Head Coach an OK first try, but just to much going on
Genre: Football Sim, Sports
Publisher, Developer: EA Sports, EA Tiburon
Rating: Everyone
Console: Xbox, PS2, PC, etc.
Price: $40
By BEN MEYERS
The Saratogian
Grab a whistle, get some X’s and O’s and be ready for a lot of paperwork, while chasing greats such as Don Shula, Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry because it is time to put on the headset and become an NFL Head Coach.
From the moment you start this title you find out that from top to bottom this game is every part of football that you would simulate when playing its inspiration of Madden Football. Believe me if you are a fan of actually playing the game with the players on the field in that title then this one is most decidedly not for you.
In fact this game isn’t really for football fans that much. I think it is more for fans of games such as the Sims because the overwhelming amount of the time you are in an office, not on the field, and you are filling out virtual paperwork, not calling plays. (You can create your own plays in this one, but it is difficult to come up with any that the computer won’t figure out within a few snaps.)
This game is a micromanager’s dream, but I know that the American gamer is not one who tends to like to worry about the minutest details in a game. In Europe and Japan these sort of ultra in-depth front office games are more popular with soccer or baseball, but the reason why football is popular in America is the action on the field on Sundays not the running of practice on Wednesday afternoon so your running back will learn to bounce a play outside or get the guts to take on a linebacker.
If there is one thing I have come to understand it is that most gamers are people of action. They want to be following a personal crusade, blasting some aliens or enemies, scoring points or just competing against another gamer online. This game is more about getting all the pieces in place so someone else can compete.
I took control of my favorite team, the Buffalo Bills, for my coaching career. Now the Bills definitely have some problems with their team in real life, but once I got through resigning some coaches, which took an hour’s worth of negotiating, and resigning players, which also took about an hour worth of haggling with agents, I finally got to what I thought would be one of the redeeming qualities of this game…the Draft.
It was actually pretty interesting to try and trade some picks early-on, but one Reggie Bush fell to me at draft pick No. 8. All of the credit I had given the AI of this game went straight out the window for me right then when I pretty much stole one of the easiest No. 1 draft picks ever, but don’t tell that to the Houston Texans.
Incidentally I drafted Brodie Croyle from Alabama in the fourth round and he easily became my starting quarterback that’s how bad of shape the Bills are in right now.
Thankfully I was able to simulate the signing of the rookies. By that point it was too frustrating to try and scout the team the Bills would face in their first preseason game, the Carolina Panthers, so that task was delegated to the Scouting Director to come up with a report.
A few days of running practice drills (during which you can motivate your team either passively, “C’mon you can do it,” or aggressively, “You better do it or else,”) made the team proficient at a few plays. It also got the confidence of my skill players up as high as possible for the time being then I finally got to the first pre-season match-up. This is where I got very frustrated.
After calling a few plays and having offensive players not running to space, throwing passes into triple coverage and missing multiple blocking assignments I understood why coaches go crazy easily.
Defense was another story as my secondary picked off Jake Delhomme seven times and didn’t allow more then 13 yards on a single play. I ended up winning 24-17 on the strength of that defense, but I had to step away after that mess of an offensive performance.
The logical conclusion is that as the coach you have to help make your players better. That wasn’t the case as by the tenth game of the regular season as the offense was still pathetic and the defense was so dominating that the 2006 Bills could easily have been the best squad in the history of the NFL.
I can understand that some older gamers, who aren’t used to controlling the players on the field, but enjoy calling the plays that should be run will find this game much easier to handle then Madden. However I would recommend just playing Madden on a non-playing setting rather then getting bogged down in the useless front office stuff that this game hangs its headset on. Regular madden gamers will rip their hair out with this title but litteraly screaming at the screen for a quarterback to tuck and run or check down to a third receiver, but to instead be rewarded with an interception going the other way.
You can talk strategy or motivate players during the game, but the effects are negligible and you dare not take an eye away from the action on the field or you will be burned badly I guarantee it.
There are a few good things in this one despite the laborious nature of everything it brings to the table.
First, on big plays during a game the game goes into slow motion as you can hear the beating of your coach’s heart because of the pressure. Second the Madden engine is used for the on-field play so the football at least looks good and you can choose from a lot of different angels which is a nice visual touch.
This one also offers a lot of gameplay time. Hours upon hours can be poured into this one which is a double edged sword in that if you like this one then there will be a seemingly never ending stream of games and off-seasons, but if you don’t like it you are going to be stuck for hours.
The controls are simple enough with points and clicks along with a good shortcut system utilizing the directional pad.
The sound is serviceable as a combination of NFL Films orchestral pieces and modern techno riffs along with good on-field pad collisions and grunts.
Overall this game is a solid first attempt at a game that has never been tried before, but it needs to be stream lined. There are too many things to worry about for one person in this game. Even after the last 1,000+ words we have just shared the surface has literally barely been scratched. This is a game that is definitely worth a rental to see if you can dig up anything inside of it that makes it a worthwhile purchase, but more often then not any nuggets of potential this game has are lost in a mediocre pile of virtual paperwork for this time around.
2.5 out of 10