4Gamers – Review | Pro Cycling Manager 2024 remains stuck in the past

For soccer, you have FIFA (or EA Sports FC) and Football Manager every year, and for tennis fans you have series like Top Spin. Cycling fans look to Pro Cycling Manager every year to prove that they can do a better job than all the team leaders and managers. Just in time for this year’s Tour De France, we’ve gotten to work with Pro Cycling Manager 2024.

Let’s get straight to the point: As usual, not much has changed in the game this year. The user interface remains almost the same and Pro Cycling Manager is still a task for a newcomer to master. So much information is thrown your way in such a short time that it is almost impossible to keep track of everything.

The biggest change in the game itself is advertising is the way it deals with sponsors. They’ve now been given a more important role, which means you really have to think like a team player.

Every sponsor has their own goals, and based on your results, those sponsors will be satisfied or dissatisfied. So, for example, you might win a number of races, but you can’t perform in the races that the sponsors want you to participate in, and so they won’t be very happy. This also means that you, as a team manager, have to take into account which areas you focus on.

For example, you might be someone who loves the Flemish classics, but you might have sponsors who want you to score high in the three main rounds. Then you may have to abandon your classic core for lap riders or strong runners. Of course, you can choose your own team at the start of the game, so you can already take that into account. If you have to look for new sponsors later in the game, you should of course not just choose the sponsor that puts the most money on the table, because you may have to rebuild your entire team.

For the rest, everything stays pretty much the same. You do some research on new materials, try to get your riders up to par in time, occasionally do some contract negotiations or scout young talent, and of course you participate in a number of races.

Pro Cycling Manager has been around for many years, and despite minor improvements or tweaks here and there, very little has changed. Not even in other modes, such as Pro Cyclist. This also means that the game is still not bug-free and it is also better to get a new database via Steam Workshop, in order to have more real riders and team names. So maybe it’s time for developer Cyanide to start from scratch.

Pro Cycling Manager 2024 is neither fish nor meat. It’s certainly not a bad game, but there’s not enough improvement over previous years to justify a new purchase. On the one hand, it also has a lot of aspects that you have to take into account, but on the other hand, it does not offer the depth of something like Football Manager or the comprehensive gameplay of games like Top Spin or EA Sports FC.