if you so desire, a career mode for those who like diving deep into the management aspect. For me, I would prefer a more streamlined “Team Mode”option.
Is it worth $$, if you like or are a fan of cycling – yes,
If you want to deep dive or have a desire to manage a cycling team – Yes, this is the only game in town.
If you want real-time 3D “character” race simulation and control – probably is not worth spending your $ on.

Does it worth 40 euros ?

At the current state I can't recommend this game, because it is full of bugs. When you go to play it as a management game, there are many points in the game which don't work properly. It seems that it is just developed and never been tested before. I played only two full seasons and came to a point where it was impossible to go on, because of a bug.

I had something to submit which was impossible to submit (endless loop with no way out). And I'm not the kind of person who stops playing as the first bug occurs. There were many before (small and big ones) and I went on playing.

I hope the next patches (if some come) will bring solutions and maybe the game is worth its money. Especially on Steam are so many alpha and pre alpha games which have far less bugs than this piece of shit.

Awesome game-series since it started of in 2001. Every new year there are a number of updates which might make you wonder about really getting every year's edition. I myself choose to skip a year (so my last PCM was 2012).

But since 2012 the updates are amazing to me!

I haven't played this series since PCM 2009, while I hardly remember some of the features from PCM2009, I can say with confidence that PCM 2014 has a few items that can draw the player into the game - but there are other items that will draw you away. For one let's highlight the positive mechanics that I found in the game:

Beautiful graphics
Relatively clean interface and menu
Somewhat of a comprehensive tutorial
Great in game commands
R&D feature was a step in the right direction

Some negatives:

Cluttered inbox, you'll get mail from a bunch of miscellaneous events that don't impact or pretain to your current game which I would just simply classify as spam
(Something minor which can be easily fixed by zero'ing off the "announcer/commentator under sound options) But the announcer sounds cheesy as hell, I don't even think ESPN announcers sound that bad.
If you haven't played PCM before, the tutorial might not be enough to properly introduce the game to you. There are many screens on the UI (not as bad as football manager!), it wil take some time to get used to it all.
A few minor graphical glitches during the race that don't impact the quality of the game (cars driving through the race formation, racers "ghosting" through each other)

It's hard to say what exactly needs patching as of right now, my first race was fine and I didn't encounter anything wild that needs to be addressed immediately. I would recommend this game to someone who is interested in cycling or management of cycling teams. would buy again 10/10.

Making an update to the review since I've been able to play the game more and see more details.

Below are my general feelings about the game.

Positive:
* Graphics are improved and quite good.
* Gameplay is nice.
* Different skill levels to make it easier for casual gamers.

Negative:
* Game crashes alot (Like around every second race - this is also reported by others)
* Major bug at August 2015 which makes the game crash. According to developer this means you have to start a new career once the bug fix is implemented in order to proceed. The bug fix has not been implemented yet( Ref: http://www.cyanide-studio.com/forumPCM/viewtopic.php?f=123&t=16550)
* The loading of races are really slow, even on quite decent computers.
* The sorting of players lacks several options to find the correct riders. For example tring to find the best riders without a contract at a certain age is from what I see really difficult to do.
* A bit difficult to find things like training, training progress etc until you are used to the game.
* For the games current state and in general, 39.99 EUR is very expensive.

Minor negative things:
* If you change screen resolution you have to manually exit the game, and then start up. Quite annoying when trying to find the correct resolution as this takes alot of time.
* The change of volume from minimum to maximum is done by holding down a minus button for a long long long time. This must be done for each of the 3 volume options from 100-0. It does not speed up while holding down the button. Instead of adding a slider and a mute button, it's only possible by holding down these buttons 1 by 1.

Conclusion:
I'de recommend the game if you are a hardcore cycling fan and can survive crashes and some annoyence. However if you haven't played any of the games before it might be worthwhile first to buy an earlier patched up version. In it's current state the game now is not in my opinion all completed. Still it's great fun to play the game when it's working. It might be worthwhile to buy an older cheaper version first to see if you like the game before you pay 39.99 EUR.

Improved since last year? Ohh yes :D

- The menus are much better now.
- Riders orders in races have improved alot.
- You can even set the riders to auto so they follow a strategy that you can setup before and under the race. (sprint for mountain/sprints/stage victory or defend leaders jersey etc.)
- Realistic equiptment sponsors thats allow you to determin the R&D in their frame and wheels!! Riding them in races will speed up the testing process, like in real life :D
- Price money is back in a minor scale.

Generally I have the last couple of year been alittle disapointed in the improvements of PCM and the pricing for that upgrade wasnt worth it, but I can tell you, this year it is.

You have done a great job this year Cyanside! :-)

9/10

Note: The general gameplay is much as you know it, but I think all the small improvements they made in this years edition, makes it proberly one of the most realistic and best PCM I have ever played..

Note: Played them all :-)


UPDATED 28/6 2014 ----------------------------- BELOW ----------------------------------

Now the time have come to liste some of the bad stuff I have experienced lately.
- Click on rider with the mouse in races, does not always work. Sometimes you have to use the keyboard back/forward key or use multiple clicks around, before it works..
- Making a train with your sprinter in the last position, is a pain in the ass. Its always the sprinter that gets dropped and none of the other riders in the train.. Wierd..
- No more race-reports after a simulated race. Did the riders do, what I ordered them too? I have no idea.. Only a result list to look at.
- Few rider crashes. No point in keeping your leader in the front of the pack, if mass crashes never happens/exits.

Now some good stuff.
- Stable game. Only got a failure a couple of time when loading a stage.. Nothing serius, as the game was loaded back in no time and game remembered the line-up for the race. (Remember to update drivers)
- Breakaways have a fair chance of getting a stage win.

As I wrote in the "first review", I still recommend the 2014 edition of PCM, but I must change the rating to 8/10 untill the "mouse clicking" / "sprinter train" mentioned above is fixed, hopefully in a patch in the near future.