Title: NFL Head Coach

Date: 07.21.2006

Genre: Sports

Platform: PlayStation 2

Developer: EA Tiburon

Publisher: EA Sports

I hope I got this review done in time for you to take a look at, and help you decide whether this game is for you. At a glance, it looks as if NFL Head Coach would be Madden's franchise mode with more bells and whistles, just no on-field playability. This is not the case however. This game has its own precept and ideas. Keep in mind that this is a completely new game - less the graphics - it does not have the same menus or concepts as Madden. In fact, if you are one of those people that like the franchise stuff in Madden more than playing the games, you might be the most frustrated with Head Coach.

During this review you will notice I mention the words “pointless” and “good idea” often. There is a lot of this in the game; a lot of good ideas, none of which work, and a lot of pointlessness that the game could have done without. I would have rather had a few good ideas that were brought to fruition. This game is obviously not finished, and seems like it was pushed through so it could launch two months before Madden.

The on-field graphics are amazing because they are completely Madden's graphics, only with fewer animations. In fact, even when you bust a big run there won't be many animations. You will see your running-back break tackles like in Madden '94 when you would spin with Walter Payton and no one could tackle you. You might see a lot of big plays but nothing that would make you want to save a replay. The player models look great but you never get to see them up close due to the rather limited camera work. Once in a while in practice a player will wonder in front of the camera while you are picking a play and you'll get to see how good the player models really are. The other graphics in the game such as your coach, assistants, and offices are quickly thrown together and bland.

Does winning a regular season game feel good in Head Coach? If you want to play Career mode you won't find out for a long time. The whole precept of this game is based around your schedule. You can only work on certain tasks during its properly scheduled time. During office hours you can make two changes to your playbook or roster (or one to each). You can only scout other teams when it's scheduled, trade when it's scheduled, and practice when it's scheduled. The schedule is completely annoying, mainly because of the ridiculous load times in between scheduled tasks. You will log more loading screen time than you will be working on scheduled tasks.

I would like to quickly run down some of the good ideas and pointlessness: The game introduces a good concept of a player having a range potential for his player rating. His range might be 57 to 84. On game day he'll never play worse than a 57 or better than an 84. The idea is to get him to the top of his range during practice. During player progression is when the range can go up or down. This would be really cool if they would have made the concept of practice and coaches actually work.

Assistant coaches are a good idea but clearly an unfinished one in this game. Each position has a coach and that coach has a trust level in you that can be raised or lowered based on how much you agree with them. The players themselves practice and play better for a position coach that has high trust in you. The concept is that you should pick the right coaches that fit your philosophy. That's all well and good but every coach is the same across the board as far as the weekly meetings. Every week you have a weekly meeting where your position coaches will tell you which backups have been performing well and that they want to give them the start. If you don't agree to start those guys they will lose trust in you, but you can go back and switch the starters after the meeting. So this is just a pointless waste of time to agree to start a garbage player to gain trust and switch it back before game day. You'll almost certainly end up switching your entire roster around every week and it gets pretty annoying.

They introduce another feature here that is a good idea but surrounded by pointlessness. That is the concept of motivation for your players. During practice and game day you have an option of talking to your players and saying one of two things. One has a risk of greatly increasing or decreasing their abilities temporarily and one has a risk of increasing or decreasing their abilities a little bit. The risk of what will happen is supposed to be based on your coach rating in that position but in my experience it is completely random. It is totally ridiculous when I tell Tommy Harris he is making some nice tackles and he gets offended and it lowers his attributes, and it makes the whole idea pointless. You are better off just not using this feature; in my experience not risking a lowering of attributes is better than risking to raise them.

Practice is so bad it would be comical - if the load times didn't tick you off. The WR/DB drill has your WRs run routes and your DBs defend them to increase both of the players' ratings. Although you think you can pick almost any route in the game, all but three end up being hooks. It even shows a picture of a hook underneath the word post-corner. The HB/LB drill is even more boring. You pick 1 of 3 HB dives, really makes no difference, and you hike the ball and watch your RB run into the LB. It is nothing like the minicamp drills in Madden; not one body bag or obstacle, just running a dive into a LB standing right there in front of him. Not too much fun.

The contact practice is the only interesting practice in the game. As you call plays, the more you run a single play, the more you will increase the percentage of that play becoming a money play during game time. The problem is you only get 10 reps and you have 50 plays and you need to run a play about 10 times to get it to be a money play. There is no way to practice with your special teams players so they will always be at the low end of their range.

Another glitch is trading players. You can only trade when it is scheduled in your calendar to trade. Teams will email you offers, but you can't call a team to do a trade until it's scheduled. The problem is that after the Unrestricted Free Agent signing period, which ends in June, there is no trade time scheduled for the rest of the season. Unfortunately, after the UFA period is when you really want to trade. Preseason is very frustrating because they take the only fun part of preseason and destroy it. Your opponents in preseason keep their first string in all game. If you put in your backups against your opponents first string you get killed and your coaches loose trust in you. What is the point of that?

They also make the on-field direction during game time a lot harder then it has to be. In Madden you can use your L1 and R1 to shift the D-line respectfully. In Head Coach you have to hit X, go to Line Adjustment, and click on which way you want to shift; all before the opponent snaps the ball. There is no way to make a line adjustment and a coverage adjustment in that amount of time… I thought games were supposed to be fun.

There is not an option to save during a game and no option to change the quarter length. I hope you like playing 5-minute quarters. The idea of having agents is cool but they really don't negotiate. Instead of getting into it I'll just say that it is more fun to sign a player in Madden.

One pointless thing is that they give you a 14-page summary of the team you are about to face but it's all preprogrammed mumbo-jumbo. They don't include any useful information about an opponent, such as their play calling strategies, player tendencies, or anything like that. And they are completely exaggerated. According to the team summaries half of the quarterbacks you face have the strongest arm in the league. That's not a very good scouting report. Once again, a good idea, and if it was useful information it could be a cool addition to Madden, but it just doesn't work.

Another very annoying and pointless thing is the game ticker. While you are playing a game there is a ticker scrolling across the top of the screen giving the play by play. With the camera being as unhelpful as possible the ticker is your prime source of information. The problem lies in that it is always two plays behind. For example, if you run for a loss, pass for a gain, and line up on the line at 3rd down, you can look up at the ticker at that moment and see who made the tackle two plays ago. One reason for this is that it scrolls by too slow compared to the speed of the gameplay. Another is that there is a very large EA Sports logo scrolling in-between each play call and it takes up a lot of space on the ticker.

The one bright spot in this game and the only part that garnished any points in its favor is the draft. Scouting the draft, trading up for higher round picks, and trying to get a high draft grade is well done and more importantly very fun. The presentation is excellent during the ESPN hosted draft, with the announcer, the commentary, and the whole package. It immerses you in an experience that far outweighs the Madden draft. It really makes you follow the draft throughout the whole league. You will actually not want to skip other teams selections out of curiosity of whom they will draft and to keep you engulfed in the anticipation of your upcoming selection.

For all you Madden fans that were hoping against hope that this may be the answer to those summer months when last year's Madden has gotten a little old and you can almost taste next years Madden, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is not it. This really could have been a cool game but it needs an extraordinary amount of work. If you know a lot about the game of football this game will more likely frustrate you than entertain you.

Game Score

6.7

Reviewed By: Contributed