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February 26, 2008 - The first edition of NFL Head
Coach was an exercise in frustration. A great premise and
sometimes-exciting gameplay was marred by a UI seemingly hell-bent on
getting you to turn the game off or throw your controller on the wall,
with the depth needed for such a game to be exciting spoiled by gaping
logic flaws and AI issues. As an exercise in the tedium of simulating
meetings and getting little done, it was superb; for those people who
were looking for an actual fun, exciting simulation of what it's like
to be a coach at the highest level of football, well, they were left
unsatisfied.
Enter, then, NFL Head Coach 09,
EA Sports' peace offering to those who were disappointed with the
original. A new development team was brought in to work on the game
and, according to EA developer Josh Looman, the game was entirely
rewritten, with neither a line of code from Madden (outside of the
Madden gameplay engine) nor the original Head Coach. The primary focus
of the team was to ensure that the game was playable; unlike the
original Head Coach, with buttons obscured as items in a room, every
playable screen in the game is available in a right-side navigational
box, easily accessible at any point.
All your cap space belongs to Nnamdi Asomugha. Or it should.
The tedium is also gone. Tasks are now deferrable to members of your
staff, who will perform them at levels according to their ratings; in
other words, if you leave the draft in Matt Millen's hands, expect to
have a lot of wideouts by the time Day One is over. You can also choose
to simulate ahead to almost any period of the season or offseason,
allowing you to move past items you're uninterested in. Any individual
task (say, scouting kickers at the Combine) is dismissable with the
press of a single button.
Of course, now that you know you can actually get from screen to screen
without throwing a controller through the wall, are there things here
that make Head Coach 09 worth picking up? Specifically, are there
things that make it stand out from its big brother, Madden 09?
Although we only saw a small portion of the game in our initial look at
the game, the answer appears to be yes. The freedom of starting the
game from scratch has resulted in EA implementing some new,
legitimately logical features that could be fantastic if implemented
properly. They include:
Unlike other EA games, Head Coach's slogan will be "If it's not in the game for a year and a half, it's in the game."
Tony Dungy is aggrieved about Peyton Manning's completion. We are not sure why.
While we can't give Head Coach our full Fred McGriff endorsement until
we actually get to sit around and play with the game and see if its
decision-making processes and underlying logic actually make sense for
both your team and its opposition, there's certainly a promising level
of playability and depth that we witnessed. Looman noted that the game
was still several months away from its release and that all its
features had been implemented, allowing the team to spend the rest of
the pre-launch period fine-tuning the game and working on ensuring the
AI is accurate and intelligent. For a game in this vein and for a
predecessor who failed so frustratingly, those are very promising words
indeed.
And, for those who aren't sick of talking about it yet: No. You cannot film the other team's walkthrough. We think.
Coach was an exercise in frustration. A great premise and
sometimes-exciting gameplay was marred by a UI seemingly hell-bent on
getting you to turn the game off or throw your controller on the wall,
with the depth needed for such a game to be exciting spoiled by gaping
logic flaws and AI issues. As an exercise in the tedium of simulating
meetings and getting little done, it was superb; for those people who
were looking for an actual fun, exciting simulation of what it's like
to be a coach at the highest level of football, well, they were left
unsatisfied.
Enter, then, NFL Head Coach 09,
EA Sports' peace offering to those who were disappointed with the
original. A new development team was brought in to work on the game
and, according to EA developer Josh Looman, the game was entirely
rewritten, with neither a line of code from Madden (outside of the
Madden gameplay engine) nor the original Head Coach. The primary focus
of the team was to ensure that the game was playable; unlike the
original Head Coach, with buttons obscured as items in a room, every
playable screen in the game is available in a right-side navigational
box, easily accessible at any point.
All your cap space belongs to Nnamdi Asomugha. Or it should.
The tedium is also gone. Tasks are now deferrable to members of your
staff, who will perform them at levels according to their ratings; in
other words, if you leave the draft in Matt Millen's hands, expect to
have a lot of wideouts by the time Day One is over. You can also choose
to simulate ahead to almost any period of the season or offseason,
allowing you to move past items you're uninterested in. Any individual
task (say, scouting kickers at the Combine) is dismissable with the
press of a single button.
Of course, now that you know you can actually get from screen to screen
without throwing a controller through the wall, are there things here
that make Head Coach 09 worth picking up? Specifically, are there
things that make it stand out from its big brother, Madden 09?
Although we only saw a small portion of the game in our initial look at
the game, the answer appears to be yes. The freedom of starting the
game from scratch has resulted in EA implementing some new,
legitimately logical features that could be fantastic if implemented
properly. They include:
- Different Interpretations of Player Ratings -- OK, so
there's probably a better name for it than that, but we're not PR
people, we're journalists. While Madden offers up player ratings that
remain true and constant regardless of what system, philosophy, or team
the players are on, Head Coach 09 can see players rated drastically
different depending upon the philosophy and abilities of a team's
coaches and general managers. The Raiders, for example, have a
hankering for speed, and will rate players with great straight-line
speed (say hi, Darren McFadden) accordingly, while the Colts will look
for halfbacks who can catch the ball out of the backfield. These
differing views on player ratings come into play when you're trying to
make a trade or sign a free agent, with teams more aggressively
pursuing players who fit their philosophy. If a free agent has
experience in a particular playbook or scheme from playing in it
previously, like Cato June did in Indianapolis before he signed with
Tampa Bay, teams will note that and it will make him more valuable to
them in free agency.
- Trade/Free Agent Acquisition Auction -- Speaking of
trades and free agency, unlike the Madden schematic, which allows you
to plug in trade after trade and offer after offer until the little
meter magically goes from red and empty to green and full, Head Coach's
system is essentially eBay. When signing a free agent, teams go back
and forth in a timed auction with offers, one above the rest, until the
time runs out or no teams are left to bid against the eventual winner.
After that, another timed negotiation process allows you to propose
contracts to the player, who can walk away from the negotiations or
make counter-offers to your team. Trades, meanwhile, are offered to you
with packages and allow you to offer specific counters or simply ask
the opposing team for more in return and allow them to decide what
they'll offer. When inquiring about a player, you'll be asked to pick
one of several different packages the other team would be interested in
receiving for his services.
Unlike other EA games, Head Coach's slogan will be "If it's not in the game for a year and a half, it's in the game."
- More Realistic Player Behavior -- In Madden, players are
relatively genteel. Sure, they ask for the occasional new deal here or
there in the offseason, and if you trade away all your veterans, they
tend to riot and what-not, but all in all, it doesn't really matter too
much. On the other hand, in real-life, Kellen Winslow's asking for a
new deal after spending the first two years of his rookie contract on
the shelf with myriad injuries. Head Coach factors some of that in as
well. Players are modeled with different personality traits and
characteristics that affect how they perform and how happy they are;
excitable players who constantly feel underappreciated will ask for new
deals in the middle of the season, while others will request trades or
ask for new deals come February. Players from the CFL invade the NFL,
while off-field injuries (including contracting food poisoning from an
all-you-can-eat buffet and fracturing a fibula falling off a ladder)
come into play as well.
Tony Dungy is aggrieved about Peyton Manning's completion. We are not sure why.
- Authentic Combine/Pro Day Experience -- Since we were at
the combine in Indianapolis for the demo, it was naturally focused on
the whole scouting process and the events that come into play related
to the NFL draft. This was the part of the game that we were shown
almost in full, and the amount of detail was staggering. The whole
process was four broad steps, starting with the Senior Bowl, proceeding
to the Combine, the Pro Days held by each university, and then finally,
individual workouts. Players' stock rise and fall with good or bad
combines, as noted by mock drafts that appear periodically throughout
the process. Some players choose to skip running at the combine,
preventing you from finding out what their ratings look like before the
draft (unless, of course, they run at a Pro Day or in an individual
workout and your scout attends). Your scouting ability is tied directly
to the ability of your general manager, so Matt Millen (to pick a
particularly egregious name) can only scout, say, 15% of the players
that Bill Polian can. NFL Network reporter Adam Schefter appears in the
game to relay details of players being scouted both during the
offseason as well as the regular season, where you can choose to keep
tabs on certain players throughout the college season. On the other
hand, if this seems tedious, it can be delegated to an assistant coach
while you sip on a mai tai in Hawaii or, alternately, skipped
altogether and simulated.
While we can't give Head Coach our full Fred McGriff endorsement until
we actually get to sit around and play with the game and see if its
decision-making processes and underlying logic actually make sense for
both your team and its opposition, there's certainly a promising level
of playability and depth that we witnessed. Looman noted that the game
was still several months away from its release and that all its
features had been implemented, allowing the team to spend the rest of
the pre-launch period fine-tuning the game and working on ensuring the
AI is accurate and intelligent. For a game in this vein and for a
predecessor who failed so frustratingly, those are very promising words
indeed.
And, for those who aren't sick of talking about it yet: No. You cannot film the other team's walkthrough. We think.
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