[Critch]

Roundabout this time each year, for the last 5 or 6 years anyway, I get interested in cycling. Not actually getting on a bike and doing it myself because that’s too much like hard work, but watching it on TV. It’s Tour de France time, obviously.

Unlike the vaguely effeminate, funny-English speaking mainland Europeans, us folk from the UK have never paid much attention to professional cycling as a spectator sport as it’s fairly boring. If we want to put the TV on for an all-day sports event where nothing ever happens, we have cricket. A few years ago though I started sharing an office with one of those aforementioned funny-speaking Europeans (a German) and we had a TV in the office, so I was introduced to the joy of having the Tour on as background noise for 5 hours before watching the last 40 seconds. I’ll watch any sport on TV, really.

I’m at the point now where I recognize most of the big name riders, know the result of most of the big races, and have Peter Sagan in my fantasy TDF team but I’m still only a vague follower. No claims of being knowledgeable.

Anyway, onto the point of a Dynasty thread: Professional Cycling Manager from Cyanide games. I bought it years ago and it really wasn’t very good, but since then they’ve released a version every year and it’s apparently a lot better than it used to be. Some years their release made it graphically prettier, some years the gameplay actually improved or added features that didnt quite work, some years it was really just a patch that you had to pay for (that all sounds familiar). Online reviews make it seem that starting with PCM2011, it’s actually playable. This years version, imaginatively named PCM2012, has just been released but its $40 so eff-that. I’ve bought PCM2011 for half the price. Apparently the main improvements for 2012 are nicer graphics (which wont make a difference on my laptop) and a season planner (I’ll use a fan made standalone program instead) so really PCM2011 is good enough.