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NFL Head Coach
I think EA actually has a good concept with the Head coach game, and for a first installment it's not actually that bad. But it needs a lot of work and additions if EA plans to make another version next year. Because otherwise nobody will be buying it.
Starting out in career mode you make your coach. The options are really limited for creating the coach. A few hairs styles (no bald) a few hats.. The options are not many. Of course this is the xbox and I have gotten used to my 360 (hmm there's an idea make games for the 360...which HC is not available for)
You get to pick whether your coach was formerly an OC or DC, and that will of course affect his attributes. Once you have done that you will interview with a team. Be ready for the interview, because it shapes you attributes more. After the interview you will get offers from 5 teams and one of them will be from the team you interviewed with. I interviewed with the Cowboys and thier owner Grizzly Adams (It was not Jerry Jones). Each offer will come with a contract offer and a list of goals the owner expects.. don't live up to the owners goals and you could be fired!
Once you pick you team you will go into a short orientation that will get you info on the basic controls, and then you will move to a staff meeting where you will decide which of your coaches to retain and which to fire. Make sure you look at your coaches attributes using the computer before you talk to them because when you talk to them you will be making you decision whether or not to retain them.
This is a good time to explain Tasks and Actions. For each period of time you will have Tasks to complete. For example after you decide which coaches to fire you will have the Tasks of filling the coaching positions you have empty. And this is where actions come into play. The game gives you a certain amount of Actions per 'segment' of your schedule. For example int the 'Office hours' segment you get 2 actions. Ok lets say you want to redo your playbook. Replacing a play with a new play takes an 'Action'. So you can only replace 2 plays each office hours segment. It is the same way with resigning players, making trades, scouting players, calling coaches for interviews. The whole system of the game revolves around these 'Actions'. For some things this is ok (like running plays in practice) For others it is annoying (like building a playbook). I am the type of person that would rather sit down and do my playbook all at once. I don't want to replace 2 plays, talk to 3 agents, replace 2 plays, talk to my staff, replace 2 plays.
When you call coaches agents to interview a coach, you will only get to see one attribute of that coach. The one that is highest. So lets say you are looking for a good RB coach. You cannot have the game show you all of the coaches with a good RB attribute. You can see the coaches who have RB as thier highest attribute, but that doesn't mean there might not be another coach out there that is good as a RB coach but just has higher Strategy or Motivation. This is another annoyance because in the Real NFL coaches KNOW what other coaches can and cannot do well there whould be a way to view the coaches attributes before interviewing thiem just like the players.
When interviewing the coach you will get to ask some questions. The questions you ask will determine what attributes you get to learn about the coach. So if you are interviewing the coach to be your RB coach you better ask how he can improve your Running Game.
Lets move on to the players and roster management. Personally I found the roster management outlay to be annoying. The way you have to switch through players is tedious. EA should have stuck to the old name and attribute listings, instead you get little torso icons you have to highlight to see the player. There is no way to swtich quickly between posisitons you have to go into a position and then exit back out of that position and goto another position.
So you have moved through a few sections of the game and you come to restricted free agents. You can look through each team and find guys you like.. now remember with 'ACTIONS' you can only call 3 players agents. Here is another problem. you have to call the players agent in order to find out what the compenstation you would have to give up to get the player is. Not noticing this at first, I made an offer on a FB and nearly gave up my 1st and 3rd to get him (The CPU was dumb and matched it).
On to Trades. There is no Trade Block. You can get offers for trades from other coaches, but unless an offer is sent there is no way to see who they want to unload. The major thing they left out of trades that has people so frustrated is the 'Interest meter' without it you are really shooting blind shots in the dark. You don't have any idea how close your trade is to acceptable. I understand the game wants to put some type of realism in, but doing offers over and over and over until I find out how close I am is the same thing as an interest meter it just takes longer. I got a trade offer from the Colts.. thier MLB Bracket for Keyshawn. Normally I wouldn't do this trade but KEY was holding out.. so I got a new MLB for my 3-4.
On to Scouting. You will talk to your coaches and they will give you suggestions on who to scout. I told them all yes, it raised thier trust in me. But it uses 8 of the initial 25 scouting slots you get. After talking to the coaches you talk to the scouting directory and pick the rest of the players you want to scout. Then each week you get to scout 8 more. Some players need to be scouted more than once to get thier rating. You can scout draftees or players on other teams.. sometimes you need to scout players on other teams if you want to do a trade.
The Draft. You get to the draft screen, and man this can be fun but instead you are looking running around unprepaired. Hint: Do your trades before the draft. If you want to attempt to trade you have to do it before the draft, because you can only do like 3 trades during the draft WHAT?? Yeah thats right I'm making phone calls once Vince Young fell to me trying to unload Bledsoe, and I run out of trades. Now I made a trade down and unloaded HOLDOUT Al Singleton to pick up another 2nd rounder. If I could have traded Bledsoe I might have been able to Parlay him and that 2nd into another first, instead the game is telling me I can't trade again?? WHAT is that a rule in the NFL? Did my phone go out of order? WTF!!??!!
You can quick sim to your picks and you will have 5 minutes to pick or you can wait 30 secs for each team to pick and listen to Kiper give his breakdown on the current pick. This goes back to me personally not liking the menu layouts, I think they should have been more like Maddens. You can goto a screen and see the torsos of the players picked and players left, but its not a list. I like lists.
After the draft you have to sign your players and any free agents you want.. ONCE again the process is... Sign 3 guys, office hours, Sign 3 guys, office hours. With the FA's you will need to scout first... I didn't, because I was gettin frustrated with the flow of the game at this point so I just signe Lenny Walls, Pierless Price, and Kelly Campbell.
At this point I just simmed ahead becaue I'm ready for some practice and games...
Speaking of simming.. When I simmed ahead to my first preseason game about 5 players on my team got injured in training camp. Now 5 injuries in training camp might be normal, but so is having 85 people in camp and of course just like any other NFL game made by EA you can't have 85 guys, no you get 55. Not only that but when you go to the roster and goto injuries it shows you the players that are injured but it doesn't tell you how long they are out or what is wrong with them. Now it may be there somewhere, but wherever it is (if it is there) I can't find it. When you click on a player all it asks is if you would like to place him on IR ... Uhmm NO I'de like to know whats wrong with him thanks!!
Back to training camp. When you start doing training camp stuff you will be able to run drills. You can pick the drills by going into your calendar and replacing the drills action with other drills actions.. You can also replace the Drills events with other events like trading players or signing players (which is what you have to do to cut someone.. That's right to cut someone you would have to take a time slot that you would use to improve all your players to call up his agent and tell him you are cutting him. Huh? Can't I just tell him "Come to my office after practice" and tell him myself... Actually its more like "Go see the TURK".
The drills are fun at first. You will want to check your players on your roster and find out who needs work after each time you run drills so that you know who to work with (The players have a rating range and before TC they are all at the LOW end of thier range, but after practice they move up). I assume just like any other NFL game by EA if you just run through ALL of the drills yourself instead of simming through them, you won't get as many injuries.
After you go through the drills and the fun of them wears off you get to your first pre-season game. Get ready to be annoyed. Your QB will take one step drops and throw the ball with nobody around him, and you won't have time to make any pre-snap calls on defense. The punters are dumb (punting from the 40 sends the ball through the endzone every time). Basically you get the gameplay you see when the CPU plays itself.
Which leads me to the Interceptions. Madden by default has way to many interceptions. For it to be realistic you have to set the INT sliders down real low (They are set like 1 bar up from 0 in the SIM LEAGUE!!). But there are no sliders in NFLHC so you are stuck with the default. You are also stuck with 5 minute quarters. You really can't change anything but camera views (which there are like 6 of, but the widescreen view is NOT one of them).
Overall the game has a few fun factors, and then they wear off fast. Keep in mind the ratings I put on this game are IF you like the game. Whenever I rate a game I will rate it as if I liked the game. Personally I wouldn't suggest this game to anyone, but I know there are people who like it, so my advice is to rent it, and if you are one of the 5-10% of people that like it after playing it for more than 2 days then by all means buy it.
The actual setup and layout of the game itself is so annoying and aggrevating that it just absolutely wore me down to the point I wanted to quit with the game before I was even done with my review. The fact that I get a time slot in which I can set who my first and second team QB is and then I am out of actions is horrible.
The reality of it all is that this should have been an ADD-ON to Madden. Every year we pay another $50 or $60 for a new Madden that they have added 3-4 new features to (and usually taken some old features out of) EA has us locked in because we are addicted, but NFL HC should have been an added feature to Madden that would have made the Value of the game worth the $50-$60 we spend each year on it. Instead they suckered a lot of people into spending $40 on a poorly put together game to extract more $$ from us to help pay for thier exclusive NFL liscence.
Verdict- RENT IT FIRST!!!
I can't wait to spend $50 and or $60 on NCAA 2007 so I can play the same old game with a few enhancements (on a PC its called an expansion pack and the expansion packs EA releases each year are worth about $10)
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Last edited by cashpath; 06-23-2006 at 01:48 PM.
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