Played on:
Xbox
The months after the Super Bowl are a horrible time for football fans. Months of no football are only broken up by the draft at the end of April. Outside of that, we just sit around and wait for any little tidbits of news about our favorite team. Arguments over what Free Agent will be a boon to our team or complaining about that new Quarterback are common on various team message boards.
Thankfully, pre-season football will start up again in August. Fans will be able to watch our favorite team play again and see that we were indeed right when we said that our new running back was a good pickup. Of course, there’ll be times when you and I sit there and yell at the coach for making such a horrible play call on Fourth-and-one – why didn’t he just kick the damn ball?
Well, for those like us, there is a new game out. NFL Head Coach puts you in the shoes of a, well, NFL Head Coach. You’re not going to be taking control of Steve Smith here and catching tons of touchdowns – you’ll be sitting on the sidelines instead and yelling at him for making the early cut on his route. You’ll also be making all of the decisions on who will throw that ball to him, be it Jake Delhomme or that hot new rookie you drafted back in April. However you look at it, NFL Head Coach is definitely a different type of game than what most Madden players are used to – and that’s a good thing.
I’m going to save some of you some time with this: this game is not for those who simply want a Madden-type game to play for a couple of months until Madden 07 comes out. NFL Head Coach is a straight-up simulation – a simulation with nice, shiny 3D graphics. If you find yourself spending most of your time in Franchise mode and simulate a lot of the games, though, read on.
NFL Head Coach starts off after the Steelers win the Super Bowl. You, the player, were a coordinator for the championship team and a few teams are looking for a new Head Coach. You’ll answer some questions that will help to determine your style of coaching – do you like to motivate your players by encouraging them or really riding them hard? Do you really like the West Coast Offense or would you rather focus on running the top defense in the NFL? All of these questions will dictate your coach’s stats for the game.
So, just what does a coach in the NFL do, anyways? If we take what the game portrays as gospel, you spend a ton of time in your office. Sure, you’ll meet with your coordinators and such a couple times over the week but, until practices start, you just sit around your office. Now, don’t get me wrong – I realize that coaches probably do spend a good bit of time in their offices – but, well, I’m sure they can actually work on things other than sitting on their butt.
See, your time is pretty rigorously scheduled – you have to take a good chunk of time to do something simple like change your clothes. Why can’t you just change things like that in your office? Instead of the turn system that the game uses, base things solely off time. The “30 minutes” that are scheduled for office hours and split into two turns could instead just be a 30-minute span of time. Granted, it would have to tick off faster, but it would make for a much more genuine experience – you wouldn’t be able to sit there and design plays all day and may even get interrupted while doing so. Really, I’d just like to see the experience be more interactive – let people call me randomly while the clock ticks and give me the chance to either ignore them or answer the phone. A more real-time feel would add a lot to the game. Being limited to two ‘actions’ feels artificial.
All of the game doesn’t come across as a strange turn-based simulation, though. One of the neater elements of the game is the draft. The presentation here is incredible – you actually see Mel Kiper introduce the draft and host it just like he would on the real draft day. There is a reduced amount of time between picks but you can use these minutes to look through scouting reports on the rookies to help make your pick easier. You can also try to pawn off players or a package of picks to move up in the draft. These elements serve to make the draft one of the more entertaining aspects of the game.
