NFL Head Coach

"Think YOU got what it takes?"

Introduction

You are an upstart NFL head coach who aspires to be the greatest head coach of all-time. The game should really be called NFL Head Coach/General Manager, because you do everything from signing players, hiring coaches, creating playbooks, and drafting. Well, not everything. The only aspect of your respective NFL team that you don't have any control over is the players themselves. You start by choosing whether you were a former offensive or defensive coordinator. You then go through an interview, your choices influence whether you're a X's and O's strategist or a motivating leader and well as your knowledge of the different positions.

Gameplay 7/10

Much of Head Coach's gameplay is centered on office work, not actual gameday. While you can simulate over all this monotony, it is to your benefit to go through and manually perform every task. This is the “ultimate football strategy game” after all, so you should expect that you will be doing things in preparation for games as opposed to the actual Sunday football game. The pre-season is very long and consists of everything from dealing with holdouts to scouting and drafting potential players to be on your team. The game divides all these tasks into a realistic calendar of events giving you only a set amount of “time” for some tasks. I say “time” because for some tasks you can only perform two or three operations for that task period. For example, in the “office hours” task, you can do only two operations. Which means I can only make two changes to the depth chart or playbook in that task. Don't worry about the time restriction though, as you receive many of the same task over the course of the year. This advent of time and a calendar year makes things more boring and monotonous than they should be. I would have traded the “realism” with one giant task that I could make all the changes and sign all the players that I wanted at time, without having to go on to something else and forget what I was going to do. Since you have to view after EVERY task that you do, it just compounds the need of having a few big tasks than many small tasks.

I found myself having a lot of “what did I just do?” moments while playing this. The game leaves you out to dry for the most part, and you can rarely go back and change things that you have already done. For example, in a coaches meeting you select one of your coaches he inquires whether you will keep him on the staff. You have no clue whether he is an adequate coach and you can't go back to see if he is! I found myself saving often to avoid these potholes, and I still found myself stepping in them from time to time, unless of course the game froze and I'd have to reload my save anyway. The game's many glitches causes disc errors up the wazzu. It's very frustrating to have done the whole weeks boring practices and have the game freeze right before gameday! The game also seems to suffer from a bit of slowdown during gameday when selecting plays. This is only minor and shouldn't hinder the experience.

When you finally do get to practices and actually coaching your players, the game gets very fun, despite the setbacks. You can choose which drills and plays to run that fit the philosophy you follow. If you practice a play enough, it becomes a “money” play and your players will receive a boost in ratings when you run the play during the game. You can also strategize with players during practice and they will remember what you said and do it on gameday. The game gives a lot of freedom in the strategies and tactics you can have your players do on gameday. You can tell your DBs to just knock the ball down instead of going for an interception, or tell your linebackers to focus on the pass. Your players seem to take your advice a little too literally though. For example, I tell my running back to run with power and he tries to mow over people that are five yards ahead of him. Even so, it is the sweetest feeling ever when you tell your quarterback to throw deep, and your receivers to burn the defense with their speed, call that money play that you created using the play designer, and have it go for an 80 yard touchdown.

Motivating players is also a big part of head coach. You are always given a passive and aggressive motivation phrase to tell your players, and their ratings will go up or down depending on how they react. One would assume that certain players respond to certain critiques, and all you have to do is learn them. This does not seem to be the case. Whether your player's rating goes up or down depends on your motivation rating and pure guesswork.

As you play you will gain the trust of your coaches, player's agents, the team owner, and GMs of other teams. Their trust affects how much they like you and how reliable the information they tell you is, and in the case of the owner whether you have job security or on the hotseat.

Another quirk many have noticed is that you can't change any settings like quarter length or injuries, this is a minor complaint at worse, but come on, what's up with that?

Graphics 9/10

The visuals are very good, as with many games EA does, with each game the visuals seem to get a boost. Head Coach is no different. The graphics and players look more realistic than ever, and the new animations for the non-contact practices are smooth and natural looking.

Music and Sound 4/10

All the music in this game is NFL films classic tunes. Not necessarily bad, until you've heard them for the millionth time! The limited sound track makes me yearn for the awesome EA trax that usually come with an EA sports title.

The sound is as it has always been, but since your on the sidelines, it sounds like your actually on the sidelines. It sounds aesthetically cool until you realize that the sound is constantly looping so your hearing the same things over and over again. On the positive side though, I'm glad that I don't have to hear Madden's mindless chatter in a football game.

Lasting Appeal 6/10

The game offers an online mode which is very cool to pit your football brain against another. It falls short on features, you can only coach through a career or use an existing coach. This fact combined with the very easy and fixed difficulty level left me wanting more.

Closing comments

This game is certainly not for everyone, and only intended for the football purists who think they can do a better coaching job than Don Shula. Even belonging to this group, I was overcome with boredom more than once during my playtime. If you think you are interested, give this game a rental and see if you are up to the task of not only coaching, but looking past the game's many setbacks. It's a good effort by EA breaking new ground with a fresh style of football game, but I can't help feeling like they stripped down the Madden engine and slapped “Head Coach” on the front of it. All in all the game has its moments and a good feeling of satisfaction knowing that your players would be dumb as rocks without you. Indeed, in this game, players don't win the games, and coaches lose them, coaches do both.

OVERALL (not an average)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/06