Pro Cycling Manager 2008 in gear for spring release
Manage your own Tour de France team from your PSP
Just reading about the Tour de France's 21 stages (which include no fewer than five mountain sections) is enough to turn our leg muscles to jelly. We're fairly confident we'd be off our bike and pushing it within about a hundred metres.
Fortunately for the world's cycling fans, there are people fit enough to make it a little farther. And also fortunately for them, publisher Ascaron has announced Pro Cycling Manager: Tour de France 2008 (the sequel to last year's Pro Cycling Manager 2007) which will be released in the UK to coincide with the saddle sore-inducing competition this spring.
As we pointed out in our review of last year's game, this series falls into a pretty niche genre. The game involves both creating and managing a team of star cyclists and directly controlling them in races - which basically means making sure they're not peddling too fast. Or too slow. And that they're drinking plenty of water.
New for 2008's edition is a multiplayer mode - which will let you challenge others locally or online - and the game also promises a range of international cycling competitions to take part in as well of the Tour de France. While managing is still clearly a part of the game (we're assuming from the title) the highlight will be the actual racing. So expect to spend a large part of it peddling.
No PSP screenshots have been released yet - last year's game (shown above) will give you some idea of what to expect. One thing's definite - the cycling's going to be infinitely less exhausting to do with a D-pad than for real.
