Tour De France is back with a tour de force, as the 2025 edition is also predictably accompanied by a licensed videogame by Cyanide Studio and Nacon. Building upon last year’s title, this new instalment brings in a new graphics engine and a… refuelling system?! Colour me intrigued – here’s our Tour De France 2025 Review on Xbox Series X!
For the fourth
July will once again see the return of the most prestigious bike race on the planet – it is the Tour De France, arguably one of the most recognized and sought after trophies in any sport around. Slovenian legend Tadej Pogačar is largely expected to once again be the rider to beat, as he aims to win the event a whopping fourth time already. But you can’t dismiss the likes of Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel, the latter having come back from a terrible injury in shockingly great form.
If you can’t wait to get your dose of peloton, with even the Giro d’Italia 2025 having just finished a couple days ago as of this writing, don’t fret: the official videogame of the Tour de France 2025 is here for the rescue. You may remember my review from last year’s game, in which I praised the tactical aspects of the racing but commented on a dubious presentation. Well, just as multiple other racers recently did (such as MotoGP 25 and Monster Energy Supercross 25), Nacon’s new biking romp also jumps to Unreal Engine 5, bringing several new tweaks to the core game experience as well in the process.
And now for something completely different
Hold that thought about the new engine though, because I’d like to tackle the rather unexpected addition of a refueling system. Refueling is the sort of thing you see in somewhat serious racing games based on cars, occasionally on motorbikes, and it’s absolutely not something that happens in real-life biking events like the Tour de France either. These aren’t, after all, electric bikes – they’re entirely human-powered, with electronics only assisting with the gear changes. So how on Earth could refueling work in such a game, anyway?
The answer is more simple than it may appear: it’s all about physical energy management, not actual fuel or batteries. Just like in last year’s game, players have two coloured bars, representing the long-term stamina in blue and the sprint energy in red. Players can drink a limited amount of “fuel” to recharge these bars a bit, which has been a thing in previous titles as well. In Tour De France 2025, stages have a recharging spot on track – riding through it, players’ drink reserves get filled, allowing them to use these aptly named Turbogel and Energel to get back some much needed energy.
I needed that!
Needless to say, these are absolute life-savers. This game isn’t a technical racer by any means – staying on the road, following the line, is hardly difficult. Some tight corners require a tough braking to avoid plummeting into the barriers, but even that isn’t excessively costly. What makes or breaks the results is the energy, plain and simple. Run out in a crucial moment, and your rider will burn out for several seconds, slowing down to a crawl, as we watch other riders swing by. Managing the stamina is key, basically, and to do so, players can stick to the “peloton”, following other riders closely to reduce the physical strain; or, for example, assuming the so-called aerodynamic position on the bike and stop pedalling when going downhill, once again allowing for a bit of recovery.
Sprints, of course, matter. There’s the uphill segments where the winner gets a point, the mid-stage checkpoint which also gives plenty of points, plus of course the ending. It is imperative to have enough energy in the reserves to pull off these segments, as just being one of the many in the pack won’t make for satisfying results. Once again, players will also manage a whole team of riders, allowing them to give basic commands and even jump in the shoes of another rider at any given time. A strategy I’ve found very effective was sacrificing a rider to pull some of my most efficient sportsmen, murdering their energy levels in the process – this way, however, my top athletes had a lot of stamina left for the sprints and I managed to score valuable points from time to time.
You look better!
On top of being able to run through every single stage of the real life Tour De France 2025, this year sees the addition of the Flèche Wallonne stages as well. Players can even create their private team when playing through a career or championship, allowing them to put together a real dream team of riders to tackle this challenging competition. Mechanically speaking, however, differences are rather minimal from last year’s game. The bike handling is still a bit hit and miss, menus and UIs still feel a bit messy, the physics seem approximative as they did before. What actually changed quite noticeably is the graphics, however.
As hinted at earlier, Tour De France 2025 moves up to the powerful but often poorly optimized Unreal Engine 5, which gives this title a much more convincing look. The models for riders, buildings and such haven’t been drastically upgraded, but the general visual clarity, colour intensity, particles and such just feel of higher quality, making the game feel a lot less flat. On the flipside, the game feels a bit blurry, probably running on a quite low resolution even on Xbox Series X, and I even encountered stutters and framerate drops from time to time. It is a better looking game, when compared to last year’s episode, but Nacon’s latest is still quite uneven technically. Online multiplayer makes a comeback, too, but it’s still limited to 6 players unfortunately – no revolution there.
Pedal to the… err, asphalt
Needless to say, Tour De France 2025 is a game that is targeted at hardcore fans of this unique discipline, who will likely close an eye on many shortcomings in the presentation and gameplay departments. There really is no other racer like this out there, and fans of cycling hardly have any better options on Xbox in particular. It’s a flawed game, but its tactical approach of energy-management, peloton tactics and multi-rider teams make it a unique experience. It’s quite a visual upgrade from 2024’s game, too, though mechanically it didn’t change a whole lot, and the new refuelling system is quite basic as well. Tour De France 2025 is certainly an improvement over the previous chapter, but it’s still a product with notable flaws, one with limited appeal to a casual audience.
Tour De France 2025
Played on
Xbox Series X
PROS
- No other racing game like this on the market
- Highly tactical energy management
- Managing the entire team is great
- Good technical upgrade from last year
CONS
- The actual racing is still not that great
- Once again limited online options
- The advertised refueling system is extremely basic
