Background:
* Nolife is an ADSL-only TV station in France. It is mainly a music video station with a mix of Japanese and (by law) French artists, but also has shows on video games and general Japanese and / or geek culture.
* Chez Marcus (lit: "Marcus's place") is a weekly video game review show on Nolife, where Marcus (French journalist Marc Lacombe) takes us through part of a game, in a typically incoherent and distracted manner.

This week (1 Feb 2012) Marcus reviewed Cyberbike 2 on Playstation 3, although I imagine the Wii version will be much the same. The Cyberbike "controller", actually an exercise bike, comes with its own game, and is linked wirelessly to your console. The handlebars of the bike are steerable and feature a set of console controller buttons.

Marcus showed off several of the minigames (there are also fitness options, but he didn't show those off), and touched on a number of points:
* The controller doesn't have any other games that work properly with it. He expressed some interest in an option to use the bike to control the avatar in a GTA game, but sadly, no, that doesn't work because you can't set up the input model in the GTA game.
* The European price is around 70€ (leading me to suspect the bike of being perhaps a little flimsy, although he didn't mention this) with its game.
* The cycling options are usually constrained to riding on a particular circuit (rather than going anywhere WiiFitPlus style), and watching him, I was prompted to think of Mario Kart in a couple of places.
* Some games rely on a weight sensor in the seat to tell the game that you are standing up (e.g. a set of pop-out wings), but this sensor is a bit prone to lag. (Probably it is averaged to prevent it from being twitchy, but that means it will lag a bit.)
* The bike has a magnetic resistance control (immensely better than mechanical brakes), but using a knob rather than being under the game's direct control.
* There is an on-line option, but the small user-base means that other players are hard to find, and it seemed also from what he said that they haven't exploited all the possibilities of such a game on-line.

Overall, it looks interesting, but it seems like it is a bit limited, both in terms of the content of the game and also in the use made of the possibilities it could offer.

Footnote: it's a little unfair to suggest that Marcus's presentation is incoherent. I actually meant that the way he plays the games is incoherent and distracted, mostly because he keeps talking to the cameras, one of which requires him to look over his shoulder at it.

I saw the programme, too. Marcus is great, as always, but I wasn't convinced about the bike and the game. I didn't like the graphics; they were a bit too crude for my taste, even for Wii games. The bike did look a bit flimsy, as well. Actually, it looked both flimsy and just a bit too big to move conveniently. I also didn't like the fact that the magnetic resistance control used a knob that was in an inconvenient place on the bike: Marcus had to keep bending down to adjust it. It should have been part of the game and it should have been adjustable through the game controller.

The 'games', such as they were, weren't very interesting. Just travelling round and round collecting tokens is not my idea of fun. In Step to the Beat it works because you can build something, but in Cyberbike 2, it's just mindless collection, a sort of platform jumper without the platform. The fact that you have to go forward all the time because it shows the 'Wrong Way' sign if you don't is another problem for me. I want freedom to travel where I want.

The music wasn't great, either. I don't really like 'easy listening' music. Yes, OK, you can just turn off the sound and listen to the music you like on an MP3 player, but that isn't the point. There should be choice for the game music.

For 70 €, for one game, even if it does come with an exercise bike, I expect much, much more from the game. The whole thing had a sort of 'let's get something out the door' feel to it.

That said, it might be a good game for those who like cycling but just want something a little different.

He's fun to watch, is Marcus. He shows you how the game really works, that is, he's showing you how it's played by someone who isn't an expert, by someone who hasn't played it millions of times so that every move is just perfect. I love Chez Marcus.