  It's lonely at the top...not that I would know after losing in the semi-finals to the eventual Super Bowl champion New England Patriots :(
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If you’re a football fan – even casual – chances are you’ve had the urge at some point while watching a professional game to bark out instructions to the teams on the field. In fact, a lot of sports fans tend to act on these urges in dramatic fashion, sometimes yelling at the top of their lungs at the television set in front of them:
“Why are you trying to throw left?! THROW RIGHT!”
“He can’t catch worth a damn! Send in (insert random name here)!”
“RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN! RUN!”
You get the idea. Now, imagine being able to step into the shoes of an NFL head coach and control every single aspect of a team, from scouting players to hiring an entire coaching staff to deciding trades to calling plays and motivating your players? If this sounds like something right up your alley, you can’t go wrong with Electronic Arts’s new NFL Head Coach.
This game takes all the best parts of Madden’s Franchise Mode and makes it the centrepiece as opposed to just being the second-fiddle to what most football games are all about – the gameplay. Quite honestly, this game is not for everybody. It’s for the hardcore football fans who follow the National Football League religiously, who know that the terms ‘nickel’ and ‘dime’ don’t refer to the backups to the quarterback, and who have a whole heck of a lot of patience.
Head Coach starts you off from the very, very beginning. You customize your character and are asked some questions regarding how your team would play the game (wide open offense, tight defence, lots of running, etc.) and just like that, offers roll in from teams looking to hire you. I had my sights set on coaching my favourite childhood team the Pittsburgh Steelers, but I really did try to get into the role as much as possible and weighed out what team was looking to focus on in the coming year, and the team that fit me best was the Kansas City Chiefs.
Once you have your team chosen, it’s onto the tasks at hand – and there are a lot of them. Thankfully, EA made the menus quite clean and organized for the most part. There is a lot to do, yes, but there’s a guide for everything, help menus, and a relatively clutter-free interface. A lot of your offseason – and regular season for that matter - will be spent in the office, poring over player contracts (you get to be introduced to the wonderful world of player agents! Yippee!!), playbooks and rosters from the other 31 NFL teams.
The team at EA didn’t spend a lot of time focussing on the actual face-to-face conversations and that’s probably a good thing. Sure, the conversations don’t seem all that realistic – it was hilarious watching one coach get up with a smile on his face, unflinching, after I fired him at the weekly team meeting in front of all the other coaches – but again, this game is more about following statistics, reading X’s and O’s and comparing stats and salaries. The pleasant-looking offices your character spends time in are more to avoid shocking North American gamers who are likely new to the whole ‘run a franchise’ genre. If they were shown page after page of just graphs and numbers, they’d go cross-eyed and sweaty within seconds (I know I would).
After a long offseason, you get to jump right into practices. Here you actually do watch the players do their thing on the field. You choose plays, run drills, give out advice and generally watch progress. Remember though, you don’t control the plays in any way in real-time. There’s no ‘hit the X-button while holding R-trigger to do a spin while running.’ The most interaction you have during the play is hitting ‘enter’ to snap the ball.
After plowing through several practices, you’re given the chance to test your playcalling skills in some preseason games. Games consist of five minute quarters and of course you’re given full freedom to make the plays you want. It’s actually quite satisfying, after months of mostly looking at stats and putting your team together, to watch them on the field. The graphics here are nice enough, though the crowd is pretty much an unmoving mass consisting of about four colours. By this time, though, theoretically you’ll be more interested in calling out plays than the number of pixels in your running back’s helmet. Your offensive and defensive coaches will give you suggested plays before each play but you’re free to do whatever you’d like. Throw Hail Marys on 1st and 5. Attempt fake field goals after every single touchdown - it’s all good, and it really does give you that sense of freedom and being ‘in there.’ There are a few random commentator comments which seem completely out of place here and take away from calling the shots on the sideline.
There are a few sticking points with the game though where things could have been improved. The time during the offseason is quite long and there are times when things get very repetitive. You’re constantly given tasks to complete but during the offseason when not much is going on, it’s the same thing every day – picking plays and scouting rosters. Sure you can browse a stripped-down version of the NFL.com or check email, but you can’t actually send email out – you can only read what’s sent to you.
The loading screens, though they are fairly quick, are also annoying to look at. They consist of quotes from famous coaches from the past and present. But after reading the same few quotes 20 times each, it starts to become very grating.
Otherwise, NFL Head Coach is a great package put together by EA. As mentioned earlier, this really is only for a defined group of hardcore football fans, but those fans won’t find anything close to this anywhere else. They can spend 10 minutes or two hours at a time playing depending on their mood and it’s possible to simulate through an entire season if you’re really that lazy.
If anything, Head Coach gives you great fodder to yell even more pointed remarks at the TV the next time you’re watching the big game with your buddies.
WHAM! Rating: |
8 out of 10 |
ESRB Rating: |
E (Everyone) |
Official Web Site: |
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