Amazon.com: NFL Head Coach: PC: Video Games

42 Reviews

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2.3 out of 5 stars (42 customer reviews)

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63 of 69 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Extremely Tedious, June 25, 2006

By	GameMaker (Portland, OR USA) - See all my reviews

Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars

I love EA's Madden Football games. I've been playing Madden since the original Madden hit the shelves for the Sega Genesis. But I was real excited when this game was announced because it sounded like it would perhaps be like Madden except that you control the sidelines instead of being on the field.

Well, after getting this on the first day it was released, and spending a lot of hours playing it, I can say that I am already bored to tears with it and highly annoyed by it.

The main problem with this game is that they went WAY overboard on the "what it's like to be a coach" thing. It is literally an hour-by-hour head coach simulation during the entire offseason. There are just SO many tedious things to do. Everything from sitting down with the owner over and over and over, and hearing all his nonesense. Then you have to attend meeting after meeting with your position coaches, which is just plain not fun. Then running practices. Blech! There really isn't anything fun about running the same play over and over and over in hopes of seeing incremental ratings changes of your players.

The college draft could have been a lot of fun, but even that they ruined by insisting on running it nearly real-time. You make a pick and literally have to sit there and wait for half an hour until you get to pick again, with seemingly no way to fast-forward that. And again the "presentation" of the draft was very disappointing. For example they make it really awkward to try to do something as simple as looking up statistics on the players you have already drafted, or the ones you have scouted (much less the ones you haven't).

It took me over 10 hours of gameplay just to reach the first game! And then what a letdown! The gameday presentation is just a shadow of what it is in Madden, and the games themselves are rediculous shams. The computer AI is poor, the play by play is almost nonexistant. The statistics are presented in an almost unreadible way. And it's buggy as heck. For example it tells you that you lost yardage on most plays where you score a touchdown. Also it's usually showing the results of a couple plays back on the scoreboard, rather than keeping up with that game as it's happening.

Argh! This game had so much promise, but it was completely ruined by adding in too many tedious elements and obviously not game play testing this near enough.

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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Falls Short, July 7, 2006

By	Brian A. Wolters (Cabot, Arkansas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars

As a fan of past football simulations from the Commodore 64 days with HEAD COACH to the weak but fun FOOTBALL MOGUL series, I was excited to learn that EA sports was going to make a NFL simulator. Now, EA really upset me a year ago when they took the NFL license and killed the best football series ever, ESPN 2K. But I was willing to give them another chance with HEAD COACH. The verdict: I am still mad at EA.

I installed NFL HEAD COACH and already had a problem. It was telling me my DirectX wasn't up to date, so I had to go to the EA site and hunt for a fix for it. Once installed, I was ready and excited to play out my life as a head coach.

I was pretty happy for a while. Even though it seemed tedious, the day to day was fun but I couldn't wait to get to actual coaching. I signed and drafted players, kept my staff and started spring training. While I was sad to see little options on talking to players, the practices were fun and I could see improvement in the players.

Then came the pre-season game. Oh my...this is where the game fails. First of all, you can't save mid-game at all. That is a big no-no to me. I sometimes can't sit and play for too long. Then, the AI in the game was horrible as my QB who is a pocket passer, would run a lot and I could make easy plays often. And subbing players was a nightmare because you had little time to do it.

I haven't made it to my second pre-season game because honestly, the in-game coaching was terrible and boring. This has all the workings of being a good game but playing Madden 06 as a coach is better than this. I hope they do release one next year. And even though this has my favorite coach (Cowher) on the cover, it will just go with the rest of my Steelers collectables for now.

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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A bad port of a bad console game, July 6, 2006

By	Nicholas J. Delillo (White Plains, NY United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this game, I really did. I was very forgiving for a lot of things, but as time went on, I simply realized the game is just not fun. I love strategy games, sports manager games, and Madden's franchise mode. But there are just too many things that NFL Head Coach does wrong that it really clouds the few ideas that the game does right.

I like the game's use of assistant coaches, talking to agents, scheduling practice, and I love the dynamic draft. One of my few critiques of Madden's franchise mode is how the draft zips by, and you can't slow the game down to see which players went where. NFL Head Coach goes team by team, and even has suggestions from your scout. Awesome, and adds to the drama of draft day, as you wonder if a top player you've been scouting and need will make it to your pick in the round. I also enjoyed making my own custom head coach, and having an office.

With that said, there are just too many things that this game does wrong. Some you may have heard these before, but I'll repeat, just to emphasize what many have said already:
1. The interface is one of the worst I've ever experienced in a game. This is classic laziness of a developer to copy and paste a console interface for the PC. The button colors are "surprisingly" the same for a PS2/Xbox gamepad, but the keyboard buttons are extremely unintuitive. Also, every fact on your players, and the league in general, is contained in subwindows and deeper sub-subwindows. Ok, this is tolerable, barely, but to get back to the main screens, you need to go in reverse through ALL these screens instead of using a shortcut. It becomes very tedious. Finally, the game inexplicably forces you to go fishing for information about each player, instead of just using the simple, elegant design used in Madden. I don't mind the game using Madden's designs if they work well.
2. The scheduling of tasks is way overboard. I understand what EA was going for here. They want people to really consider this a hardcore coaching simulation. Let the casual players play Madden's franchise mode. Ok, fine. But the use of tasks that force players to roleplay a coach's schedule hour by hour is pointless. Players want the interesting parts of coaching, not the tedium of "office hours" that limit you to a certain number of actions per day. A more effective break down of time is required. I hate to refer back to Madden again, because I understand they wanted to create a different product, but "different" does not have to imply tedious. There are plenty of sports management games out there (The Front Office series, anything "Mogul", the Championship Manager franchise for soccer) that have successfully produced entertaining sports management experiences despite the abundance of player data, game data, and the time constraints of a season.
3. I have never, never, NEVER played a game with so many load screens in my life! It is unnecessary and pointless. Just lazy, lazy design.
4. Random crashes. Particularly for me during practice session. Which leads me to...
5. The practice sessions are dull and repetitive. Again, I understand, this is what coaches really do. But I bet they go to the bathroom and pick their nose too. I don't need those things simulated, nor do I need to run through every practice. I would have been happy with just scheduling practice, but not having to watch every. single. play. Althoughg you do have the option to skip coaching practice, you lose the ability to create "money plays," which are plays that you have rehearsed so often, they have a high chance of success on gameday. Also, the game punishes your simulation of practices with higher frequencies of injury, or players which are often not ready for game day. Which leads me to...
6. Player development. Players are granted range of ability scores (ex. Strength 65-85) that change throughout the season. If a player is well prepared and practiced, he will peak near game day. However, these scores all plummet the very next day. Players must then be retrained through practice again and again every single week. Again, it may be somewhat real, but it is tediously dull. I guess the designers were trying to emphasize the need for between game and preseason practices. Real? Yes. Boring. Yes. It would have been enough to require practice to maintain player ability scores, instead of the need for practices to continually replenish ability levels before game day. Which brings me to...
7. Gameday. Some people do not like the graphics used here. I don't mind. I've dealt with plenty of text-only or dots-on-a-field sports management sims that it's refreshing to watch a game. But this is not a normal NFL game. First of all, only 5 minute quarters are allowed. I understand this is to prevent the padding of scores with excess plays from button mashers, but Madden (again!) allows me to modify the quarter times. The 5 minute quarters are too short to produce NFL-level numbers for offense and defense. Also, on the field adjustments are nearly impossible in PC mode. It requires the fast paced button pressing of a gamepad. If you want to adjust your linebackers and tell your corners to enter bump and run, forget it. The plays almost always starts before you have a chance. As for the game itself, you are practically guaranteed to have at least 2 interceptions for both quarterbacks every single time. 3-4 is the norm. While passing for 150 yards. Every game. Maybe if I'm Joey Harrington, sure, but not for Peyton Manning.
8. Motivation mode is worthless. Example. My QB just threw an 80 yard touchdown. I tell him he's doing a great job out there. He responds negatively and his stats drop. Gee, I'm sorry I complimented you! Also, you are limited to 2 choices for motivation strategy (aggressive and passive/complimentary), but have no idea how players will react. What's worse, if you use the same strategy twice on a player, he may react positively and then negatively on the very next attempt. Or vice versa. It's better to just not use or even include this feature at all. To be fair, I did enjoy the ability to tell individual players to emphasize particular aspects of their gameplay, like "concentrate on stopping the run", or "throw the ball out of bounds if you are under pressure". Well done there.

Despite all of these "issues", I really enjoyed the idea of coaching my NFL team. But in the end, I didn;t enjoy the actual experience. In one particularly revelatory moment, while wading through screens and screens of info, I felt that not only wasn't I enjoying the game, I wasn't even playing the game. It was as if the game was playing itself, with the simulation screens, watching the games without being able to adjust the rules/time/plays, being shackled to an unnecessary daily schedule, etc, the I was just fighting to create my own enjoyable coaching experience which the game would not allow. So I gave up. Guess which game I WILL be buying to get that experience? Yes, Madden. It's a shame. I always wanted a deeper version of Madden's franchise mode, but not at the expense of enjoyment, much less playability.

In conclusion, Ernest Hemmingway once said "The first draft of anything is S#@t. If nothing, writing is rewriting." That philosophy really sums up NFL Head Coach. I think of this game as the awful first draft of a potentially great series. Although there are multiple problems, they are all solvable. In fact, they've already been solved in Madden's franchise mode. It's funny, you can see them trying to make a different game to avoid complaints from players that "It's too much like Madden", but instead committed a worse sin: they created an unplayable game. What I'm encouraged about is that all the good aspects of NFL Head Coach are all new ideas: Interviewing for your first head coaching job, hiring assistant coaches, designing my own coaching avatar, the dynamic draft, changing player strategy, and dealing with agents. But I just get the feeling the developers decided to dump this on the public, and design next year's version based on the criticisms of this game.