NFL Head Coach

If there was ever a bigger geek for sport’s franchise and dynasty modes, I would love to meet him or her. The truth of the matter is that I am addict to franchise modes. Video games started around the PlayStation era to include these dynasty building modes as the norm. With each passing year, they continually become more advanced and detailed. NBA 2k6 allows gamers to set-up practices, scout talent, and even watch the talent in one-on-one match-ups. Madden 2006 (Xbox, PS2) provided the players the freedom of running drills in training camp and even building their own stadiums. So, when NFL Head Coach was announced by EA, I was overly joyful with possibility to have an even more in-depth strategy game on one of my favorite sports. The end result though, is a clunky and ugly game that is just one large loading screen.

You’ll start out creating a coach. The creation process isn’t necessarily a long one. At first you will have control over choosing basic templates for the looks. Do you want a larger coach ala Mike Holmgren / Andy Reid or maybe you want a smaller coach like Joe Gibbs / Mike Shanahan?  Then of course you can change hair colors and the age, but, there isn’t much control with the rest of the looks. Generic and basic at best, the creation process of changing your looks in NFL Head Coach is simple! Oh the grief!

Well, that isn’t the end of the creation process. You’ll be able to change the offensive and defensive schemes for your game plan. Do you like to run the 3-4 over the 4-3? Would you rather run the Vertical scheme than a West Coast offense? The ability to change it up is easy and you’ll be quizzed on it by a few suitors looking for a new head coach for their respective teams. The beginning of the game will take about 10-15 minutes. Even then, you won’t be able to coach any games until the season starts which is about 2 hours into the game. You’ll have to jump all the hurdles like drafting, scouting, coaching, training, and hearing word from your coaches on a daily schedule. Back on track though, you’ll be able to change the voice of your coach in the beginning. What this does for the game is substantial to the end result. It does nothing! The few voices they provide are horrendous and my girlfriend kept asking what in the world I was listening to that kept repeating itself. Every time I wanted to tell the players how to adjust to a particular play, the voice would say something annoying that had me turning the volume down.

As you can see, my experiences so far with NFL Head Coach are all on the dismal side. How does the game actually stack up for the strategy portion of the game? Well the first thing I noticed that was missing was a trading block for my players and other team’s players. If I wanted to trade a player, it was a stab in the dark to know if a team wanted my player at all. Most comments on my trades were somewhere towards the effect of “Are you kidding me?” Hardly the most welcoming game, NFL Head Coach doesn’t even let you know the rating of any of the rival players on any of the teams. You’ll have to scout all 52 players on all 32 teams. Something I wasn’t ready to do since due to all the loading. A few of the proposed trades that I thought would work weren’t even close to being acceptable in the game. I wanted to trade Charles Rogers and Joey Harrington for fifth round draft picks in the game, but, the opposing teams had no desire for those two players for even sixth round picks when I offered it to them. At first I thought maybe I was wrong with my evaluations of these two players, but, when I offered Roy Williams for Cato June on the Colts and it didn’t go through, I figured something clearly was wrong with the trading system.

The other teams won’t ever look to help themselves out if it involves helping your team out. When I was overlooking my opposition and noticed that one team had four centers, all that were rated over 80, and wanted my center that was a 79, something had to be up. NFL Head Coach has the right tools, it just never executes them right. The off-season is a joke in my mind. I am used to competing with teams in Madden over a free agent and seeing big free agents come and go. When in NFL Head Coach, all the big free agents are retained by their teams and the only players that ever leave are the restricted free agents if you want to give up third round picks or higher for them usually. I never had the opportunity to even try to sign Edgerrin James who bolted Indianapolis for Arizona this year. He was wrapped up by Indianapolis along with every big free agent they had. Strangely, they never went over the cap when in reality they would have gone over the cap to retain them all.

The actual gameplay – boring! When I tried to coach one of my first games, I wanted to substitute one of my guards out and put a new one in. Well after about five minutes of fiddling and finally putting him in, it was already nearing the end of the quarter.  Little did I know that play went on without me helping out the team. That was Ok with me at first, but, all of the sideline coaching is managed through the bringing up the quick access interface that drops down if you don’t hold the d-pad. The developers do have one thing going for them and that is the Voice Recognition System where you can use your headset to call in plays to your team. Only thing it is limited from is using it online against the competition.

The graphics engine is still built around the old Madden engine. While it isn’t beautiful by next-gen merits, it gets the job done. What really holds back the graphics is the presentation quality. The menus are lacking in fluidity and are a pain to travel through. The music is what you currently hear on ESPN 2, you know, those old legacy movies of greats talking about those Super Bowls from yesteryear. From a technical standpoint, NFL Head Coach doesn’t match up to what is currently being developed on next-gen systems.

If I had one recommendation, it would be to wait until Madden NFL 2007 comes out this August. This is only meant to be tailored for the hardcore simulation enthusiasts. If you are dying for some football, even Arena Football by EA may be a better choice since you can actually control the players there. With me being more of the strategy lover, NFL Head Coach disappoints with its limitations of load screens and off-season blunders.

Gameplay: 5.9
Don’t get me wrong, the depth is surely present for NFL Head Coach – it just lacks any type of soul to bring this actually alive.

Graphics: 6.2
The graphics aren’t any prettier than Madden NFL 2006. The load times need to be worked on if they hope to develop another title based around this premise.

Sound: 6.4
I’ve heard it all before – nothing groundbreaking. It’s not the soundtrack I would listen to in my car or on my radio. The voice-acting is terrible.

Difficulty: Medium
There are two different difficulty levels in the game. There’s the medium difficulty level of figuring out how to call your plays and to out-coach the opposition. Then there’s the hard difficulty level of actually sitting through the load screens.

Concept: 8.5
I wanted to love this in every way. The more I played it, the more I knew it wasn’t working out for me. The game wanted to beat me at every corner I tried to turn to help out my franchise. The other general managers were harsh, the off-season is tiring, and the scouting before the draft is a bore. The only thing I loved is that they put a lot of time into the actual draft; Mel Kiper Jr. did a great job with his analysis of picks.

Multiplayer: 6.3
While it isn’t terrible, it is limiting. The only option is to play a pick-up game online. No system link or split-screen play.

Overall: 6.1
If I had to give advice to the development team, it would be to allow players more freedom in the off-season. Only allowing them two things to do between idiotic load screens is awful. Let’s see … move one player to starting running back and change another player’s position and time for another load screen. What? I can’t call their agent to discuss signing them? I have to assign a part of my day to calling their agent rather then just picking the phone up whenever I wanted to, that’s absurd. Well, there you have it, NFL Head Coach is a game that wants to give you the world, but, only piece by piece over 80 years of your life as you watch loading screens pass by.