NFL Head Coach

"If you are the ultimate football strategist, this game is for you"

NFL Head Coach delivers NFL football to the strategist. EA Sports had a great idea here, but could tune a lot up. The thing that plagues the game the heaviest is by far the atrocious and repetitive save and load times. Let's take a further look into the game:

GRAPHICS: 6/10

In the office the graphics are great, but on the field they are another story. Think of the on-field graphics and Madden, only a little blockier and fuzzier. My brother was watching me play the game, and pointed something out that I agree with, which was, "The way the screen moves reminds me of the Nintendo 64 Madden." That is a true statement. The actual graphics are way better, but just the screen movement will remind you of that. In the office, you can think of it basically as a Sims game. Simple, yet sharp and pleasing to the eye. Also, as another reviewer of the game pointed out, the player movements and gameplay are very simple, and you will see way more jukes than broken tackles and power moves. That's just the way it is.

SOUND: 8/10

The sound clarity is pretty good on this game. The on-field sounds are the exact same as Madden. Your co-ordinators talk to you and tell you which play to call. In the office, the NFL Classics music returns as the whole soundtrack. If you like it like I do, you'll enjoy it. But if you're more the EA Trax person, the music will get old quick. Not much more to say here.

GAMEPLAY: 7/10

You start your coaching career by selecting your tendency, offensive or defensive, and creating your coach's appearance. You then select your offensive style (vertical, west coast, etc.) and defensive style (4-6, 3-4, etc.). Then, finally, you pick a team you'd like to interview with. You are guaranteed a job offer to the team you interview with, but you will also get 4 other random job offers, so you will get 5 total. After your interview, you will select your team. After that, the owner takes you through a lengthy orientation, and finally you can start the game. The way the game works is you have 4 events per day. The events range from office hours (which you use to edit the depth chart and roster), trading players, signing players, meeting with co-ordinators, hiring staff, training drills, and much more. You can also swap off unnecessary tasks for tasks you'd like to get done. For example, if you really want to trade players but it's not scheduled, you can swap changing coach clothing for it, because it's not a needed event. Now. Your job starts after the season, so the rosters are old. First you go through the sign players period, then the combine (which only your scouting director can go to), then to the draft, then to training camp, pre-season, and finally the regular season. If you choose to coach the pre-season games like I did, to gain experience, you could easily log 10 hours of gameplay before you ever start the regular season. Now for on the field gameplay. Basically you stand on the sideline and call plays and motivate your players. There's not a whole lot more to it than that. It's not as boring as it sounds though. Close games will really have you on the edge of your seat. You also have the ability to call hot routes/audibles before the snap, and you control when the ball is snapped. There actually aren't any holes in the gameplay, it could just be more complex considering it's being modeled after an NFL Head Coach.

REPLAYABILITY: 6/10

This was a hard category to rate, because it all depends your gaming and football interests. Like I said, if you're interested in going very in-depth into the game of football, it's a good pick-up. But if you like the fast tempo of Madden, you should probably just stick with Madden. So if you like this game and what it has to offer, you'll spend a lot of time on it. If you are just picking it up to see what it's like, you will probably get bored after oh..a couple of hours.

OVERALL: 6/10

If the concept sounds interesting, pick it up. It's only $20. If it sounds boring and repetitive, but you still want to see what it's like, rent it.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 01/25/07