**
For years, it has been the dream of text based sports fans to see a deep statistics driven game with high end modern day graphics. The idea of playing a game with the depth of Front Office Football or Out of the Park Baseball but with sharp graphics rather than dry text seems like a logical evolution of the genre. In fact, old games like MicroLeague Baseball and Front Page Sports Football did this very thing back when 2D graphics were all the rage.
EA Sports' new "sports strategy game" NFL Head Coach 2006 is actually a mess from top to bottom, but it does do one very important thing: it clearly shows you how fantastic a game like this could be if done right.
The most egregious crime is the game's interface. It's a monstrosity of a design that is full of unnecessary busywork. The idea is to simulate the day to day like of an NFL head coach. The problem is that that isn't always a lot of fun. For example, you have multiple "Office Hours" scheduled each week, and during this time you can change your depth chart or make other roster moves. You only get two actions per Office Hour session so you can make two subtle depth chart changes and that's it.
After that, you have to go on to the next "task" such as meeting with your staff or talking to the owner, who basically tells you the same thing each week. Then it's back to the office to make another depth chart change. The entire off the field portion of the game is like this; you see as much of the "loading" screen as you do the actual game. It's staggeringly tedious.
The games themselves are fun, to a point, depending on how much realism you're after. Being a hands-off coaching simulation it's safe to assume that the target audience is looking for a more realistic simulation than they get from games like Madden or NFL 2K. At times, the game shines as basic football principles are reflected better than they are in arcade games. Players are rated in more categories; quarterbacks are rated in short, medium, and long accuracy and wide receives even have a rating for avoiding press coverage.
Ratings also fluctuate depending on how the players practiced for that week. These traits are reflected on the field because if you ask a quarterback with poor long ball accuracy to heave it deep it could wind up anywhere. Receivers with poor hands drop more passes, and even though this sounds like a no-brainer this was never really the case in Madden.
Unfortunately, there are parts of the game where realism flies out the window. The games are firmly set to five minute quarters, which is just plain asinine for a coaching simulation. You can't edit the clock or use an accelerated clock – it's five minutes. On top of that, interceptions plague the gameplay as it is not uncommon to see eight or nine combined in a single game. It strips away any sense of realism when Peyton Manning tosses his sixth pick against the Browns in a five minute game. In addition, the computer never returns a punt and the defensive linemen are no threat to sack the quarterback (you have to blitz a linebacker or defensive back). Finally, in a final blow to realism, each team signs each and every one of its free agents in the off season, making rebuilding a team virtually impossible because teams have so much initial cap space. Any modern day NFL sim where free agency is broken is impossible to recommend to anyone remotely serious about experiencing life as a real head coach.
Even though the first attempt is a bust, EA Sports is clearly on to something. When everything clicks, when you call a perfect drive that keeps the defense guessing, Head Coach provides more drama and just as much excitement than any arcade sports game. Sitting back and watching your quarterback throw into double coverage while you sit helplessly on the sideline is frustrating, but in a good way – it's what a real coach has to suffer through. Conversely, it's gratifying when you call a perfect play action pass when the defense is in the wrong coverage, and to see it all happen in living color is a wonderful experience. If only the rest of the game was a good as those fleeting moments.
***
Now, remember, that was the OLD Head Coach. Not the new one that comes out in a couple of weeks.
The NEW Head Coach has the potential, although it is still extremely early in the review process, to be an absolute first rate coaching simulation complete with sharp visuals and tense gameplay. It is the kind of game on the surface at least, that I wanted the original to be.
Let's run down the list of complaints from the first game:
- Games locked at 5 min quarters: fixed. It uses 15 minutes with the fast clock. Takes a little over an hour to play a game.
- Plagued by INT: Fixed. My preseason game against the Jets saw 1 pick.
- Lack of Dline sacks: Fixed. Ask Ken Dorsey how that went against New York...yikes 'twas not pretty.
- The worst user interface in the history of videogames: Fixed. It still screams for a PC UI, but this is pretty darn easy to navigate and in the game you can quick sub players with the press of a button and you no longer have that silly "2 task per week" thing. It moves MUCH quicker and is nowhere near as tedious. There still might be things you choose to simulate during the week to week grind, but it moves along at a nice clip.
- CPU never returns a punt: Fixed
- FA signings: Dunno yet. I do know that during the first preseason week I got into a bidding war over Travis Henry (and lost the bid war, thankfully).
OK the Browns won the pre season opener 31-24. Here's some numbers:
Anderson 7/12 105 yards
Quinn 6/7 70 yards
Dorsey 2/6 26 yards
Clemens: 6/11 91 yards
Pennington 17/29 303 yards 1 TD 1 INT
Wright: 8 for 54
Harrison 7 for 6 and a fumble
Quinn scrambled 5 times for 23 yards
Jones: 16 for 70 yards
Washington 9 for 3 yards
Josh Cribbs ran a kick back 98 yards for a TD. Cribbs -- if you know the Browns -- is the MAN on special teams.
A lot of players were dinged up during the game and all came back as fine except old man Willie McGinest is down for 2 months and Winslow hurt his knee and will miss the rest of preseason.
The final drive even though it had nothing but backups shows you how tense just calling plays can be. I use the Overhead Cam angle which shows me as much of the field as possible. NY had the ball on my 10 yard line, :04 secs left down 7. They had moved from the 50 to the 7 in under a minute. My backups were helpless and TIRED. Checking the fatigue, these boys were huffing and puffing.
I decided to blitz both OLBs. Pennington dropped back and the OLB (Peek) came in untouched and was just about to drill him but Pennington avoided the rush; he stepped up in the pocket to get away from Peek and ran right into reserve lineman Lewis Leonard. Game over. Great call. :)
You'll see dropped passes, sacks, overthrows, passes broken up, missed tackles, hard hits that dislodge potential catches, blitzers getting picked up and blizters coming in like madmen, wide open receivers and times when the QB will tuck and run, missed blocks, pancakes, deep passes from the AI, bad reads by the QB, fumbled pitches, missed FGs, kickoffs returned for a TD, hurry up offenses, blown coverages, kickoffs returned for 20 yards...I saw ALL of that stuff in one full game of Head Coach.
After only messing with it for one day -- this thing has the potential, and again I stress potential based on the small sample size, to be up there with FPS: Football in terms of combining graphics with gameplay.
How's that for a first impression?
